Over It: 4 Tips To Avoid Blogging Burnout

You’ve always loved blogging and you’ve been happily reeling out compelling, dynamic, witty blogs for a good few months/years now but just lately something hasn’t been feeling quite right. You don’t really know how it happened but you think somehow *deep breath* you might have fallen out of love with blogging.

Suddenly the thought of creating yet another clever, creative blog on a certain theme now fills you with dread and right now you’d happily watch paint dry if it meant you didn’t have to write yet another blog.

Sound familiar? Don’t panic! We’ve all been there – in fact, if I’m perfectly honest, I was there last week – the point where you just feel well and truly burnt out with blogging.

Symptoms of blogging burn-out syndrome can include a lack of inspiration, having to rewrite an article at least five times before you’re happy with it and shamelessly nicking bits from other people’s blogs because you can’t for the life of you think of any new ideas.

As a fellow writer, I know how horrible blogging burn-out can be and I know it can feel like the end of the world but the important thing to remember is that it won’t last forever!

And if we’re being honest, it was only a matter of time before you were struck down! Think about it; you’ve been churning out great content upon great content for ages now so, just like your otherwise healthy body picks up colds from time to time, it makes sense that your creative juices and amazing ability to write epic blogs and copy in general can’t always be on its A Game 365 days a year.

Think you can protect yourself from this dreaded affliction? Forget it! Blogging burn-out is notorious for striking at the worst possible time and no blogger is safe so you need to always be on your guard!

Convinced you’re suffering from a nasty case of blogging burn-out? Here are my top tips for getting through it.

1. Don’t Panic: Like I said earlier, writer’s block doesn’t last forever so there’s no need to panic and start looking for a new job.

2. Give It Time: The best cure for blogging burn-out? Time and patience! The worst thing you could do is rush it and try and force a recovery! Your brain’s trying to tell you it needs a break so don’t try and deny it one. Seriously, just take a bit of time out and put blogging to the back of your mind.

3. Find A New Approach: Once you’ve taken some time out, it’s time to attempt to get over your case of blogging burn-out and the best way to do that is to try a new approach.

Think about it; what you’ve been doing might have worked well for the last couple of months/years but it’s obviously not working now. Take a step back from your blog to work out what type of posts work well and what posts get the best response and try and bear these in mind when crafting your new blog strategy.

4. Fall In Love With Blogging All Over Again: Okay, so you didn’t fall out of love in the first place but something went wrong somewhere so it’s time to rediscover your passion for blogging all over again.

Read up on your favourite blogs, have a look at what your competitors are doing and try and work out what posts you most enjoy and why – chances are if you enjoy them, other people do too! Remember what it is that attracted you to blogging in the first place and try and keep this in mind when blogging in the future.

Just like any other affliction, when it comes to blogging burn-out, your body needs a total reset and your mind just needs a bit of a rest! Remember, you’re great at blogging (that’s why you’ve been doing it for months/years) so try not to beat yourself up when you have the odd bad day or week.

With a bit of time, patience and enthusiasm you’ll be able to beat the infamous blogging burn-out syndrome and you’ll be back to your brilliant blogging self in next to no time!

No Blog Section?: Why Your Website Is Missing Huge Traffic Leads

Blog posts serve many purposes for a business or organization. They provide current and prospective clients or customers with information that can assist with their decision making. It’s an avenue to share some brand personality and showcase specific employees within the organization, allowing target audience members to feel more “connected”.

From an SEO perspective, blog posts provide an additional opportunity to target keywords, specifically long tail keyword variations that will generate traffic from the search engines. Blog posts are also an integral part of a social media campaign. Sharing blog posts in social media helps to keep the account active and stimulates social activity which is tied back into the search algorithm.

Of course all of this is great and serves the purpose of gaining the attention of both the search engines and target audience members, but ultimately what do you want a visitor to your blog (and website) to do? You want them to take some sort of action! A business website should be a lead generation tool, and every blog post that you write and publish should assist in that effort. Getting traffic to your site that reads your blog posts is beneficial, but getting a blog reader to take that additional step is really the prize that you are searching for.

One of our tips for business bloggers is to write blog posts that are purely informational, as opposed to promotional. What does that mean? Well, it means writing a post that provides target audience members with information that they are looking for or answering questions that they have without mentioning your services or products specifically. It’s an indirect way to sell yourself. You aren’t making a sales pitch directly, but by showcasing your knowledge and expertise in a specific industry you will be thought of as a trusted resource and therefore more likely to make a sale when the time is right.

So how do you write blog posts that are lead generation tools if they aren’t promoting what you sell? The key is to make the most of the web page real estate that surrounds your blog post. The first item to include is a call to action somewhere on the blog post page. It shouldn’t take away from the blog post content, but it should be there. It could be a button that says “Click here to learn more about our services” or “Call 555-4321 to speak with our sales team”.

Different websites have different site conversion goals. If you want a website visitor to download a recent whitepaper, include a call to action like “Like this blog post? Download our whitepaper to learn more”. If you have a form on your site for a visitor to contact you or to sign up for your newsletter, it should be on every page of the site including on every blog post page.

Whatever action you want someone to take when they land on your site, be sure to point it out to them! No need to by shy about it. Don’t assume that people will click around your website to figure out a way to get in touch. Have the information right there. If you have a great writing team and are actively posting and sharing content in social media, it’s likely that it’s your blog post pages that are going to be getting the most attention. Make the most of these pages by turning blog posts into lead generation tools.