I’m not going to lie to you. I’m writing this Blog article in a panic. Why? Because I didn’t stick to the plan – I ignored my own Blogging rules.

Let me explain…

Blogging Rule 1 – Plan Your Blog Titles

I normally have a list of titles that I can scan through, pick one and write it up. Sometimes scanning through them there aren’t any I want to write, but they give me inspiration for something completely fresh and new. At the end of each month, I reflect on the articles I’ve shared across social media and the emails I’ve saved where I’ve been asked specific questions that I think are blog-worthy and add to my list of titles.

For the last two months I haven’t done this, and now my list is extremely thin. Leaving me running around shrieking ‘What the hell am I going to write about?!?’ at the top of my voice for the last two days!

Blogging Rule 2 – Protect Time To Write Your Blogs

If you’ve spoken to me about blogs – you’ll know I absolutely hate writing them, but it’s the one thing I refuse to outsource. I was talking to someone recently who is just starting to blog and relayed the story of how I finally managed to get my first blog written. My children (two girls) wanted to watch ‘Frozen’… again. The thought of watching this and hearing the song ‘Let it go’ one more time was threatening to finish me off. I figured I’d use the time to do something that filled me with an equal amount of dread. Then realised that thing would be to write a blog. Even now, sometimes, I have to put myself in a horrible situation to get my blogs written so the experience doesn’t feel quite as painful as I think it does!

So how do I get around it? What’s my plan? I protect time in my diary to write Blogs. The problem more recently, however, is that I have allowed procrastination to kick in.

Uh-Oh… I’m now under severe pressure to write this blog in the next 30 minutes so that I can get it over to the Green Umbrella dream team where it can be proofread, a suitable image designed, added to the website and optimised before hitting publish; and all before 10 am.

(It’s currently 8.50am and I’m still in my pyjamas – I also need to scrape myself together and head into the office before then too…. Now I’m feeling the pressure!)

Blogging Rule 3 – Plan Blogging Themes

I think we can be guilty of writing about what we want to write about, without really thinking things through strategically. The whole point of this blogging lark is to improve the strength of our site from an SEO and ranking perspective. It also gives us great content to share across our social media and other digital communications.

So, plan a monthly theme – which should be in line with your overall marketing strategy!

What is your strategy? (I think I may have to have those four words as my epitaph, I say them so often!) Part of my strategy for the end of last year/beginning of this year related to email marketing, so we made sure we had some blogs on the subject.

I’ll let you into a secret – we’ve been working away on a new website, which has been part of the reason I’ve been leaving blog writing to the bottom of my to-do list. However, it’s also meant that I haven’t really properly updated where we’re going next strategy-wise with our blogs. So, when I screamed ‘Crap!’ this morning it was because I realised I also need to plan my next content themes for the next three months.

Does it shock you to read that we’re human too? We practice what we preach – but it also means that we also come up against the same hurdles and blockages. I think it’s one of the reasons why we’re best placed to help you get over them yourselves! When I hear a client telling me how much they hate writing I offer supportive words and strategies – but I also get to sigh and say ‘Me Too! – I know exactly how you feel!’