Parenting is a lot of work. So is holding down a job. If you’re one of those incredible go-getter mums that is managing both of these and trying to create a blog to inspire others, more power to you.
If you’re a working mum-blogger, though, you’ve probably discovered that you can’t treat your blog simply like a journal. When you’re busy, planning on recording an occasional entry when you “feel like it” pretty much means you’ll never actually write anything.
And yet, you need steady content on your blog if it’s going to survive and thrive. Fortunately, there are many different tips and strategies that can help you turn your blogging endeavour from just another chore or a neglected project into something that is successful, effective, and adds meaning to your life.
Set Yourself Up First
If you’re going to be a blogger, you’re probably focussed on writing — and truth be told, you will spend most of your time writing content. Not all of your time, though, especially at the beginning.
If you want a blog that is productive and efficient, it’s important that you start the process by setting up an airtight site right from the get-go. For instance, before you write anything, seriously consider what your site’s design should look like first.
Consider your target audience, competitors, timeline, marketing strategy, mobile-friendly options, and so on. The last thing you want to do is get your site rolling and then decide you want to change how everything looks or functions.
Master Your Tools
Once again, while Google Docs and your keyboard are going to be your best friends, as a blogger, you need to master more than just the basic writing tools. A few other ways that you may want to consider sharpening your skills and beefing up your toolkit before you launch your blog include:
- Taking a WordPress Training course to help you understand the full scope of the benefits that you can get from your site.
- Using Grammarly, Hemingway, and other writing/editing applications to improve your writing.
- Finding a good photo editing app that is free or cheap to give your site’s imagery a unique, branded feel. Improve your proficiency by taking advantage of this free beginner guide on Google Docs.
- Dabbling with some easier coding languages like HTML and Python to give you greater control over your site’s unique design elements and functionality.
By lining up your blogging tools before you start, you avoid the stress of figuring things out as you go along.
Address Basic SEO But Don’t Get Carried Away
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a big deal if you want your writing to be found online. However, SEO can also be a black hole that can suck up all of the time that you give it. With that in mind, it’s important to implement basic SEO best practises without spending countless hours tweaking your site. A few of the basic on-page (that is, within your blog articles) SEO tips that can make a big difference include:
- Writing quality content that is focussed on helping the reader.
- Creating long articles that keep readers on your page longer.
- Giving your articles clear titles and headers.
- Writing page URLs that match the content.
- Adding image alt-text to your images.
- Writing meta descriptions for your content.
- Making sure your site loads quickly and is mobile-friendly.
- Linking internally to your site and externally to quality resources.
- Focusing each piece of content on a clear keyword.
While SEO can feel overwhelming, many of these tips can easily be streamlined. This can give you a quick and easy checklist of search engine optimisation steps that will supercharge each piece of content that you publish.
Set Goals and Have a Plan
If you dive into your blogging adventure without a plan in place, you’ll likely have fun …for a while. But if a month or two goes by and you don’t see the results you want, or you dive in with inflated expectations, you can quickly be brought low by the hard-knock realities of the blogging life.
In order to avoid disappointment and keep you focussed on the endgame, make sure to set goals to keep you motivated and working towards something. Do you want to initially focus on building an audience? Are you looking to generate income immediately? What are you trying to accomplish?
If you can answer that last question clearly, it can enable you to create a plan, follow the plan, and then reassess and adjust the plan as you go along.
Finding Success as a Working Mum-Blogger
Running a blog as a working mum is challenging, but not impossible. From setting up a quality site from the get-go to mastering your tools, setting and reassessing goals, and addressing basic SEO best practises, if you can follow the above tips, you can create and maintain a high-quality blog no matter how busy you may be.
So get organised, create a blogging schedule, and then implement the above tips as you launch your new blog for all the world to see.
