The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 138. Low on time? Prioritize These 3 Things in Your Blogging Business

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Do you feel like you are low on time? As summer comes to a close, we know that summer may have looked different for you in your blogging business. We are talking about the challenges that bloggers often face during these busy seasons. We share our personal experiences of balancing family responsibilities and blogging and we are offering actionable strategies for you if you are short on time. We hope that this episode encourages you to navigate your blogging business with grace and strategy to keep moving the needle forward!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsSEO Audio CourseCheck out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode138

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinke and Jennifer Draper. We are on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you are just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we are excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your

own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Well, it is August. And if there is one thing that we have heard a lot of over the last couple months is that people are just short on time. Summer looks different. And it's been something that's felt, I think, a little overwhelming for quite a few people, quite honestly, whether they already have a blog or whether they've wanted to start a blog. I think summer for many of us, and it always feels like this summer is different, but it's really not. Most summers look a little bit different for most people and your timing looks different. But today, we want to really just talk to you about what you can do in these seasons

of life when you're short on time. And when you don't have the hours that you maybe usually do when it comes to working on your blog, because there are going to be those seasons. And I think we would be not being truthful with you is if we didn't share with you that this is a very, very normal part of blogging. We have different seasons in our lives that we are able to focus more heavily on our blogs than others, and that is normal. And it doesn't mean that if you have a shift in your time and where it's spent that now it's time to throw in the towel and blogging in general is just not for you.

It's also a blessing. We're kind of going to go into that. But when we're short on time, I think something else that we can feel is some feelings of guilt and some feelings of shame that you're not doing the things that you should be doing. How many times do you look at something that needs to be done in your house and it's just that thing that's there and you know you need to do it, but you just can't seem to get it done no matter how hard you try, no matter if you wake up in the morning and you're like, this is it.

This is the one thing I'm going to get done today. And then another day passes and you're like, I didn't get it done today. And so then you feel all that guilt and shame. That's normal too. But we don't want you to stay there because truthfully, we're all feeling it. We all have these seasons. A lot of times it happens around the holidays as well. But when the weather is warmer outside,

when it's nicer, when kids are home, all the things when you have vacation, blogging just looks different. And instead of feeling like you're paralyzed and when you feel like you have this list that's a mile long and so you don't do anything because that's common too. We hear a lot of people say that like,

well, I have so many things to do that I just don't do anything. And I'm definitely not throwing anybody else under the bus. I'm totally talking about myself here too. Like sometimes when the list is so long, it just feels like I don't even know where to start. And so that's kind of what we want to talk about today is just making this normal, making you understand that it's normal when this happens. And we just want to give you some things to think about, maybe some strategies that you can keep moving forward, even when you might only have one hour a day. There will be so many things you can do. But we want you to focus on what is going to have the most impact in your business.

So when you do dig back in, you don't feel like you're going to be completely starting over. And that's just the lens that we want to take this into today is just what are three things you can focus on when you are low on time? Yeah, you know, we all just have this feeling at one time or another in our lives. And no matter if you're super organized and you have put all your time into your business or if you're trying to juggle ten different things, I mean this is gonna come up for all of us and like Amy said our goal today is just to give you three solid things so that if you get into this

situation you're going to feel empowered knowing that A you're not not alone, and B, you know what to do. So if you know what to do and you know that you can tune out the rest of the noise, you're just going to be so much more impactful with your time. So I'm going to jump into the first one and I'm taking content as the first one to talk about, and that's because I'm super passionate about creating content. And Amy reminded me that we need to be really specific with you about this. When we say creating content,

we mean creating content for your blog. So whether or not you might need to add a new page to your blog, like you wanna update your about page, or if you wanna write a blog post, that is what we mean. We want you to spend time on your blog. And if you have an hour that week, then maybe the first week you're doing your research and

writing your outline and the next week you're writing the blog post. If you have a couple hours that week, you can get it all done. And it doesn't take a ton of time. It just takes a little time. And this is where you're going to have to let go of a little bit of that perfectionism. Because you know, you've listened to all of our podcasts, you know, we talk about keyword research and all the things to make sure that your blog post is done, quote unquote, the right way. And yes, those are important. But if you can take the ones that you know, you know, that you can do quickly. You can do a little bit of keyword research and you just jump in and you get the post written. You forget the perfectionism, you forget worrying about Google and all the things,

and you just think about your person, you write a blog post that's going to help them. And then most importantly, you hit publish, just do it. Just gotta get it done. There's no sense in just mulling it over. If it's not out there, then nobody can even read it. So let's get it out there because don't forget, you can always come back.

