July 4, 2021

Has Your Blog Lost Its Mojo?

How to Recover from Blog Neglect

Did you once start a blog with good intentions and then run out of steam to the point of blog neglect? Did you initially keep to a regular posting schedule (twice a week? twice a month? even monthly?), but you were at least consistent? Did you then start skipping weeks—or months? Did you draw a blank when it came to blog ideas? Did you wait until the last minute to post hoping a brainstorm would save you? Even worse, did you forget what your blog was about and who you were writing it for? Did guilt set in when you even looked at your computer?

Confessions of a Lapsed Blogger

I plead guilty to all of the above. I started this blog nine years ago on July 4^th, 2012, after my first self-published book (THE THERAPIST WRITER: Helping Mental Health Professionals Get Published) was launched on Amazon’s CreateSpace (now called kdp). My first blog was about celebrating “writer independence” through self-publishing, instead of traditional publishing with all its gatekeepers and NO-sayers.

I realize now that, at the time, I looked at blogging as just another book marketing tool, so I didn’t think it through beyond the first couple of months. I didn’t ask myself, What about when the book is no longer “just published.” What then? A blog has to be about a lot more than launching a book. The bulk of it has to be about things related to the theme of your blog —and of benefit to the reader.

When I reached the point where my book was no longer new, I floundered, and the resistance began. My last official blog wasn’t even written by me. It was a guest blog. When the pandemic hit, I wrote a blog about how to market a book when you can’t leave the house, but I procrastinated when it came to editing it, and then a bunch of other blogs and articles appeared on the same topic, so I put my own blog away in the proverbial drawer.  Then one day I heard someone snidely remark during a Zoom writers meeting, “Blogging is so yesterday.”

That got my attention. Really? Is blogging dead? You’d think that would have made me feel better, confirmed that I was right to quit, but instead it challenged me: If blogging—as an art—is going south, that means there must be others like me who’ve fallen by the wayside. Gee, what would it take to bring them back? What would it take to bring me back?

In early 2021 I began reading up on blogging for the first time since 2012! I quickly noted that a lot more has been going on in the blogging world than I thought. It’s far from dead! It only took three article and a couple of interesting factoids on the general topic of blogging to make me feel that old blogging energy return. Just reading that there are currently 600 million blogs worldwide was heartening, and I was amused to learn that 25 years ago when blogging was still new, the word “blog” (short for weblog, as you probably know) had been named by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as the “Merriam-Webster word of the year.” That’s pretty cool. It made me want to figure out where I’d gone wrong and get back up the horse.

Anyway, just hitting the basics here, let’s look at some of the reasons bloggers like me fall off the horse in the first place:

 Why Bloggers Get Derailed

• Blog’s mission statement not clear

• Benefits to reader not spelled out

• Audience not specified

• Blog’s topic too broad or too narrow

• Blog posts too short or too long

• Blog doesn’t offer enough value for reader

• Blog is too “one note” and is boring

• Blog isn’t published consistently

• Blog lacks visual appeal

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How to Get Your Blogging Mojo Back

1. Re-educate yourself on blogging: There is so much more information out there now than there used to be when many of us began our blogs. Soak it in! Learn to re-appreciate the art. Look on Pinterest, Amazon, YouTube, try different search engines. Read a variety of blogs. If I could be re-inspired after reading only three articles, there’s hope for you, too. We all have our own take on things, so share yours. It has value. There’s someone who needs your words.

2. Keep a Notebook handy for jotting down blog ideas. Have a run-list of at least 100 ideas so you can pick and choose when it’s time to post again.

3. Collect Hints and Tips: You can improve your blogs immediately by applying hints and tips from your research, such as “the most effective words in blog titles are HOW, YOUR, WHAT, BEST, WHY, and TIPS,” or “What’s the best lengths for blogs?”

4. Niche down or expand: If your blog topic is too big (e.g., medicine, law, world peace) you’ll be overwhelmed, feel pressured to know everything, and probably write something that’s a mile wide and an inch deep (no meat). Niche down! WAY down. If your topic is too narrow, expand creatively to cover more territory so you don’t bore yourself and others.

5. Divide your blog topic into categories: No matter what your blog is about, it’s more interesting if you juggle posts in 5 or 6 different categories, such as News & Reviews; How-Tos & Don’t Dos; Hints & Tips; Interviews with Experts & Talent; Personal Takes; and Serendipity (leaving room for the unexpected).

6. Pictures over Words: There are statistics to back this up, as well as the old expression, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Readers are more attracted to blogs that have pictures, videos, and graphics, along with white space so they feel they can breathe. Use bullet points, use some bold, use some italics. What you don’t want is a wall of words. Off-putting.

My Favorite Way of Getting Blog Ideas:

Aside from all the ideas you’ll probably get from re-educating yourself about blogging on Pinterest, YouTube, Googling and Amazon, a great way to get blog ideas is to scroll through photo sites, the photos you can legally use for free with no restrictions. 

When photos pop out at you (some may be good metaphors for possible blog topics), save the photos, jot down the related information, and gofo back to them later for inspiration. It’s much harder to find a photo for a blog that’s already written. This way, it’s like writing music to go with the lyrics. It’s counter-intuitive and timeo-consuming, but a great photo can make a blog. (Collecting photos for blogging is a blog topic in itself! See, a blog idea!)  Give all this a go. Arfter all, you’re a blogger again.