At the risk of getting this post derailed right from the get-go… Jaedia wrote a great piece on the fact that you cannot fail Blaugust. And she is 100% right. When it comes to Blaugust; just deciding to participate is a win. It doesn’t matter whether you hit >31 posts or just barely manage to trip, fall, and find yourself posting your first introduction seconds before the month ends.
But…
Especially given the direction of my own thoughts toward improving, I had to ask myself: Can one fail at blogging more generally?
And I think the honest answer is: Yes, you can. But only really in one clear-cut way, and perhaps one more highly subjective and personal way.
The Two Things
1) You Just… Stop. (And Never Return)
Despite being in brackets — it is really the second part there that is key.
If you stop — for any reason, whether you deem that to be a ‘good’ reason or not — it is always OK to make a return.
From past blogging efforts, I know well the strength of the mental wall that can go up after you’ve unexpectedly stopped all blogging efforts for a while. The longer it is, the worse it gets, until it feels absolutely insurmountable.
But know that so far as everyone else is concerned — they’re just happy to have you back. You can explain as much or as little of your absence as you wish. Just jumping straight back in with a topic that interests you is perfectly valid.
If you’re just getting started, and this hasn’t happened to you yet, permit yourself here and now to make a return should you ever find yourself in this position. Future-you will thank you.
2) Not Achieving the Goals You Set
By the very rawest of definitions, not hitting whatever success metrics that have been set is a failure.
But more importantly?
They’re an opportunity to reassess – be that whether the success metrics were actually feasible/healthy, or whether they may require a change in path to get there.
The first and most general piece of advice I’d give here?
Don’t set goals for yourself around views, comments, or other such external measures. And definitely don’t go comparing your performance against that of others. I know, easier said than done. And I don’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t care about these things or that its ‘wrong’ to want to build a readership — of course it isn’t.
But it’s also worth knowing going in that too much emphasis in that direction lies madness. (Or, at least, an increased likelihood of falling victim to the ‘Just stopping’ failure condition.)
If you really want to set goals for yourself — make them highly incremental. Aim for getting an average of 10 views per day to start with. Maybe landing a post which has two comments once a month. That sort of thing.
So, What Are My Goals?
Goals are suspiciously close to ‘Planning’.
And while my stance may have grudgingly softened1, compared to where I started, it is still, by far, not my preferred way to operate.
But you know what else I don’t prefer?
How I’m currently operating (outside of Blaugust).
So, I see two main ways to proceed with rectifying current poor blogging habits from here:
- Set a Schedule — which was the first idea that came to mind, before I left on this trip. Somewhat ironic a position to take though after the Big, Baggy, Billowy, Blogger Pants where I made the case for schedules not being required to be a successful blogger.
Still; I guess any tool has a time and place.
However, with some time, and in fact through the framing of this very post, a second option presents itself.
- Set some Goals — as the present answer to the question posed by this section’s heading is simply, ‘Don’t let the blog die — keep going with the monthly journal posts at a minimum.’
Setting some modest goals has many of the same benefits as forming a schedule, but while still giving a degree of flexibility — something I not only value but require for my hobbies to be sustainable.
And I think to follow my own advice from the prior section, I want those goals to be small and iterative. While ultimately I might want to get back to a position of posting 3 or so times per week — setting that as the next step, given I’m presently posting 1-2 times per month (outside of Blaugust), seems a step too far and destined to failure.
So with all that in mind…
My New Goals; and Suggestions if You’re In a Similar Position
- Post 4x per Month (or, 1x per Week)
- This can include the monthly Journal post for the week that falls within.
- At least one post in the month should be focused on recounting a gaming experience I’ve had.
And… I think that’s all I’m going to set. Keep it simple, keep it achievable. That is really the key advice here, I think. A post per week might still be too much for you and not feel small or incremental at all. If that’s you, change it! If once a month or twice a month feels more comfortable to you, go for it!
Can always change it later if, or once, you start finding that too easy.
I set an additional clarifying goal, as that is a style of post I’ve really let fall to the wayside. I don’t mind whether in a more structured style2 or free form3 so far as the goal goes; but free form is probably the easier one to get started with.
And… I think that’s really a bit it.
This is what I think has the best shot of working for me. I’ll keep an eye on it in the Journal posts going forward.
Depending on how your particular brain meat works though, this might sound wild to you to be so loose with it. You may well want to set yourself a more strict schedule and say, ‘Gosh darn it, every Tuesday and Thursday, I shall post come heaven or high water!’.
In which case, I applaud you. While also squinting at you strangely in the suspicion that you might just be an alien.
Either way, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. So I guess we’ll have to see how it goes once this whole Blaugust thing is over!
This was posted during Blaugust 2024, the annual blogging event hosted by Belghast. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
Footnotes
- I really hope WordPress brings back the ‘Random’ feature for WP.org blogs soon — they took it away on .com but have already returned it now after community… um, ‘response’.
