Skip links

Performancing

Main navigation

Blogging Productivity

5 Time Enjoyment Tips for Home-Based Bloggers

by

One of the toughest things about blogging from home is being able to separate work and pleasure time. If you’re just starting out and not earning quite as much as you would like to, you might be accepting as much work as you can find, regardless of rates. Which could mean long work days. Or you maybe you’re spending extra time researching your niche or blogging it on your own until you find more clients. Either way, you’ll likely be more productive on a long-term basis if you allow yourself to recuperate each day. Otherwise, the work you love will turn into a chore and you’ll end up resentful. Now the other day I talked about time management tips for bloggers. Here are some time enjoyment tips to help you differentiate work and play time and you keep grounded.

  1. Have a schedule. This is easier said than done. If you’re like the typical creative person, you tend towards being a night bird — or worse, sleeping whenever. However, having a routine helps to differentiate work time from everything else: personal tasks, play, family time, etc.
  2. Use a signal. If you watch any of the financial TV channels, you already know that 1pm EST marks the end of the trading day in the stock market in N. America. Some of the stations play a clip of the clanging bell from Wall Street. You could do something similar, though not necessarily so loud. So if you find it easy to get engrossed in your blogging but want to keep a consistent schedule, give your self an end-of-day signal. It could be implicit, by putting up a large analog clock in front of you. Or you could set an alarm on your phone, or use Google Calendar in a Web browser. For the latter, you get a default browser popup 10 minutes before the start of a new scheduled activity. So schedule something in, even if it’s “enjoy the evening”. So if you want to stop working at 4 pm, put in a dummy (or real) event in Google Calendar that starts at 4 pm.
  3. Schedule non-blogging activities. Schedule real non-blogging events, even if it’s to read a book, watch TV or whatever. This helps to reinforce in your mind that your work day will end. Your workflow will adjust to to the time you have, and you might even find yourself getting more efficient.
  4. Involve friends and family. It’s easy for those around you, such as those you live with, to forget that just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you have leisure time all day. This can be a touchy issue.  Even innocent text messages can turn into a drawn out digital conversation and break your workflow. You have to gently remind chronic interrupters who either forget or just don’t respect your work time that you are working, that you can schedule some time with them after your work day is over. In the worst-case scenario, if they won’t leave you be, turn off your phone and only check your email at scheduled times each work day. On the other hand, if they can enter your work area and disturb you, you’ll just need to learn to be more assertive about time. Send them a bill, with reminders to pay up, and see if they don’t stop. (Or leave you, depending on whom we’re talking about here.)
  5. Split your work day. Sometimes a straight 7am – 3pm, 8-4, or 9-5 work slot just won’t work. Hey, you’re working from home. If your client work allows it, you could always split a particular day (or every day), to take advantage of your most creative times of day but enjoy a chunk of time inbetween. Go see a movie, sit by the pool, or whatever.

Ultimately, you want to do what’s necessary to make a distinction between your work time and the rest of the day. Working somewhere other than your bedroom is a very good idea, if you can manage it. Now that my wife and I are finally in our own apartment, I’ve appropriated the guest room for my work area. I set her up a nice desk on rollers in the master bedroom. However, she’s pretty good at managing her work-at-home time, though it probably helps that she’s a film producer, not a blogger.

As a final bit of advice, I suggest that you read a great post at Smart Passive Income that offers some tips on keeping your work and life balanced and yourself healthy.

Image: Flickr.

7 Time Management Tips for Bloggers

by

You want your writing to be inspired, but that in itself can be an obsession, and selecting a topic to blog about can take up a good chunk of your day, if you let it, and work still has to get done. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some tips to manage your blogging workflow, choose blog post topics, and make efficient use of your time.

The Problem

One of the problems with having Web content aggregator tools at your disposal like Google Reader, AllTop, YourVersion, or TechMeme (for tech topics) is that you can easily get caught up in cataloging or bookmarking every new post — especially those with breaking news from a few minutes ago. If you do this, yes you’ll be aware of all kinds of breaking news and other trends in the blogosphere, but if your objective is to blog, you’re no closer to your goal if you’re spending hours looking at what’s going on online. Just like the saying “writers write,” be of the mindset that “bloggers blog.”

