Blogging Fear: Just Start Writing

Recently, I was consulting with a business owner about starting her own blog. Darren Rowse, Problogger, referred her to me, and so I was excited to get started. One of my biggest passions is to teach, and there is nothing I love more than to see a business jumping into the blogging world.

She was very hesitant though. She had looked at many blogs and was awestruck by their high quality content, amazing editing, striking use of images, and she felt like competing would be hard. Then I told her that the blogs she was comparing herself to were years old. Both bloggers had already done hundreds of posts, and had refined their writing style, use of images, and editing over that period of time.

She was just starting out and like anything, blogging requires time, effort and practice to do amazingly. She begrudgingly started writing a post, and saved it as a draft for me to look over. Other than a few stylistic things like making some text bold and italics, the post looked great. She looked it over again and was finally ready to publish it. Nervously, she wanted to take it back.

We all have those doubts, those questions. “What if others think it is horrible? What if it doesn’t make sense to them?” In the end though, while the blogging is about helping build her business and brand, it is also an archive of her life as a businesswoman and should cater to her own desires first.

Quickly, the “bug” of publishing content online grew, and she was always thinking about what to put on the blog next.

This whole experience made me wonder if the issue with blogging is that too many people expect to be experts on day one. When you had your first day of school, did you know everything in the text books? When you started your first real job, were you the number one expert in your field? No! So why should blogging be any different? Be it as a hobby, career, or a promotional tool, blogging is like any other task from riding a bike, to building a business: it takes practice to do well.

Don’t let your fear stop you from producing content. Even if it doesn’t appeal to everyone, I highly doubt that with over six billion people living on the planet, that you won’t make a connection with at least one of them, and if you are really shy about your content, don’t promote your blog, just post what interests you. Use your blog as a tool to express yourself, and let come what may. It is your island, you control the design, content, comments, and more. Fear nothing, and get blogging!