Blogging Strategies - 7 Methods to Reduce Blogging Stress

Are you suffering from blogging stress? Some people pick up blogging as a hobby to reduce stress, but end up feeling stressed trying to make their blogs tick. How ironic. We all want our blogs to be top-notch, with tons and tons of visitors dropping by to leave constructive comments. If you are one such blogger with high expectations and targets, this is when you may be giving yourself too much stress, especially if you are blogging on a part-time basis.

In our pursuit for blogging “success” (which is of course subjective), we also need to take care of our mental and emotional well-being and not give ourselves unnecessary stress. Here are 7 ways to combat stress that may arise from our pursuit for blogging success:

Don’t rush madly in search of stress. Don’t rush through your blogging activities and create a “panic situation” for yourself. The majority of bloggers are part-timers, and spend a few hours maximum blogging each day. With the limited time that we have, some bloggers attempt to “overkill” in order to complete as many blogging activities as possible. They do this by listing a dozen blogging activities / tasks to be carried out each day, and rush themselves into completing the tasks. This creates unnecessary stress for them, and often degrades the quality of the output for those tasks. At the end of the day, these bloggers are merely rushing in search of stress. Worth it? Definitely not!

Research, trial and error, blog. Quite a mouthful, eh? Research. Before plunging in to set up a blog, perform a simple research to gain an understanding of the happenings in blogosphere, as well as get to know the “blogging basics”. By blogging basics, I mean familiarizing with the different channels that you may come into contact with during your blogging career, such as knowing how to manipulate simple HTML code, what programmes / services you need to sign up for and how to go about it and knowing where to get information when required (e.g. blog directories, SEO information or article submission directories). We will want to equip ourselves with blogging basics to reduce the chances of getting stuck and create unnecessary stress. Trial and error. Having armed yourself with blogging basics, do you plunge straight into setting up a blog? I wouldn’t. I would use free blogging services and set up two test blogs, a blogspot blog and a wordpress blog. This will allow me to put my blogging basics into practice, select the blogging service that suits me and at the same time learn. Often, beginners don’t get things the first time right. By going through this phase of trial and error, I am learning how things work but I have removed the element of stress. These are test blogs anyway, so I wouldn’t feel stressed up to get things right immediately. Blog. Having gone through a period of learning through research and trial and error, it is now time to set up your own blog. Having learnt the basics of blogging and familiarized oneself with the different channels, you should be less prone to feeling lost and stressed while blogging.

Prepare blog entries in advance. This is one of the top-notch blogging strategies that I highly recommend. This blogging strategy basically encompasses drafting posts in advance and setting up a blog entries library, for use when required. Most people blog whatever that comes to their mind. This type of on-the-spot blogging may create unnecessary stress should a blogger experience bouts of mental block and is unable to post an entry when one is due. With blog entries prepared way in advance, one will not feel stressed and pressured to “deliver a post by the end of the day”.

Manage your blog post frequencies. Some full-time bloggers can post up to 3 entries a day. Can you? How often do you post an entry in your blog? Once a day? Once every other day? In any case, do you set a realistic target for yourself and allow time for other blogging activities? One of the main culprits of blogging stress is setting unreasonable blog post frequency targets for oneself. Let’s perform a simple time allocation calculation. If you are a part-time blogger who spends on average two hours a day on blogging activities, and takes half an hour to write a unique quality entry that has value-for-time content for readers, that leaves you with one-and-a-half hours for remaining blogging activities, which include networking, commenting on others’ blogs, links building and exchange, blog administration, researching for content etc. Can you manage all these with so limited time? For the lack of posts we put up (say adopting the strategy of one post every other day), we make up with quality. Ensure your blog post is unique and has quality value-for-time content for readers. A well-planned blog post frequency strategy will help ease off unnecessary blogging stress.

Create a blogging schedule. Would you feel more at ease when you are in your neighbourhood or in a faraway country that you have not visited before? I guess being in familiar territory always eases the mind. The same goes for blogging. Having a blogging schedule allows one to “routinize” and get used to his blogging activities, and with some form of familiarity, this helps to ease the mind. For instance, dedicate Mondays for traffic building, Tuesdays for reading others’ blogs and dropping comments, Wednesdays for brainstorming blog entries, etc.

Having said that, you may want to maintain some form of flexibility in your schedules. You will never know the exact time the next thunderstorm will strike. Similarly, you will never know when blogging ideas will come to mind. With a sudden influx of blogging ideas, you wouldn’t want to wait for the next Wednesday to transform your blogging ideas into solid posts.

Automate tasks where possible. Find it a chore submitting articles to article directories? There is available software that allows one to submit articles to article directories through a few clicks. Find it a hassle to manually reply emails to customers or readers? You can always use email autoresponders. It takes time to set up certain automated tools such as autoresponders. However, once it is done, it takes a load off your shoulders and minimise frustration and stress that may build up with such administrative work. If money permits, you may want to consider outsourcing menial tasks to willing parties.

Take a break. Lastly, get away from your computer if you are feeling stressed up over blogging. Simply relax, exercise or indulge yourself in nice ice-cream. Taking your mind off blogging allows your mind to rejuvenate. A rejuvenated mind will reward you with fresh blogging perspectives and enhance your blogging experience. As the saying goes, “Rest now to prepare for a longer journey.” Taking a break not only allows you to relieve yourself off blogging stress, but will also aid you in going the extra mile.

Hope my two cents’ worth helps.