Nip Idea Acquisition Obsession and Pick a Topic

To make efficient use of your time, develop the skill of choosing suitable topics for your blog posts and get writing. Here are some suggestions to help you filter your choices.

1. Stop searching.

First and foremost, stop scanning your aggregators and adding new items to your list of references. Close your Web browser tabs – or at least the ones with your aggregators. Trust yourself that if you’re reasonably knowledgeable about your niche, you have enough references to trigger some ideas for a blog post.

2. Check your editorial calendar.

If you have one, use it as a filter for your current list of “hot topics”. Maybe something one blogger wrote coincides with an item on your editorial calendar and you can add to the “conversation” of that topic.

3. Check what’s trending on Twitter.

If you don’t have an editorial calendar, see what the trending topics are on Twitter. The new home page makes it easy; you don’t even have to have a Twitter account (though you should).

4. Look at Google Trends.

If you want a more long-term view of popular topics, use Google Trends to compare the search frequencies (on Google) of two or more keywords/ keyphrases.

5. Pick at random.

If tips #2-4, above, don’t help you, just pick at random. Assuming you have already been selective about what’s in your list of references,choosing a topic at random from the list is far better than wasting time trying to decide what to write about.

6. Set a timer.

If I have a large daily quota of articles and I have a client who needs news-y posts, setting a timer for each post helps me immensely. Sure, I might be able to write 800 words on some celebrity’s passing, but if 200 will do and the priority is to get the news out fast, then I can revisit a longer post later. Think of it as a link-building opportunity: write a shorter post now and link back with a longer post later.

Another area of obsession can be choosing the “right” image for your post. I use Flickr and filter for CC-licensed content. Sometimes certain keywords just don’t turn up the “right” image. If not, use a “first fit” approach: change search keywords and take the first image that works. It doesn’t have to be perfect, else you can easily get caught up in browsing for something “better”. Worst case: browse at most 3-4 pages of Flickr search results and pick the best one from each page. Compare the selections and pick one so you can get on with your day.

7. Write.

Just write.

  • Don’t cripple your creativity by mentally imposing minimum word limits for your blog posts. You might have those, but don’t write as if you do. If you learn efficient blogging, there’ll be some time to edit to length.
  • Don’t cripple creativity by worrying about SEO. As you become a better writer, you’ll learn to copywrite in a way that gives you good anchor text for both internal and external hyperlinks. But if you obsess your wording for the sake of one or two links, then you need to go back to Tip #6, above.
  • Don’t cripple your creativity by trying to write linearly. If something compelling comes to mind, just write it down. You can rearrange sections of your post later. That’s what editing time is for. (Of course, if you have 15-30 minute deadlines for posts, there’s not much time for that. But then that’s a whole different issue. Hopefully you don’t have a client who expects quality in 15 minutes, but if you do, here are some tips for writing effective news posts.)

How do you keep your blogging time in check? Or do you let it dominate your entire day?

Disclosure: I have share options in YourVersion, a real-time Web content discovery engine.

Image: Flickr.

5+7 Tips to Spark Blogging Inspiration

by

If you’ve written or blogged for at least a few months, you know that inspiration comes and goes. It’s not always lack of ideas that stop you from getting that next blog post out — often it’s having too many ideas and having doubts about what to write. Here are a few tips to spark some blogging inspiration, that have worked for me in the past.

Scanning For Ideas

The first step is scan for sources of ideas. Yeah, I know that I said you might have too many ideas, but we’ll take care of that in the next section.