You can always revise it. You can always clean it up. You can always perfect it later, but just get it out there and, you know, just get that consistency going. Whether or not anybody else finds it, at least you wrote it and you get in that habit, you're creating that habit of creating content for your blog.

And that's, you know, just one of the reasons like if you have no other time, then create content for your blog because you're a blogger and that's what we want you to be doing. So think about even if you can only create a few posts over the course of a couple of months, at least when you get back to having actual time to commit to all the things involved in blogging, you've now created all this content, all this work is done, and you're still in this like rhythm of being a blogger. And you can use all that content to, you know, post on social or share on Pinterest or revise the content, whatever you need to do with it, at least it's there and you have done all that work instead of just kind of sitting back going, well, I don't have enough time

to do it perfectly, so I'm not going to do it at all. You put yourself ahead of the game by just creating the content and it's there and ready to use in whatever way you want to use it when you have more time. I think a common theme there is that I don't have enough time. And so instead of taking time to write a blog post, I'm just going to hop on social media and spend my time there. I think that's a really, really common go-to with people who are content creators. I'm not telling you that posting on social media can't be fruitful or it can't create revenue or that. It can't, absolutely.

But I want you to understand that when you create content for your blog, it lives forever. And so that is why we do believe content is king. That is why that is the top thing for us to be thinking about here. If you're doing nothing else, like nothing else at all, just write blog posts, like just write blog posts. Because like Jennifer said, when you get in that habit and that consistency, not only are you just consistent and it becomes a habit, but then you also just get quicker and quicker. I think the more that you do it, the quicker and quicker you are. If you're only writing one to two blog posts a month, I kind of feel like you never like get in your groove really. And when you're creating

content more consistently, it's something that you know, like you could almost take it down to the minute. Like I know it's going to take me X amount of minutes to write a blog post. And so you can feel more in charge of your time when you understand going into it, how much time it's actually going to take. Yeah, I think you could even set a timer and say, you know what, I'm going to sit down for two hours and whatever I can write in two hours is what I'm going to publish. It's like a little challenge to yourself just to get quicker at it and create that habit.

And also put your phone in another room. Because I know I do that. I do that. I'll sit down to write a blog post or do something. And then next thing I know, I'm scrolling Instagram and I don't even know how I got there. I have no clue why I picked up my phone and it was a distraction. So if you really are short on time like that, just do yourself a favor from the get-go. Take your phone, put it in another room, put it away. Don't even have that distraction nearby. Tip number two, or the thing that we want you to focus on after content would be connection. Connection is so important to Jennifer and I. And we want you to understand and realize that you're doing more than just writing blog posts. You're creating a community. You're creating and cultivating a community of people who are like-minded, people who are... It's not just

the content that you're putting out there, but it's also the content that you're creating that allows people to connect. And when you are creating that content, you are giving people a vehicle to find that connection with others as well. So bring back comments on blog posts, people. Let's start commenting on blog posts again, please, because connection is truly, truly important. But how can you connect?

You might be asking yourself that, well, how am I going. But how can you connect? You might be asking yourself that, well, how am I gonna, how do I connect? You have something at your fingertips that allows you to connect with your audience each and every day, and that is your email list. So if you do not have time to write a blog post, send out an email. It doesn't need to be like an amazing email even.

It can just be a couple paragraphs. It can be linking back to a couple different blog posts that you have. You do not need to spend like an hour or even two hours writing a newsletter or anything like that. Just talk to your people. When you're a blogger and when you have this like arsenal, this collection of blog posts, you have something that you can go back to and repurpose. So I want you to think about your blog posts differently than you ever have before. And I want you to think of it as,

how can I repurpose these? How can these blog posts create new life? How can I make sure that people are still finding them? How can I make them still relevant? One way that you can do that is by sending out an email. And it might be something like a themed email. It could be something like, I'll use something. I was actually doing this yesterday looking at some of my old blog posts. And so I have several about like exercising or walking or whatever. And so maybe my email could be something about feeling burned out

on what you're doing to exercise, try these new things. And then I could link it to like three or four different blog posts that I've written about different exercises or why walking actually is really underrated and it's not given enough hype because it actually is a really good workout. But that's for another time and another day. But think about that. Think about the content that you already have on your blog and how you can turn that into something that you could essentially, what you're doing is reminding your audience, hey, I wrote this post

and I really think that you could learn something from it. And so I want you to read it again. Don't tell yourself that everybody on your email list has seen your post. They have not seen every post that you've ever written. So by sending out an email, shining light on a post that you have written before, you're just like bringing it back to the forefront. If they've already read it, then they're likely not going to read it again. And that's totally

fine. But you're speaking to the person that maybe wasn't on your email list when you initially sent it out. Maybe the particular email that you're sending at that time is not one that they could have related to when you first sent it out, but they will now. So just don't be afraid to essentially repackage it in a different way. Use content that you have already created in a different way. Another idea would be once again, set that timer and say, okay, I'm going to create a freebie. I'm going to spend one hour creating this freebie. And then even if you don't get it promoted that day, the freebie is created.

