8 ways to waste your blogging time.

Yes, I know that blogging is never a waste of time. But we can waste the time we spend on blogging.

1. Never tell anyone how your posts are connected to each other.
Liz Straus wrote a wonderful post about internal links which changed my posts…and changed my traffic. Go read it and then come back. And to see an example, look at the bottom of this post.

2. Write a draft and then never publish it because it isn’t ‘perfect’.
This is a conversation, after all. Invite our conversation rather than waiting to wow us with a work of art.

3. Try to figure out how to attract more people to your blog.
Shouldn’t you be spending your time writing, thinking, and living life so that you have something to actually say?

4. Check your statistics incessantly.

5. Decide that blogging isn’t real writing.
For many of us, writing is how we think, how we find out what we know and who we are and whether we believe what we say we believe. A blog is a perfect place for all of those things to be true. But if it merely is a place to rant, to vent, to blather, to spout…then you are missing a perfect opportunity…to write.

6. Spend months searching for your voice.
If you just write and live, your voice will find you. I promise.

7. Assume that people will be able to find you again in the equally random way they found you the first time.
Use tags. Make a subscription link. Send emails to the people who comment. Build a relationship with as many people as you can. And don’t worry about making your community bigger than you can relate to.

8. Decide that just because the title is 8 ways, that you have to spend hours finding that perfect last point.
Maybe it is staring you in the face.

—————————–

I’m writing a series of 8 ways posts. Here are some of them:

To ruin your day
To be thanked
To increase your stress
To explain 2.0 friends to 0.0 parents
To lose your faith
To make yourself angry
To make yourself jealous
To make yourself depressed
To ruin your marriage

Subscribe to this blog for free by clicking here.