  1. Scan the blogosphere. The first thing I usually do to start a blogging day is check my favorite aggregators and portals. I like to use Techmeme, Alltop, YourVersion, Google Reader. Depending on the niche that I’m blogging, I might check other similar tools or have my own custom aggregators that I’ve built in WordPress.
  2. Look at your archives. Ok, maybe it’s a slow news day. Don’t forget to look at your archives. Maybe you wrote about something before that needs correcting, updating, or some sort of followup. This is also an opportunity for you to deep link to your own content, to help build your site’s search engine profile.
  3. Write for yourself. If you’re trying to establish expertise, you need to cover topics relevant to your niche. Ultimately, you’re probably a rich source of ideas, and writing about what interests you is what gives you motivation and focus in blogging. Unless you’re doing it to pay the bills, why bother blogging about something in which you’re not interested? Look within yourself for ideas. It’s okay to get ideas from readers, but if you’re always wondering what your readers want, you’re asking for trouble. Blog readers are fickle as well as transient as a whole, and unless you’ve been posting a lot of cornerstone content and following a regular publishing schedule, your readership on any given day will change. That’s especially true for a new blog whose bulk of Web traffic comes from search engines. So it’s more important to decide what you want to write about, then promote your content to attract interested readers. They’re out there; you just have to attract them.
  4. Mine your web metrics. Now while you do still want to write for yourself, as your readership grows, the value of your site’s keyword searches grows. Your site metrics will show search terms used to visit your site from search engines. If you see any trends, they might be worth exploring, provided they’re related to your blog’s niche.
  5. Mine your comments. You don’t have to have a high-traffic site to enjoy regular commenters and loyal readers. If you’ve been promoting your blog content through your Twitter or Facebook networks, you might find you have regular readers sooner than if you didn’t use social media. Comments can be a rich source of ideas for future blog posts, either because of a direct query or some idea that gets triggered by a comment.

Filtering Suggestions

Now that you’ve bombarded yourself above with lots of ideas, what’s the next step? Filtering, to narrow your interest to one or two topics. Inspiration strikes when you’re focused. Believe me on that. I’ve been using inspirational writing and productivity techniques for a couple of decades, and whenever I’m distracted by too many ideas and thoughts, my writing isn’t my best. It’s also far tougher to write at the pace that most blogging requires, compared to non-blog writing. So filtering ideas for focus is a crucial step to getting inspired. The key is to use some sort of mechanism to, real or mental, to narrow down your topic choices.

  1. Topic themes. Some bloggers have a different weekly or monthly theme for posts, which helps to focus. Usually that’s something you can plan for in an editorial calendar.
  2. Editorial calendars. Create an editorial calendar ahead of time and use it. Of course, newsy topics aren’t always something you can plan for, but you can for evergreen content that’ll be relevant long-term on your blog. How-to tutorials, guides, and resource lists are often good candidates for editorial calendars.
  3. Random choices. If you’re fortunate enough to be blogging in a niche that allows you a lot of different sub-topics, then sometimes picking something at random suffices. This works for newsy sites where you’re publishing lots of short content daily. E.g., news, celebrity, politics. That doesn’t mean what you write will improve your site, only that you’ll have something to write about, to help get the creative juices flowing.
  4. Trending topics. If you’re uncomfortable with randomness and want maximizing your blogging efforts, check for trending topics. For example, the Twitter trending list that you’ll see on your profile page, right hand sidebar, might give you some ideas of what the Twittersphere is microblogging. There’s also Google Trends, which gives you a longer-term historical view and a plotted graph to boot.
  5. Visual input. While I’ve long ago realized that unless I’m live blogging a TV show, watching TV while while blogging is a major distraction. My productivity is sometimes zero DURING watching TV. However, a short break to watch something relevant to your niche, or to view some video, or even just browse some totally unrelated photos at Flickr might spark a post idea to help you focus.
  6. Change your environment. If working at your desk is not working for you at the moment, trying moving into another room. Some people like to take their blogging outdoors. A netbook works well for that, if you don’t want to lug around a laptop. If that’s not viable, sometimes moving to another room works. I like to lounge for a while on the couch and use my iPad for some planning and notetaking. I find it’s easier to focus on an iPad.
  7. Sleep on it. If the blogging inspiration you’re seeking is for publication the next day and you can’t come up with anything, there’s no harm done in literally sleeping on some ideas for the next day. Your brain needs some “alone time” to sort through and parse other ideas that you may have accumulated. I often find that if I’ve prepped suitably, I wake with a couple of clear ideas or possibly even a full post in my head. Alternately, a nap or just a short break away from your computer can make all the difference. (Take a notebook, netbook or iPad with you, but don’t use it unless an idea sparks while you’re on break.) A long break can paradoxically increase your productivity. For example, in the past, I’ve gone off to watch an afternoon movie then come back home and productively written material for novellas or a book. This works for blogging as well, but I usually try to finish any daily client blogging obligations before I take long breaks.

