Overcome Your Fears and Start Blogging
Blogging and posting your written text online for the world to see can send chills down someone’s spine. That may rank up there with public speaking. Everyone is hesitant about posting their written work online. Fears such as, I’m not a writer what am I doing, or what if no one reads it, or what if I look stupid races around in our heads. Clear your head and overcome your fears by following these simple techniques.
The Fear of Writing
There are many people out there developing content. Some of it is good and some of it is not so good. You need to stand out from the crowd by developing great content. “How can I develop great content you ask?” The most important thing to do is to write. Practice the art of writing every. Practice makes perfect. No one starts out developing great content; it is something that takes time.
To overcome this fear:
- Write every day. Set a specific time of the day to sit down and write. Remove all distractions, email, Facebook, Twitter… Set a goal of 50 minutes and 300 words to start. Increase your word count as writing becomes easier.
- Develop a blogging schedule. Develop a schedule for the month. Decide on your topics in advance. That way when posting day arrives, you are not sitting there wondering, “What am I going to write about today?”
Free-Photos / Pixabay
The Fear of Mistakes
Rule #1: You will make mistakes and they will get posted online.
Rule #2: If you don’t catch the mistake, one of your readers will.
This is probably the biggest fear a new blogger has. You have to overcome the fear of failure, rejection, and mistakes in order to become a great blogger. We all make mistakes. We ALL have set a post free onto the world with a BIG, GLARING mistake it. It happens. We are human.
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To overcome this fear:
- Realize that we are human and we will make mistakes.
- To lessen these mistakes, try this editing technique. After you have finished your article, let it rest overnight. The next morning, read your post aloud. This way you will HEAR what you WROTE. By reading your post aloud, you will catch any run on sentences, wordiness, and misplaced commas. Read every word aloud and by the time you reach the end of your work, you will have caught many errors that your grammar/spell checker did not catch.
No One Will Read It
I’ve had some posts that I thought would set the world on fire only to just sit there with only a few people reading the post. Then again, I have written a post that I thought was only so-so, but my readers loved it and commented on it. You can never tell how successful a post is going to be.
To overcome this fear:
- Use social media to drive traffic to your site. Twitter is a great tool for bloggers.
- Guest post on other blogs to gain new followers outside of your circle. A simple Google search of “now accepting guest posts” will do the trick.
I hope these tips help you to overcome your fears about blogging. We all started out hesitant. Not knowing the “What ifs,” but we overcame the fears by closing our eyes and jumping in. You can do the same, have faith in yourself, close your eyes and hit the PUBLISH button. I know you can do it.
