The Ultimate Guide to Get Back to Blogging
Welcome back to the world of blogging!
Here’s the thing: blogging is hard. What’s harder? Going back to it!
If you’re reading this, you’ve taken the first step toward getting back on track with your blogging journey. You don’t exactly know how it happened: you skipped hitting “publish” one week and…here you are, 9 months later…
Before we dive into the essential steps to take, let’s talk about the elephant in the room – the fear of failing, again.
Taking a long break from blogging is perfectly fine, and most bloggers have been there too. However, not everyone has the determination, ambition, and resilience to come back.
Blogging after having fallen off the track is an incredibly brave thing to do. So, before we even start, I want to say: be proud of yourself for being here!
You didn’t fail at blogging just because you weren’t consistent once. Now you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting from experience.
So, are you ready to dive into the essential steps to get back to blogging? Then, let’s get started!
1. UNDERSTAND WHAT WENT WRONG
Before you jump straight into blogging once again, it is important to understand what went wrong the first – or fourth, it doesn’t matter – time.
So, take a step back, and analyze your blogging journey from an objective perspective.
What did go wrong?
- Was It the lack of confidence in yourself?
- Did you pick the wrong niche?
- Was it too demanding?
- Were you too disorganized?
- Did something major and unexpected happen in your life?
Be honest with yourself. Understanding the real reasons why you “failed” in the past is the first step to making sure that you will develop the right plan and avoid making the same mistakes.
For example:
- If the problem was that you self-sabotaged yourself because of your negative mindset → You must focus on developing a more successful mindset (you could start with my post “7 Proven Mindset Shifts for your Business Success”, for example)
- Wrong niche? → No problem! You can always pivot (I know you’ve read that in Ross’ voice). The good thing about being a beginner is that no one has high expectations of you, and that gives you plenty of freedom to experiment
- If it was for a lack of organization → What could have you done differently to guarantee your success?
- Were you spending too much time on things that didn’t make much of a difference?
- Weren’t you investing in activities that would’ve created the highest ROI?
- Were you considering your blog more as a business or as a hobby?
Take some time to reflect. Think about all the things that didn’t go right. Then come back and find a solution – or more – for each of your previous problems.
Those solutions are going to be your starting point in your return to blogging.
2. MISSION AND VISION
You had probably defined your mission and vision back then, when you first got the idea of launching your blog.
If you didn’t do it, that might have been one of the reasons why you weren’t consistent with it. So, here’s my gift to you! I’m giving you a FREE 10-page Workbook to “PLAN YOUR BLOG LAUNCH FOR SUCCESS”!
If you’re serious about your blog and want to treat it like a real business, then you must know that every business starts with a mission and vision.
A mission is the why behind your business. It is the moving force that pushes you to create.
While the mission is focused on the steps that you’re going to take in the present; the vision, instead, is more future-oriented. It stands for the ideal positive impact and contribution that you would like to create.
Why is it important to define your mission and vision?
Well, as you’ve already experienced: blogging isn’t easy. You will get discouraged from time to time – especially at the beginning – when you will be investing a lot of time, energy, and money to get in return…nothing (or little).
Having a strong why behind your blog is what will make you push through those moments.
Mission and vision are the coordinates on the compass that will lead you right straight to success.
To give you more context and help you get your creative juices flowing, I will share with you the mission and vision behind “Purposeful Dreamers”.
- Mission: To help young adults navigate through their 20s while becoming the best version of themselves and designing their dream lives. How? By providing them with the best tips, tools, and resources!
- Vision: To have a rising number of people who are genuinely happy in life, as they invested in getting to know themselves so they could improve themselves and design a life they loved
3. COMEBACK PLAN
After understanding past mistakes and getting clear on the why behind your blog, the next important step is to develop a bulletproof plan for your comeback.
You’re making your way back to being a blogger, hurray!
Having a solid plan can only benefit you, but please also remember that at some point the planning must come to an end. Don’t spend too much time planning out details that, in the end, won’t even make a difference.
