10 challenges faced by new bloggers and how to solve them
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New bloggers are constantly faced with a deluge of information, decisions and challenges. No sooner than one challenge is sorted, another one pops up. So how do you keep up with blogging keeping up with your busy schedule? What are some of the top challenges faced by busy bloggers? What are some of the tips that might help you on your way to blogging sanity?
1. Purpose
This is the #1 challenge that I feel is faced by most new bloggers.
They are certain that they want to blog - about something.
But digging deeper throws up more questions:
- Who they want to write for?
- What is the purpose of their blog?
- What is their content strategy?
Sometimes, the allure of quick fame and money is so powerful that blogging just becomes a vehicle for their larger goals in life. Since they did not spend enough time analyzing their blogging purpose, their journey is fraught with disappointment and failures.
It is quite important to address the purpose of blogging itself. Your blog needs to have a vision / mission statement - the larger problem that you are trying to solve and how you will be solving it. You may want to check out the following post on how to write a mission statement for your blog.
2. Prioritizing
Absolutely the most perplexing challenge faced by most newbie bloggers.
As a new blogger, you get pulled by a thousand things in different directions
- Do I start my video marketing strategy right away?
- What is social media promotional strategy?
- What about getting subscribers through email marketing?
Hey, wait, take a breath.
You need to prioritize what is most important for you.
As a new blogger, you can’t be doing everything. Worse yet, is beginning something and leaving it midway. So my recommendation to new bloggers is to prioritize their most important objectives and tasks.
Maybe you decide to focus only on growing your blog subscribers.
Say, your target is to hit your first 100 subscribers. And you decide to focus on the following only:
- Develop your website / blogging platform
- You will only write 3 blog posts a week, of 4000 words each.
- You will promote your posts on social media, 3 times a day.
Gradually, you can amp up your blogging schedule by adding more in terms of variety and depth.
3. Consistency
Readers crave consistency and familiarity. They should know what to expect.
Is your blogging schedule three times a week? Or two?
I know I have said this before as well, but you cannot have 3 posts in first month, 0 posts in the second month and again 2 posts in the third month.
Respect your readers time - and be consistent with your blogging frequency.
Have a blogging schedule, and maintain an editorial calendar [Struggling to keep up with the demands of content creation for your blog - read this article]
It is important that your readers see your commitment to your blog. And one way to build commitment is to be consistent.
4. Time Management
Many bloggers are managing a job, family and have a million other commitments. A blog, courtesy, its pecking order in the hierarchy of things, sits pretty low in the overall scheme of things. Hence, many new bloggers are not able to keep up with the blogging / publishing demands of a blog and give up.
Time management is of utmost essence when you are managing an additional activity like a blog. You have to schedule in some exclusive time for writing. And you can do that by identifying which time of the day is the most productive time for you. It is your morning? Or are you your most productive in the evening? Whatever is your most productive time, earmark it for writing.
But how do you figure out what to write about? You have to have your ears on the ground constantly. Research continuously. And record your ideas. I have mentioned the use of Evernote and Trello in this blog post before, but as you know, my favourite is my journal. I keep on writing down all my ideas in this itsy bitsy journal. Find out whatever suits you best and use that to record all your post ideas.
You may want to read this post on how to write more blog posts in lesser time.
5. Frequency
A lot of newbie bloggers suffer from frequency of posts. Sometimes their posts are fortnightly, yet at other times, it is weekly. To maintain a consistent blogging frequency, bloggers can utilize scheduling tools. If you are writing and posting every day / every week / right before you need it, then you are just playing catch up. You have to create a slew of posts during your most productive time and then schedule it all the way. Even if you are away on vacation, or not able to take up writing for sometime, your blog is out there, featuring new posts every week.
6. Competition
Yes, competition is challenging. And scary.
How do you compete with other more established powerful bloggers?
The thing is, you can’t.
Every blogger has his/her own unique blogging journey. And it is this journey that makes them unique.
You can’t start off by taking more established blogs head-on. You have to take your time, build your audience, build acceptability and drive engagement. Perhaps they have a million view of their blogs and a couple of thousand comments. And you don’t. That’s absolutely fine. What is more important is that you keep building. Respond to the comments that you are receiving now. Comment on other blogs, build and nurture relationships.
The thing that most young bloggers do is trying to come off as experts. And this hurts them in the long run. People appreciate and accept vulnerability far more than fake expertise. So write from your experience and continue providing value to your audience.
7. Authority
Which brings to my next question about authority.
When you are starting off as a blogger, how do you write with authority. More so, how do you project authority?
The feeling is that readers only appreciate experts and not amateurs.
Bloggers fear that their perception will be damaged irreversibly if they are not acknowledged as experts.
There is plenty of content on the internet that advocates tips on how to project yourself as an expert when you are not.
My take is simple: Why do you want to project yourself as expert if you are not one?
Let me explain with the help of an example:
When I began blogging, I was hugely influenced by the same line of thought.
I must come across as knowledgeable
I must appear as an expert
To do this, I used a lot of grandiose words in my writing. Now in retrospect as I cringe and read those very articles I realized that my (i) my target audience was definitely not using the tone of voice which I was writing in (ii) I was spending so much time camouflaging what was my true style that I completely lost sight of what was important - delivering value to my readers.
All I needed to be was my true self.
And if that self wasn’t an expert right away, then so be it.
The world already has a lot of “experts” - we could do with a few folks who explain stuff simply..
8. Promotion
Another challenge faced by new bloggers is promotion. Where to promote their content? How to do this? Promotion is such a massive massive exercise that it requires a schedule of its own. Else I tend to be at sea without any agenda.
Let me explain.
When you are a new blogger, as much as you would like to be present on all social media platforms, you may not be able to. Sometimes, it just may not make sense for you to be on certain platforms.
So what do you do?
I would recommend identifying your top three platforms of choice for the first few months and seeing how it goes, instead of spreading yourself too thin on a multitude of platforms and falling flat because you can’t keep up [remember, consistency and frequency].
You can start from any number of platforms you are comfortable managing. Just ensure that you have a proper promotion schedule
For example
Promote all new posts on LinkedIn / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram
Promote specific content on social media: such as milestone days, feedback, encouragement, inspirational quotes and so on.
9. Mentorship / Advice
Another challenge faced by newbie bloggers is access to mentorship / advice. Sure lots of information is available online on how to start a blog, how to write content and so on. But nothing beats the advice received from a fellow blogger.
Some of the questions that bear on your mind
What do I blog about?
How long will it take before I see some readership on my blog?
Is it okay not to have a 1000 subscribers in the first year of blogging?
I wish I could talk to someone who has been through this....
I would highly recommend joining / building a network of fellow bloggers who can motivate each other, discuss problems and issues. Sometimes, it may feel like this is another addition to a list of tasks that you already do, in a time-starved environment, but the pay-offs are huge for this.
If you are part of a group of like-minded people with a common goal, you can ideate, ask questions, have access to resources and mentorship alike. Best part, not everyone in your group may be at the same point in his/her blogging career - some people may already be more accomplished than you, others might be less informed than you are. This shared participation in learning will surely enable you to supplement your learning from online forums and sources.
10. Motivation
Being the lonely, solo journey that it is, blogging can be quite depressing at times. Especially since bloggers don’t see a quick return on investment very soon. Remaining motivated despite the initial bleak scenario is very important. So much so that I have a separate post on motivational tips for bloggers. Check out the 5 tips to stay motivated as a blogger
Hope this posts help - blogging is not an easy journey, and knowing that others have also faced these challenges helps. Share your blogging experiences in the comments section below.
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