Controlling the Flow of Ideas

If you use the above tips regularly, you might find days where you get over-inspired. Ideas start flitting through your head; blog posts start writing themselves for you, waiting for you to type them up. Because I’ve enjoyed this sort of idea flow for many years, I’ve long used mind mapping as my tool of choice for capturing ideas and breaking them down as far as I can go without writing posts right there and then within a mind mapping application. The problem is, you still end up with too many ideas, thus hampering inspiration for writing a post right here, right now. You still need to filter, as discussed above. (Note: mind mapping is more suited to developing longer content, not short newsy pieces.)

More on finding blogging inspiration, in the near future. Stay tuned.

Disclosure: I have share options in YourVersion and am an unpaid tech evangelist for this real-time discovery engine.

Image: Flickr.

Blogging Workflow and Productivity: Alternate Bookmarking Tip

by

If you have a Mac or PC computer, there’s a simple way to locally bookmark Web pages that you’re browsing or researching en masse that keeps you browser-independent: file folder shortcuts. This method keeps you from having to open multiple Web browser tabs or bookmark all the URLS or worse, copy and paste links into some sort of list. It is a simpler former of bookmarking, but avoids some of the other methods’ limitations. Note: I haven’t tried the following tip on a Linux system, but it might work similarily. I tested on a Mac (10.6.x Snow Leopard) and a PC (Win Vista).

First, let’s look at the objectives we’re trying to achieve:

  1. Browse lots of pages daily, to find ideas and references for blogging.
  2. Locally bookmark web pages independent of any browser, to preserve them for that day and beyond, if necessary.
  3. Minimize the number of open browser tabs, to save the amount of RAM memory your computer is using at any given moment. This saves an immense amount of wasted time.
  4. Reserve the ability to group links as necessary, and move links around for regrouping.

Sources that I refer to daily for finding blog post ideas and references include:

  1. Favorite sites you’ve previously bookmarked.
  2. RSS readers (e.g., Google Reader).
  3. Portals and aggregators (Alltop, Techmeme, Megite, WeSmirch, etc.).
  4. Social voting sites (Digg, Mixx, etc.).
  5. Social bookmarking sites (Delicious, Stumbleupon).
  6. Microblogging sites (Twitter).
  7. Social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning).

Typically, I’ve used mind mapping software and other tools for bookmarking or recording interesting links for later use. Specifically, I’ve tended to favor Mindjet’s MindManager on a PC for about three years, and particularly love this tool. However, when I switched my main laptop to a MacBook Pro last December, I was hugely disappointed to find that not only is the interface for MindManager different than on a PC, but the workflow is different. That’s also true on the Mac for all the other mind mapping tools that I tend to use regularly, such as XMind.

I still love MindManager and other mind mapping tools, but for now, they don’t work for me on a Mac. After wasting a lot of time going back to opening up multiple browser tabs while researching, I managed to crash my Mac (yes, a Mac!!) too many times. Purely by chance, I accidentally discovered a simple trick: drag Web page links from your browser to Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac) applications to create a link shortcut. I’m honestly surprised that I never knew this before, and actually have Mac OS X’s general interface to thank for the discovery.

What happens is that both apps store link information in the form of a “shortcut,” which you can later either drag into a browser or double-click on to open the content page. It’s really quite simple and I’m actually surprised not to have discovered it in the past. Note that with Macs, clicking on a link stored in a Finder folder opens the Safari browser, and that as far as I know, this cannot be changed. If you prefer a different browser while using a Mac, you can use your mouse to drag shortcut links from Finder folders and drop them into your browser of choice. With PCs, you can configure the default browser, so clicking a saved shortcut will open whatever browser you’ve configured.

Caveats
You can end up still accumulating far too many link shortcuts that you’ll never use, and create multiple daily folders, thus finding yourself just as overwhelmed with information overload as with other blogging research methods. So discipline is independent of blogging workflow, and something you’ll need to discover for yourself.

The fact is, I still open far too many browser windows and tabs. For example, at the time of this writing, I have probably 60 tabs open overall in Firefox, Chrome, Flock and Safari. It may seem like a bad habit, but is often a necessity when working with multiple clients and using multiple Web profiles for social media and other services. Using the “bookmark-within-file-folder” trick simple reduces the number of browser tabs I need to open. As a result, I’ve managed to be more productive again for two key reasons. One is that my browser windows hang less often because of more free memory. The other is that I now focus on one browser tab at at a time. Overall, this means less time spent researching/ browsing and restarting browsers and more time for writing.