How to Get Your Blog to Work for You Even When You’re Not Blogging

The PBS Blog was not my introduction to blogging. At first, I hosted a blog through Blogger in honor of my first novel The Aftermath. My second blog, A House of Poetry, was dedicated to poetry and hosted here on WordPress. Neither of these blogs went very far. When I transitioned from A House of Poetry to The PBS Blog, I had a different intention. This time around, I enjoyed blogging, and I did not want to miss a day of publishing content. I was relentless and almost obsessive. I posted three times a day for five or six days a week. My routine looked something like this:

  • A Poem
  • A Creative Piece or Article
  • An Inspirational Quote 

I did this for the first year of The PBS Blog, which I discuss in detail in How I Reached 300 Blog Followers in 3 Months.

Create

Of course, you have to first produce something. This post is about getting your blog to work for you when you are away, but that doesn’t happen unless you have first created something. 

My first tip to getting your blog to work for you even when you aren’t blogging is to be consistent in publishing valuable content when you first start your blog so you have tons of content to repurpose later.

My first posts did not do well far as engagement. But what it did was help me get used to writing publicly, posting regularly, and creating content that people will read weeks, months, and even years later. People are still engaging with posts I wrote four and five years ago because blog posts have a long shelf life, unlike a social media post.

I believe in hard work. I also believe that hard work pays off. These are pretty much the basic principles that help me to keep this blog going.

Update: We are now in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, which we were not in when this post I first published this post in 2016. More people are at home now, which is a wonderful opportunity to engage your audience because people consume a lot of content. Time spent reading blogs and social media posts have increased significantly, with everyone being at home. On the flip side, there are also more distractions which means that you are easily forgettable if you are not showing up regularly.

Another thing to remember is that a post you publish today can blow up a year from now. A post with five likes now can get 50,000 likes in a year, depending on the spirit of the time and how it is relatable to your post. Here’s an example of what I posted in the original version of this post from 2016:

“Last week, a blog post I published two years ago suddenly got lots of attention. My stats were going crazy! Shooting up to over six hundred views within 48 hours, over 3,000 by the end of the day, and over four thousand shares on Facebook. This was an old post that new visitors were just discovering. This is a clear example of your blog working for you. If I wanted, I could have sat back and took an entire week off and made it up in views, likes, and follows coming in from that post alone. This same thing can work on articles that surround certain historical events, like 9/11. Maybe you posted something on 9/11, and two years from now, it gets all of the attention you thought it deserved when you first published it. It’s all about timing.” – Yecheilyah

You won’t have to worry about posting as much once you’ve been doing it for some time, and you won’t have to worry about losing followers when you are not blogging  because there is enough content for people who have not yet discovered your blog to read.

Schedule Your Blog Posts

Although I was publishing a lot initially, it doesn’t mean that I was coming up with the content on the fly. I planned my posts out and scheduled them. If you go into your WordPress dashboard, you can schedule your blog posts so that they will go live without you having to sit in front of the computer or phone and do it manually. If you are in the US, I recommend scheduling it to go live at midnight so you can reach people all over the world who are in different time zones. We talked about this in another post already, so as not to be redundant, I will refer you to that post which you can find here.

Download the WP App (Or Whatever App is appropriate for your blog platform)

You can also download the WordPress app, which, once the post is live, helps respond to comments and share to social media on the go.

This is probably one of the best tips of them all because you can grow while you sleep, which is like working while you sleep. And who doesn’t like that?

Support Other Blogs/Bloggers

Publishing posts regularly is good, but it is not enough. It is just as important to follow other blogs, comment on other blogs and interact with other bloggers.

The more I interacted with veteran bloggers, participated in challenges, followed and commented on other blogs, the more I became aware of the little nuggets and tidbits I needed to help my blog, not only to grow but also to keep growing. And consistent growth is a goal that I consistently strive for.

Guest blogging, interviewing others, and being active within the community will help you grow even on days you are not blogging because you are leveraging your platform through others. Someone might not have read the article on your page, but if you were a guest on someone else blog or a more prominent blog reblogged/shared your post, their readers become your readers depending on the subject and how it is relatable to them.  

It’s a challenge for authors who write and publish books to be consistent in publishing blog posts while trying to write books because blogging is still a form of writing. Whether you are publishing a poem, short story, article, how-to, research article, giving a testimony, or breaking down how a quote is inspirational to you, it’s all still writing.

