June 7th marks my first month blogging. It’s been such an interesting month and I thought a good point to share some of the things I’ve learnt on my journey so far.
1. Blogging takes effort and focus.
Like It Is – commentary from my perspective but it still requires effort and focus to develop an idea into a well written piece. The effort is worth it when your readers say things like “I know what you mean” or “I’ve been there” or “here’s my story”. And, since I’m just starting out it’s great – because I can experiment with what works.
2. Blogging takes a considerable amount of time.
Do not underestimate just how much. Even after the first week I could see that it takes an enormous amount of time. Time to plan, construct posts, think, read other blogs and, of course actually write posts. I also contribute regularly to a blog, which I have to say is what inspired me to have my own. Fortunately I am pretty organised and tend to do a lot of up front planning, which saves me time. I find I spend a lot of time both reading and contributing to other blogs. I think this is an essential part of blogging and I intend to keep the habit.
As a professional working an extremely busy full time day,my biggest challenge is finding the time to blog regularly. I’ve set myself an initial target of posting 3 times a week. I’ve seen some places where it’s said you should post every day. That’s unrealistic for me. However I like to do advance drafts… when I have an idea I begin blogging it off-line, then leave it until I feel ready to post it. That way I’m not always starting from scratch. I’ve discovered that WordPress also allows you to time-stamp posts, which means that I can set the time and date you wish a post to appear on the blog in advance. Neat.
I do not and will not blog at work. Even if I had the time, I feel that is a misuse of my employers time. So that leaves me with some evenings and weekends.
3. Getting ideas
I find that I get ideas out of the blue and I try to write them down for later expansion and so that I don’t forget them. Being a Moleskine lover, I’ve added “a blog Moleskine” to my collection (pronounced Mol-e-skin-a). That way I can grab an idea when it comes to me. If you don’t know what a Moleskine is, Google it. I have many of these. Watch out for a post on them.
4. The Blogosphere
A truly amazing place! I’m still finding my way around it and exploring it, looking forward to linking with other bloggers in due course. I already share blog tips and ideas with a fellow blogger though contributing to her blog and this has helped me enormously. Blogging is an amazing learning experience both from a people and skills perspective.
5. Keeping Going
As with anything starting is usually easy. The real effort is maintaining momentum, keeping it interesting, real, lively, evolving, and worth coming back to. Interesting months are ahead. The best bit is that I decide what goes on my blog!
6.I’m looking forward to month two!