But then promote that freebie like on Pinterest or social media. If it's relevant, put it on a place on your blog that people can sign up to get on your email list. The goal with connection is to make sure that you are constantly bringing new people into your environment and to bring new people into your space. Why is that important? Because you want return readers. We don't want to have to go out each and every day and have to find new readers. I mean, yes, that is an essential piece of blogging.

But what we want to do is we want to keep the people who have already come to our site. And how do we do that? We do that with connection. Oh, yeah. I think the thing in blogging that's so underrated and so underutilized as bloggers is that we do not reuse and repurpose all that content that we spend all that time creating. So you are exactly right.

I think we all forget about the posts that we created. What if you can recombine them into a really awesome email that would be like, hey, my best reader out there, here are three things that you can do this week or something. You can really have an impact and help somebody by using content that you created years ago. It still has meaning. It still has value. So that's a really good tip. Yeah.

And if it isn't as relevant now, if you're like looking through old posts, then update the post. Yeah. Like that's something that you could do is instead of writing a new post, for instance, like you said, Jennifer, like go in and update that post. Updating a post generally doesn't take as long as writing, you know, the initial post. So look at that. Like how could I make this better, you know, and spend your time doing that and then repurpose it and reuse it in a way that somebody could find it and gain something from it. We have an exciting collaboration happening in August that is going to help you propel your content creation business.

We have partnered with Dolly DeLong and over 20 others to bring you an SEO summit that is going to teach you all things SEO. What is even more exciting is that from August 13th through August 16th, there is a free audio summit that's designed to give you actionable tips to kickstart your SEO journey where you can see actual results. During this SEO Mastery Audio Summit, you'll learn actionable SEO tips tailored for small business owners. You'll experience real wins with the SEO strategy shared. You're also going to get to meet all 24 of us

who are part of the Systems and Workflow Magic Bundle, which is the SEO edition, and you're gonna get to know all of our individual and unique education styles. This is your chance to ease into SEO in a fun and free way as part of this audio summit. So you can get registered today for the free audio summit. All you need to do is click the link in our show notes so you can get signed up and get

ready for August. In August, you are going to learn all things SEO from the best of the best. Click the link in our show notes to make sure you are registered for the SEO Mastery Audio Summit. One final suggestion we have for how to spend your time is we're going to call it CEO time. And this means doing some big picture business planning. So taking that step back from the content creation and the tasks involved in being a blogger and putting your business owner hat on and thinking about ways to make your business

grow essentially. So what I want to be clear on is don't use this time to do like busy work. Like this isn't going to be the time to like, I don't know, set up, click up or something like that in your business. This is going to be time to really do some analysis and planning. So if you could call it your CEO day, if you want to look at some finance kind of stuff, you could call it your CFO day. Either way, you're really going to put that business owner hat on. One place you could start is take a look at your content and pull your analytics and see hard numbers, not just by your feelings, but hard numbers. What is working?

What is not working? You can use the data that you are analyzing to make some decisions about how you want to move forward in your business. Maybe you've got like three content silos and every time you post to two of them, those posts do well and the third one doesn't do that well. Do we want to take that out in terms of going forward and refocus on the things that your audience really wants? Maybe you can find a new way to add on to the content that you're already creating.

