The blogging sphere has grown exponentially during the last several years. In 2017, everyone’s starting a blog. Business purposes, passion reasons, or maybe even an assignment perhaps? Well, the point is that starting a blog now is easier than ever.
In fact, according to WordPress, 87.6 million new posts are being published each month.That should only give you enough proof that the game is on, and there’s no time to lose. The competition is growing bigger, and the standards are always growing. In order to keep up with the pace and make your blog successful, you depend on one thing.
Productivity. The key element of every successful person. If you want to be above average, no matter what niche you’re activating in, no matter what job you have, and no matter the circumstances, you must be productive.
Take Pat Flynn as an example. He’s a full-time entrepreneur, all while he’s managing a very popular Internet Marketing blog that’s focused on teaching people how to earn passive income. If you take a look at his blog, you’ll notice that he’s not just preaching about making money. He’s managing his own business all while delivering a lot of value to his followers.
He’s one of the most productive persons in the field, along with the all-present Gary Vaynerchuk. If you notice the patterns, every successful blogger or blog depends on high productivity levels.
Well, we have decided to come up with a list of useful strategies and hacks that’ll drastically improve your performance as a blogger. Instead of just reading & leaving, better take a piece of paper and a pen. Note down, plan, and most importantly…take action upon the insights that you’ve just received after finishing our post.
Focus on Systems Based Upon Goals
Start by developing 1, 2, or 3 big goals. These goals should be long-term goals and should be extremely relevant to you. You need to be emotionally connected to them, and you need to commit to them as much as possible.
Then, in order to be extremely productive, you need to develop systems around those goals. So for example, if your goal is to publish 100 blog posts that’ll generate 1k+ monthly unique visitors, your system can look like this:
-Write a blog post each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. That’s it – if you stick to this schedule, you’ll come up with 3 unique blog posts each week, and you’re on the right path towards your goal.
Plan Each of Your Days
Start by creating a small habit of scheduling your day with the use of To-Dos. Each morning, note the 3 most important tasks for the day and stick to it. Moreover, you need to mentally prepare yourself before beginning work. Putting yourself in a productive mood is a great way to boost your productivity throughout the day.
Also, make sure that you stick to your goals and systems each day by continuously assessing your To-Dos. Do they lead to the goal? If they do, take action!
Continuous Learning
Successful people read a lot. Why? Because by continuously learning new things, they develop their skills, mindsets, and work ethics. Reading and consuming useful information through other channels is the best way to keep up with the marketplace and to consistently work on being the best version of yourself.
In the blogging world, continuous learning is definitely a must. You need to completely understand your niche, and you have to keep up with the most recent updates. Your followers are counting on you, otherwise, they wouldn’t spend time on your platform.
Take some time to educate yourself each day. Thirty minutes, one hour…it doesn’t matter as long as you’re consistent.
Sacrifices are a Must
Sacrifices are essential and important for growth. Every time you have to make a sacrifice, you’re encountering resistance. That’s great! Resistance is a sign of productivity – at least for those who manage to overcome the initial negative subconscious responses.
Sacrifice your free time for writing a blog post. Spend less time on Facebook and work on that case study you’ve been planning to produce. No matter what you do, remember that you need to sacrifice some things in order to prioritize others.
Disconnect from Time to Time
Everything should be done in moderation because everything that’s too much is never too good. You need to stop working from time to time and aim your attention towards different aspects of your life.
For me, disconnection means meditation, time in nature, love emotions (spouse,kids), and having a different than usual experience. Find your disconnections and make sure that you’re doing it from time to time. A few hours/days of rest will always recharge your batteries and make you more productive.
Productive Habits Each Day
Small or big habits, it does not matter. Again, for me, productive habits mean anything that makes my day easier and better. So if for example drinking a glass of lemon water each morning right after waking up makes me feel in control over my life and gets me more energy throughout the day, I will do it every day for the rest of my life.
Try to build 1 or 2 habits at once, and make sure that you’re consistent each day. If you manage to do that, you’ll be able to establish a permanent positive change in your daily lifestyle. This basically means more productivity!
Note Down Everything
Make sure that you do everything possible to note down every idea that you get throughout the day. Okay, not just ideas…you need to be able to capture everything that might later interest you or help you achieve your goals.
A notebook, phone notes, apps like Pocket, take advantage of everything. This will boost your productivity big time, as you have everything handled all the time.
Plan Your Content Creation and Distribution
Start off by figuring out your content objectives. That means how much content you need to create, how much time it takes to do it, and when the content must be distributed.
Think about the social media channels too, and take advantage of automation tools to make your life easier and improve your blogging productivity at the same time. You should always have a roadmap that shows you what you need to do. Plan and act upon those plans instead of working without a content strategy.
Automate as Much as You Possibly Can
Today’s technology advancements together with the newest digital media tools and software allow us all to automate our jobs. Us, bloggers, we’re very lucky. There are so many tools that help you automate your blogging activity. The thing is…these tools are specifically designed for our activities.
Automation is the key to better results, but you have got to make it stick. That means that you need a stable system to count on. Once you have established it, you get so much time to do more important things.
Outsource What You Can’t or Shouldn’t Do
We either trade or time or our money. If we don’t have enough budget, we need to work ourselves on the things that we might not enjoy. Moreover, we might suck at different blogging aspects such as web designing or marketing. So we spend so much time trying to learn something that we don’t like and we’re not even good at.
Biggest mistake! You see, if you want to be extremely productive as a blogger, you have to outsource the things that slow you down. Hire someone to do what you can’t and focus all of your time on things that only you can do.
Summary
Blogging is not so easy as many would think. It takes a lot of time, energy, effort, patience, discipline, investments, productivity…and the list could go on. It’s just like a combination of so many things. Get them right, be productive enough to actually pull it off, and you’ll be one of the 10% of actually managed to bring their blog on the top of the ladder.