Challenges of Regular Blogging

For the first time in 3 years, I’ve been posting to my blog more regularly.  A big motivation for this is the social media course I’m taking at UC Berkeley; the course requires me to maintain a blog and establish a presence on social networks.

While it’s been exciting to see that my blog has a number of readers (yay!), I’m struggling with writing content regularly.  Here are three things that I’ve tried:

1. Creating a calendar of posts over the weekend and writing them on specific days.

2. Compiling a list of regular features (e.g. favorite app of the week, top 5 list, roundup of an event, etc.).

3. Writing posts when I have time and scheduling them to be published at later dates.

Despite these strategies, I find it challenging to find the time to write the posts.  Sometimes, I also struggle for inspiration – how do I balance the need to write with contributing meaningful content for my readers?  And how do I find regular inspiration?

I’d appreciate suggestions or helpful resources on this topic.  I’d love to maintain my blog even after the course ends, if I can find a sustainable way of sharing meaningful information.

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SXSW – The First Morning

I spent the weekend in Austin at South by Southwest Interactive with the imo team, which I recently joined.

This was my first time at SXSW and I had a great time.  The event was much larger than I expected – close to 20,000 attendees over the course of a week.  This made for some pretty packed sessions and escalator rides!

I arrived late on Friday night, so the first panel I attended was on Saturday morning – Social Media Mythbusters, presented by Peter Kim of the Dachis Group.  Peter had some fantastic examples of memorable marketing campaigns, including one from Nuts Online about their “nutty” campaign to save Jericho.  Nuts Online shipped 40,000 pounds of nuts to CBS to lobby for the show to be saved.

I’ve met Jeff from Nuts Online and I love that the company is a family business that has been passed down for three generations.  I also love that they sell the most excellent chocolate-covered macedemia nuts ever!

Back on track.

I then attended a “Core Conversation” (i.e. an interactive session in which the participants and speakers sit in a circle and interact closely), hosted by Cathy Brooks, Founder & Raconteur at Other Than That, and Ellen Mcgirt, Senior Writer at Fast Company.  I’ve been a subscriber to Fast Company for 7(!) years, so I was excited to listen to the hosts’ (and fellow participants) discussion of online identities and authenticity, and let Ellen know that I’m a loyal subscriber.

After the session, I met Michael Margolis of Get Storied, a professional storyteller.  Michael helps companies and individuals create narratives around their work and passions, which I thought was a fun way to spend the work day 🙂

And that was just the start…