How to develop your blog (re)launch plan? Here’s how I planned mine:
- I started by choosing the date on which I wanted to be back online: that represents the first deadline
- Secondly, I created a sitemap of my blog: what pages, categories, and landing pages?
- After, I chose how many posts per category I wanted to have published before officially (re)launching.
- Now, what about social media? I chose to stick only to 2 social media. Considering my niche and target audience, I chose TikTok and Pinterest as my communication channels to attract readers
- I developed a social media strategy by defining: the type of format, frequency on both platforms, and timing
- Finally, I started creating! I started writing posts, brainstorming ideas for the social media channels, creating freebies to offer to my audience, and so on…
If you’re interested in knowing what my business plan looks like – you can download it here!
Find out the steps I took before launching “Purposeful Dreamers” & get inspired in your blogging journey!
It’s the same plan I’m sharing with you for FREE so that you can (re)start your blogging journey in the best way!
To guarantee your success, it is important to have a good amount of work done before you go online. When you officially made your blog public, you can focus more on promoting it rather than creating content for it.
Of course, you will still have to create content and be ahead of your posting schedule, but all the work done previously will certainly help you have a smoother start.
4. SET S.M.A.R.T. GOALS
How can you know you’re moving in the right direction if you’re not tracking your progress?
I’ll even take it one step further: “How can you know you’re going the right way when you don’t even know what’s your destination?” Simply, you can’t!
That’s why an important step before returning to blogging is to set some blogging goals.
S.M.A.R.T. blogging goals, to be exact. Not only, but try setting goals for the short, medium, and long term.
Let’s move one step at a time. What are S.M.A.R.T. blogging goals?
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
What does this mean? That an objective such as “I want to grow the traffic to my blog” isn’t valid.
I mean, every blogger has the goal of increasing his/her traffic, but what does that mean in your terms? What percentage? How are you going to increase the number of readers your blog has? What is your deadline for this goal?
Below, I will provide you with 3 examples of S.M.A.R.T. goals that hopefully can inspire you:
- Short-term goal: Increase traffic to the blog.
- S.M.A.R.T. GOAL: In 3 months, my blog should have 10.000 unique pageviews per month – compared to the 1.000 it gets now -, determining an increase of 10% in readers
- Medium-term goal: Expand my newsletter.
- S.M.A.R.T. GOAL: In the next 6 months, I want to get 30.000 new subscribers to the newsletter, in order to increase the number of potential customers. This will be done by creating 3 new freebies to be released after the first month
- Long-term goal: Earn more money.
- S.M.A.R.T. GOAL: By next year, I want to earn 1.000EUR per month from my blogging business, thanks to different streams of income: affiliate marketing, digital products, and sponsorships.
Having S.M.A.R.T. goals will allow you to take aligned and consistent actions, which will contribute to your blogging success!
5. GET STARTED
If there’s one thing I know all beginner bloggers do is: freeze.
You’ve got all the tools, the right knowledge, wrote enough articles, yet you find silly excuses to postpone your launch.
I get it: it’s scary! But, isn’t it even scarier not having even tried?
You will never feel ready enough – and that’s ok!
I mean, honestly speaking, your blog won’t be perfect when you first launch it (mine isn’t even now)! Should that stop you from sharing it with the world? Of course not!
Blogging is an all-time learning journey. You can plan every detail of it, but there are many things that you will be able to figure out only as you go.
So…make that scary jump! Set that launch date and meet the deadline!
Start where you are, with what you have.
It might not be perfect, but it’s surely good enough.
If you weren’t committed enough to blogging, you wouldn’t have come so far.
The fact that you’re here means that blogging is a part of you. It’s time to take the next step toward reconnecting with that part of yourself.
Yes, it won’t be easy; but trust me, it will be worth it.
Remember that you didn’t fail at blogging; you only stumbled along the way.
So, take that first step and keep going. Your journey awaits!
I would love to hear more about your blogging journey – so please, feel free to share it in the comment section below!
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