One solution is that by frequently posting in the beginning, supporting other blogs when you are not blogging, repurposing content, and scheduling blog posts, authors can continually publish books without neglecting their blog.

The key is a little bit of discipline and networking with others, incorporating blogging into your platform building strategy as a necessary part of the work, and producing quality posts as early and as often as possible in your blogging journey.

Published by

Yecheilyah

Writing to restore Black historical truth through fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

27 thoughts on “How to Get Your Blog to Work for You Even When You’re Not Blogging”

  2. I absolutely agree: hard work eventually pays off. Only for some, it happened later than others 😉

    I had a similar learning curve as you, I started knowing nothing and learned on te go. Becuase you know, some things have to be done. You can read about it and think you’ve understand, but only when you actually do them, you do understand.

    I started off by posting 2/3 blogs a week. It didn’t lead to much in the first year. My jumping point was when I partecipated in AtoZ Challenge the first time. And yes, blogging every day for a week, being forced to connect and engange… that’s what really tought me how this is done.
    Now I’m scaling down. I want to concentrate on producing better content, and since I’m a slow writer, that takes time for me. It takes me over a week to write one of my posts, the ones I care about. That means I can only produce 1 or 2 of these posts a month. The rest of the time I share news and opinions, collections of articles. But as you said, after two years of blogging, I have a lot of content that I can share all the time. that really makes a difference.

    I do see that after two years of consistent blogging, my blgo works for me, even whan I’m not there. I also do see that when I don’t engage for a time, engagement falls.

    Social medias are demanding animals 😉

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    1. Yup, all truth. One thing I thought of mentioning but didn’t is that updating the blog can cover a wide range of things. As you know, I don’t just post articles (since the good articles do take time to write. I must have revised this one like 15 times!) but also quotes, reblogs, links to others. There’s a lot of ways we can update the blog without actually writing a new article. And yes, I’m glad you mentioned the Challenge! That’s another thing I thought of mentioning but didn’t. Participation in challenges is a great help. My participation in the 2015 Blogging University Writing 101 was one of my biggest turning points. That and Colleen’s Writer’s Quote Wednesday.

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  3. Very interesting blog! It is a challenge every now and then to find the time to write if there is too many going on in your life. I should find some though!

    Thank you for sharing and pushing me 🙂

    Warm regards,
    Tieme

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    1. Yes! I looovee to schedule posts. In fact, that’s how it’s possible for me to be an active blogger while staying focused on my work. By use of my mobile, I am always available to respond to comments and if it gets too much, I can just turn my phone off. Either way I don’t have to stop in the middle of the day to publish a blog post (unless something hits me like that) because its already scheduled to go out, freeing up a lot of time.

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  5. Through trial and error, I’ve learned consistency is key. If you plan to be away, and won’t have access, schedule posts and mention that you’ll respond and catch up upon your return. Leaving your blog to collect dust won’t help. 😊

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  6. I really needed this today! I’ve been blogging for about a year and a half and I have 66 followers. Yes, EXTREMELY discouraging…enough so that I thought maybe I should just stop and quit the Facebook stuff as well. I’ve tried different scenarios, but have almost always blogged at least once a week. I’ve tried every day, a couple times a week, still just trying to get a feel for it and what works. I don’t know if it’s the site itself, my content, me?! Just can’t get a handle on it. So after reading this, will try to just keep plugging away. Thanks for the post!

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    1. You’re welcome. It really does take time. During my first six months to a year of blogging, I wasn’t getting much of any feedback. Even though I was posting a lot I was getting no likes and no commentary. HOWEVER, I just kept going, networking with others, responding to the comments I did get, and really enjoying what I was doing and it paid off. Cherish your 66 followers and give them all the value you can give, they are worth it. Someone comments on your blog, comment right back. Show how much you appreciate what you do have and you will grow, no doubt. Just keep going. Remember: 97% of the people who work for someone else are employed by the 3% who didn’t quit. 😉

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  10. Pingback: Before You Publish that Book, Don’t Forget these Things | Pearls Before Swine

  11. You make some really good points, thank you. I always say as in the laws of physics that you have to put something in to get something out. With the power of the Internet, there can be an exponential growth. As people discover your blog the amount of effort required to get a certain level of results decreases. It can take a lot of work to get 50 followers but the same effort, later on, could get you 200.

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