So you're not necessarily doing like all the keyword research and stuff here. That would be like the tasks and the busy work, but just really saying, okay, how do I want to refocus and move forward in my business based on what is working for me today? And it's also a good time to think about like, what are some of my bigger picture goals? Because, you know, whether you are already monetizing or that's a goal that you have, it's a good time to think about, okay, what do I need in terms of monetization? How much money do I need to make? How much money do I want to make? And how am I

going to get from here to there? So whether you are already monetizing your blog, whether you have a plan to monetize your blog, this is a great time to sit down and think about the one thing that you want to focus on that's going to help you build your business and start to bring in that revenue. So you can start to think through, what do I enjoy doing? What do I not enjoy doing? Especially if you've been doing this for a little while, it's a good time to kind of just think through where you've spent your time

and where you would like to spend your time. You can do like a time analysis, things like that. The things that are going to have an impact on your business, this is where you would spend time, you know, doing the CEO work. You know, do I need to hire a virtual assistant to help me? What does my budget look like? How much money can I invest? How much money am I going to make? All those big picture things that come with running the business. This is a

great time to just spend an hour, spend two hours and just have those big thoughts. Give yourself some of that space. You may need to like leave your house and go to a coffee shop or the library or you know wherever you feel inspired or feel like you can have some quiet time to just think about things. I think that we forget to do that because we get so busy like pushing, pushing, pushing that sometimes we need to take that step back and think of ourselves as the business owner that we are

and think, if I wasn't doing all the tasks, how would I be running this business and what do I need to do so that I am being the most impactful with the time that I do have and the effort that I need to put forth into this to make it successful. I agree with that 100%. I think sometimes we get very bogged down with the day to day that we lose sight of the big picture. And we have all of these things that we have to do all the time.

And then we just kind of feel like we're a hamster in a hamster wheel and, oh, I just got to get all the things done. I got to get all the things done. I got to get all the things done. But when do you ever take the time and really ask yourself, why am I doing this? Is this actually working? Is this actually worth my time? And having just some time to really just focus on that and think about that, I think is important and could actually free up more time for you, if you were willing to, to ask yourself, is this actually an area that I need to remain

focused on or do I need to make a pivot and a shift? We talk about that. That's something that's very, very common is needing to pivot and understanding that that's just a part of blogging, quite honestly. So I hope that as you've listened to this, we've, one, given you permission that sometimes breaks are necessary. We've helped you understand that there are seasons of slowness when it comes to blogging, just like there are seasons in life that are slow too.

And that's the blessing of this, truly. I'm going to use a story. This summer has looked very different for me in particular with having all three kids home and I don't have care for my kids this summer. So like I am the care. And I, at the beginning of the summer, I think I felt a little bit stressed about that. But a couple weeks ago, I was at the pool with my kids and I had this kind of aha moment. And for me, it was like, this is what I want to do right now. Like this is where I want to be

in the summer. That's how our family is structured and that I can be with them. And then I can work in the other, you know, when my husband's home or whatever, then he can take care of the kids then. And it was this like, don't feel guilty that you're not working right now. It's the middle of the day when, you know, a lot of people are working like don't feel guilty that you're not working right now. Like your time right now is to focus on your kids. And when they're all in school, come August, you know, actually next week, they're all going to be in school, then I'm going to have a lot more time during the day and my work schedule looks different. But embrace the season that is now. And know that like you have you have started a blog that has been foundationally sound. If you've listened to our podcast, or if you're a blog bootcamp student of ours,

then you have a solid foundation. You know what you need to do to create and grow a successful blog. And it just takes time. And in that time, it's not going to be this uphill the entire way that you're like climbing a mountain. There are going to be peaks and valleys that you are going to slow down and speed up.

And that is just the way it is. So look at what you are doing instead of looking at what you are not doing or what you think you are not doing. And celebrate the wins that you have each and every day, even if it's an hour a day. Like celebrate what you're able to do in those seasons that feel like, I'm just not doing what I normally do. it's okay. We literally have all been there. I think if you ask any blogger, they're going to tell you, Oh, I've definitely had slow seasons that maybe your creativity feels dry. Maybe you just don't have the time. Maybe your focus needs to be elsewhere. Maybe you have a family member that's sick. Maybe you're sick. Different things are going to happen

and the blessing of blogging is that your blog is always there It's always working for you. People can always find it It's not like social media that it's you know, you're just like irrelevant if you stop posting essentially Your blog is always there and serving you so embrace the seasons I hope that we've inspired you to do that and to know that if this summer in particular has looked different It's okay that you won't stay here forever, most likely. And we are just here to encourage you and remind you that you are a blogger for a reason. And there was a reason that this dream was put on your heart.

And we don't want you to lose sight of that just because life might look a little different to you right now. So thanks for tuning in today to this episode. If you have a blogger friend or somebody in the content creation space that you feel like could use this encouragement too, will you please just send them this episode, send them the link and share it with them? Every share means the world to us. It helps more people connect with us. And like we said, connection is super important to us. So thanks for being a listener of the podcast and enjoy the final month or so of your summer. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with

us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.