Like most artists and artisans, I’m not a full-time artist. I have other jobs to do, other responsibilities and hats I don. And I have to balance family and work life too.
Making time to blog and to continue the social conversations begun within my niche community is a challenge sometimes. Sometimes we’re out of ideas. Sometimes we’re self-conscious. Sometimes life becomes an emergency. Sometimes we are buried in other concerns and forget that our world is now no longer simply physical, but digital too.
It’s easy to let digital anything fall by the wayside when other parts of life get demanding. It’s also easy to think of blogging for our businesses as an extra, or luxury. But the world of marketing and communication today has evolved into something new. And that new is the digital social landscape. Especially if you don’t own a brick and mortar store front, and you want to stay in business; seriously it’s not a luxury to skip out on social – it’s a need that will break you if you don’t satisfy it.
So how do you move past the hurdles and unfreeze yourself and your message? How do you breathe life back into your blog and your social communities if you’ve neglected them awhile?
1) Forgive yourself. Stop the should haves and just get to it. As artists, it’s easy to beat ourselves up for not being more left-brained about what we do when it comes to marketing. And it doesn’t do a thing to serve us.
2) Routines. If working on social media interactions and blogging every day is too much, then scale back. Don’t promise the moon to your followers and then not deliver. Set the expectations that they can count on and then deliver. Keep investing in the conversation.
3) Give the best you can give when you deliver. Quality, engaging content and conversation will carry you when you find that you are short on time. (But don’t over think it and freeze back up because the word “quality” caught you.) Be genuine.
4) When ideas come, keep notes. Write a rough draft or queue up a title for future consideration. Save a list of links for research. Baby steps will help you be prepared when you sit down to create. Really, I view this as no different from my 50+ unfinished crochet projects – all filed away, that I may grab one at anytime to finish up as I feel moved or need inspiration. Only in this case, I also have a 50+ queue of writing and conversation ideas.
5) Stay active socially. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. I don’t have to blog every day or even every week to keep people coming to my site. But I do need to care. I do need to interact. I should be involved with my niches and my communities. And I should generate quality evergreen content on my site that aims at helping the people in my community whom I’m already engaging with.
What evergreen content should that be, you might wonder? For me, that evergreen content reveals itself as I stay engaged with my community and listen to what that community needs. When I pour care and effort into my social media relationships within my community, and reflect that care into my blog (even when I go through dry writing spells), people who want/need my help will come to find me pretty regularly. But I have to stay active in the social side.
How about you? What are your tips on how to re-engage?
Crochet Liberation Front:
Aberrant Crochet (TM) 
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