What new year resolutions taught me on blogging.

We are currently in the whole “new year resolution” hype all over the place. People around us, and maybe even you dear reader, are telling everybody around that they/you have made the decision of doing this or that for this new year. All in all, it is a great idea to say all this, the prospect of success, the freshness of it all is like a backfire thrusting you forward in your new resolutions for… 3 weeks!

Problem.

There must be a problem for all those good resolutions to go down the drain. Each year we just list a whole bunch of enthusiastic goals that we drop over some weeks later. As a matter of fact, these are the same things that happen in the blogging world. People start out with an idea for a blog, get excited by the prospect, see how it works or not and drop the whole thing some weeks later. Priscus dealt a lot with the phenomenon on her blog.

What is going wrong?

Just like “new year resolutions” blogging is subject to some #epic #failure reasons that mix, mingle and mess everything.

• Too many things in one go. Too many resolutions = too many parameters, topics or possible roads to follow.
• Too much enthusiam in the beginning with a boost of energy which runs out quickly.
• Sometimes, the blogger forces him/herself in the task. Bad, very bad. This is how you get disgusted with the whole thing. Not enjoyable.
• The vagueness of it all. Resolution: lose 20 pounds. Great but there’s nothing that says how and through what steps.
• Life interferes. In the same way that your everyday life will get in the way of allowing you to focus all the time on your resolutions, it interferes in your blogging pattern, be prepared to it.
• Difficulty. Sometimes one tackles a really difficult resolution and find oneself facing a wall. This is intimidating and the whole thing is dropped

Solutions.

The analogy is quite clear here. So what can be done?

• Tackle one topic and stick to it and only to this one for some time (like: every for a month) before integrating a new one and stick to both and so on.
• Keep the juice flowing. Do not overdo things. 200 word posts are enough to begin with.
• Enjoy doing it. This is the core of the chore. Find a topic that fires your passion, this is the only way of doing it.
• You want to achieve something, draw your roadmap. Plan the job. Determine your publishing regimen. Be consistent in it.
• Don’t let yourself get unbalanced by the various unexpected elements of everyday life. Its not dramatic if you can’t post everyday but you need to get back on your feet and carry on posting. By the way, never post apologies (“sorry for not having posted for so long”), readers hate whingerers.
• Avoid the intimidating element. Start out with easy steps. As one masters one’s field, why not start by the beginning. Some introductory posts are easy to start with.