What I Learned from My Year of Weekly Blogging
I was making a big mistake.
I’ve told myself over and over that I can’t be everywhere at once and I have to prioritize, but did I listen to myself? Of course not.
I kept hearing that I had to be on this social media and that social media. I had to post this many times a week. And I listened.
But I wasn’t getting anywhere. Sure I got followers and likes on my posts, but like most small business owners, what I really wanted was clicks to my website.
Plus, for an introvert like me, someone who loves to talk one on one with people or in small groups, social media felt impersonal and not a great fit. I also found it took a lot of time to create each post and come up with ideas.
So, I decided to take a step back and think about what would work for me. I decided that instead of social media I would start blogging every week.
Writing seemed more like a one on one conversation where I could help my website visitors with tips and step by step tutorials. Blogging was something I was already doing, but not with any regularity.
It’s now been a year since I started down this path and so I thought I would share with the class what I learned from my weekly blogging.
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Create a Master List of All Your Blog Ideas
One of the first things I did when I decided to start my weekly blogging was to set up a master list of all my blog ideas. In the past I either wrote blogs when I already had a good idea or I would spend a bunch of time researching to find ideas. Now I had ideas ready to go.
Having that list made it so much easier to just start writing my blog, and to keep writing regularly.
My blog ideas were answers to questions from my clients, tutorials that I thought would be helpful to visitors, and some of my questions that I wanted answered. I also got ideas from Google Search, SEO tools like SEMrush and sites like answerthepublic.com.
And I kept adding to the list anytime I found a new topic.
The master list also gave me the chance to have the satisfying feeling of crossing topics off the list when the blogs were written. It was great to look at the list and see what I had accomplished.
Make a Blog Schedule
The next thing I had to do was to decide how often I would publish a blog. There were all sorts of recommendations for how often people should be blogging (with a lot of recommendations for twice a week), but one thing was clear – consistency was key.
I decided that weekly blogging was reasonable for me. I couldn’t imagine that I would be able to keep up with posting two times a week. And sometimes, even weekly was difficult.
I used a calendar and added in weekly blog topics so that I knew when that blog would be published. I usually planned a few weeks ahead.
*I changed up the schedule of topics a couple of times this year when Squarespace introduced new features or changes. I wanted to get information out as quickly as possible in order to help my visitors. So, I just shifted the schedule.
Work Ahead
One of the things I learned to do during this year was to write multiple blogs when I had the time. Some people refer to this as batch blogging.
Working ahead like this gave me an extra cushion for weeks when I couldn’t write, like when work got too busy, or I went on vacation. Plus, I didn’t have the pressure of having to get the next blog ready on time. It made the process much more relaxing.
Post Blogs on Social Media
While social media wasn’t my focus, I still wanted to be there from time to time, check in and post. So, instead of coming up with brand new ideas, I was able to post my blog link to my socials.
I didn’t post every blog to all my social media channels, but tried to post at least one blog per month to each one. This helped me to get clicks to my site from social media.
I generally use Facebook Business Manager to schedule my posts to Facebook and Instagram, but if you are on Squarespace you can also push your posts to various social media channels.
Related Post: How to Create a Blog in Squarespace
Add Blogs to Google Console
Eventually, Google will find your blog posts, but if you want them to know about your posts right away it’s a good idea to add them to Google Console.
I began adding them using the URL Inspection tool to add each post, but once SEOSpace* was introduced I started using this SEO tool instead.
I connected SEOSpace to my Google Console account. This allowed me to add the post to Google Console using the tool.
But first, I could make sure that the post was optimized for search engines.
SEOSpace checked my image sizes, alt text and links broken links. It also checked to make sure my keywords for each blog post were used properly in my SEO title, Meta description and content.
Final Thoughts
Switching my focus from social media to blogging was definitely the right decision for me. I’ll be continuing to write and post more in the future. Got any ideas you want to see?
