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How to succeed with your New Year’s resolution to blog more

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Blogging more frequently is high on my friends’ lists of writing-related New Year’s resolutions. This spurred me to wonder how you can use a great free class, “3 Tiny Habits,” to form new habits that will boost your blogging throughout the year. I am a recent fan of this class offered by BJ Fogg of Stanford University.

The thrust of Fogg’s week-long class is to get you to commit to three small behavior changes that are triggered by something you do everyday. For example, one of my recent changes is to put baking soda on my toothbrush the first time I go into the bathroom every morning. Having done that, I almost effortlessly flow into brushing and flossing my teeth. For more details on the class, you can sign up online. Fogg explains his class better than I can.

Daily habits that can help you blog

There should be a way to use Fogg’s class to help you blog more regularly. You’ll need to identify two things: 1) A tiny habit that will encourage writing and 2) a good trigger.

Where do you typically get stuck in your blogging? This is where you should look for your tiny habit.

If you’re short on ideas, your tiny habit could be to get out a piece of paper or open your mind-mapping software. Either quickly completed habit could lead to brainstorming ideas by creating a mind map.

If you have plenty of ideas that you’re not typing up, you could open a new post in WordPress, write a title down on a steno pad, or open dictation software.

If you have lots of incomplete drafts, then plan to type one word into one draft every day.

The triggers for these tiny habits could be something as simple as starting up your computer or opening your web browser.

What will YOU do?

How are you going to boost your blogging in the New Year? I’d like to hear from you, especially if you find Fogg’s techniques helpful or if you have suggestions that may help others succeed.

Different techniques work for different people. I rely heavily on the approach I describe in “No batteries required: My favorite blogging technique.” It has helped me to schedule at least one post per week from now through early April. If you’re a person who takes schoolwork seriously, you may find it helpful to sign up for my writing class, “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Lesson Class for Financial Advisors.” The class will show you you a step-by-step process for producing blog posts on a regular schedule.

 

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6 replies
  2. Brent Carnduff
    Brent Carnduff says:

    Good information Susan. Like so many bloggers, one of my goals for the new year is to become more proficient and efficient in writing blog posts. I am very slow, and I’ve found that as I’ve gotten busier at the end of the year, my writing production has gone down. I do keep a list of blog ideas, but I really like your suggestion about going into WordPress and saving an open draft of it. Will definitely try it out. Happy New Year!

  3. Susan Weiner, CFA
    Susan Weiner, CFA says:

    Brent,

    Thank you for taking the time to give me your feedback on what you think may work for you. Happy New Year to you, too!

  4. Jenny Bhatt
    Jenny Bhatt says:

    Susan – thanks for this. Very timely indeed. I have also signed up for BJ Fogg’s class and mentioned your site as the referral. Looking forward to it in a couple of weeks.

    As a former strategy consultant, I created a lot of content daily for my clients. So, my challenge is not so much the ability to create daily content. It’s the lack of a strong feedback mechanism like you have with ongoing clients when creating content on spec.

    My 2 personal tiny habits thus far are:

    1) An editorial calendar that I created during the last week of Dec for my relatively new blog (started in Nov) to write Mon-Fri.

    2) Creating an outline for a post ahead of time – before I actually sit down and write it.

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