Another deadline is approaching – looming on your editorial calendar. The next blog post for your business needs to be published, soon... and the thought of stringing together sentence after sentence after sentence has you searching for other marketing tasks to scratch off your list.
Whether your blogging for your business once a week, twice a week, or more, at some point during the mashing of your keyboard, your fingers will slow, the ideas will cease, and you'll smell the hint of a burned out delete key.
Blogging burnout is real. We've all experienced its wrath.
The truth of the matter is, it's easier to avoid blogging burnout than it is to recover. For more than 10 years I've been writing for a living under deadline-driven circumstances. Here are a few tips I've learned along the way.
Top 10 Ways to Avoid Business Blogging Burnout
- Set a "writing time" and stick to it. I'm not really a morning person, but I find it easier to write in the wee hours before my colleagues get to the office. Find your most productive time to write and block off the time on your calendar.
- Tell a story. I'll admit, business blogging can be stale at times. But it doesn't have to be. Find a story to tell – it could be about a customer's experience, a recent success of a client, a milestone for your company, or even a personal account featuring one of your peers.
- Audit your top performing blogs – really dig into why you feel they were successful. Did they share a similar format, style, or subject matter? Find two or three reasons why you feel they were a success, and mimic those characteristics in a new post.
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- Interview someone – find a colleague, a client, a thought leader in your industry, or even your CEO. Successful Q & A sessions have the knack for producing multiple pieces of content. Be sure to communicate your goals for the interview, prepare a list of questions, and allow the subject matter expert to explore tangents.
- Explore gaps in your buyer personas. When was the last time you really went back to read through your buyer personas? Grab 'em, go through them, and try to find any pain points that you haven't addressed with your content lately.
- Dive into keyword research. Sometimes, all you need is a little push from your SEO friends. If you're stumped with topic ideas or just not feeling the flow, identify a few keyword opportunities to write around. From a creative standpoint, the constraints of keywords can also be freeing.
- Welcome a guest blogger. You probably have a list of people in your network that would be great resources to tap. Try inviting one of them to guest blog on your site. In exchange, they may ask you the same. Guest blogging is a great way to share thought leadership and create helpful backlinks for SEO juice.
- Curate exceptional content. Regardless of your industry, there's great content online. Curate infographics, videos, lists, how-to posts, and other examples of different types of content. Highlight the content in a "best of " post or use them as inspiration for your own content.
- Ask for help. You have enough on your plate and it may be time to share the workload. Who knows, maybe you have a member on your team who's itching to do some writing? Honestly examine your capacity for writing moving forward; it may be time to hire someone or to pull in extra third-party resources.
Blogging for your business is important. That being said, you shouldn't let looming deadlines rush your process to create content with a purpose. If you feel as though your writing has become stale, it may be time to take a step back, try a few of these tips, and re-energize your business blogging.