How to Blog When You're Busy

Photo Credit: Matthias Rhomberg on Flickr

As someone with a full-time job and a lot of errands to run, I understand how difficult it can be to blog when you're busy.

If blogging is important to you, a loaded schedule can be frustrating. You want to post consistently (the most important part of blogging), but you just don't have the time. "If only there were a few more hours in a day," I can almost hear you say. Well, that's where I might be able to help.

Based on my personal experience, I've compiled a list of tips on how to blog when you're busy.

• Go for quality over quantity. When you're busy, remind yourself it's okay to keep blog posts short. After all, the average person isn't going to want to invest more than ten minutes reading any given article. People like short and sweet. As long as you're posting regularly, you can get away with writing articles between 250 and 500 words. Save the long posts for weekend writing... which brings me to my next point.
• Write your posts ahead of time. Regardless of your posting frequency (I do three blog entries per week), the easiest way to update your blog every week is to compose your posts on the weekends and schedule them to go live while you're at school or work. That's what I do with about 80% of my posts. If you want to interact and share your blogs on social media, do that in real time. But schedule the posting. It helps more than you think.
• Focus on being helpful and informative, not on crafting viral content. If you set out to write the *perfect* blog post, you're going to let yourself down. Instead of getting discouraged, be careful not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. As a blogger, you should strive to educate or help other people in some way, not to create something gimmicky that might just go viral (spoiler: you can't make something go viral; it happens organically). People reading your blog want to gain some kind of insight from it. That's why they're there.

Running a blog when you've already got a full plate may seem daunting, but it can be done. I've managed to keep this blog active through college, retail jobs, and my current full-time work. It hasn't always been easy, but it has been rewarding. Give these tips a try and see what happens.

What tips do you have for blogging on a busy schedule?

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You can still blog on a busy schedule! @brianawrites tells you how. (Click to tweet) 

Want to blog but don't have time? @brianawrites shares some helpful tips. (Click to tweet)