- Cities: Skylines: Blogger city! Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
- Black Desert Online: I recall more posts in the gameplay ‘story’ form than this, but I suppose I did only jump in (albeit quite intensely) for a month or so: Spending a Day in Velia, Moving Past Velia, Into the Valencian Desert
Best goal I ever set was “let’s do this; a post a day”. I also let off my expectations for posts; its OK to just do screenshots. Not every post has to be a masterpiece.
Simple and straightforward. Got me back to blogging daily after a multi year drought of minimal posting.
Dropped down to 5 posts a week now to take the weekends off :)
That is awesome! I’m still in awe of bloggers like yourself who daily post (or pretty much daily post) over the longer term.
Somewhat surprisingly, I haven’t really felt it this Blaugust, generally by the end of a month of daily posting — I’m very much ready for a break and feeling quite tired by the whole thing.
That said, 3 or so posts a week used to feel pretty good. So maybe I could’ve jumped to 2x posts a week right from the get-go, but I’m happy to work up to that again and see how it goes. :)
I very much like your second goal. The notion of returning to a particular theme once a month seems like a good way to build a theme, or build a particular readership, without putting pressure on yourself. I think I might try it myself. Thanks for the idea!
Thanks GT.
And yep — it can probably do that! Although it has as much benefit to myself, I think, than it may do for anyone else.
One of my big motivators for doing this whole blogging thing is because it gives me a touchstone to gaming history over the years. But… Well; that only really works if I actually talk about it once in a while. Hah.
In any event, happy the idea sparked something for you too!!
I’m still dithering over when and whether to post a Blaugust wrap-up this year but if and when I do I’ll very likely link to Jaedia’s post and this one. The reason I’m not even sure if I’m going to post about it at all is that I have a feeling the whole event has moved on to somewhere that doesn’t really have an awful lot to do with why I blog any more and I don’t think my thoughts on that would necessarily be either helpful or welcome.
For example, one piece of advice I’ve offered repeatedly in previous years is almost the same as yours, namely that it’s completely fine to stop blogging – but I also think it’s equally fine never to start again. It’s a purely optional activity that no-one needs to think about let alone attempt, even once. For the few who do get as far as trying it, that’s already a step farther than almost the entire world will ever go. If it goes well, ride that feeling while it lasts. When the feeling fades, be happy you had some fun with it and move on. If you get the urge to try again, go for it. If not, keep it as a happy memory or just forget about it. Anything is fine.
I just worry that people are taking the whole thing too seriously now and I’m not sure Blaugust helps with that. I preferred the Newbie Blogging Initiative, which seemed to be a lot clearer on what it was setting out to achieve, namely encouraging people who’d thought about starting a blog but hadn’t had the nerve to take that first step. Blaugust began very differently and I’m not sure how compatible the two concepts are, despite all Belghast’s attempts to ameliorate the innately competitive nature of one with the inclusivity of the other.
Taking the long view on blogging, if you end up coming and going, two posts one year, a hundred the next, nothing for the next five years… really, so what? Unless you planned on making an income from blogging, in which case you’re probably a decade and change late, you haven’t lost anything, only gained whatever fun, satisfaction or amusement you had in the moment and given some of the same to the people who read what you did post, whenever you got around to it.
Hearing people talk about failing at blogging, I get the impression sometimes that people are taking the whole thing as some kind of personality test, where how well they do at blogging says something about who they are. Well, it does: it says whether you like to blog and how much you like to keep doing it. If you love it and can’t get enough – yay! You have a fun thing you can enjoy for as long as that lasts. If you find it stressful or arduous or not really as much fun as you thought it would be then yay! You tried a new thing and now you know it wasn’t really for you. You learned something and that’s always good. There are a billion more new things out there and you’re sure to like some of them a lot better.
I do apologize! This seems to have been a test run for the post I said I might or might not write. Bad form to draft posts in someone else’s comment thread. Not my first offence, either… I’ll stop now.
Your comments, blog post length or otherwise, are always welcome. :)
And in this case — I agree with your view as well. I don’t mean to, for a moment, imply there is anything wrong with walking away from a blog forever, if that’s what you want. As you say — just giving it a go is more than most will ever do in this day and age.
If you give it a shot and find it isn’t for you — that’s fine.
I’m speaking entirely from the point of view of someone who wants to continue blogging, but for whatever reason, either isn’t — or isn’t doing it to a level they are personally satisfied with.
This is something we’ve discussed at least a couple of times in the past, too, but I think this scenario can happen a lot more easily for those who find their satisfaction in blogging in the ‘having done’ rather than the ‘doing’.
Certainly this is my case, on both fronts. At the moment — and I think what always helps pushing through Blaugust — there is a certain degree of satisfaction in the ‘doing’ of Blaugust, but generally, longer term, my satisfaction comes from the ‘having done’.
But over the last little while, there has been little satisfaction to be had as I, well, ‘haven’t done’!
In terms of the event format itself, if I could change one thing on the competitive end of things, it would be to tone that down to something like weekdays (or 5 days a week) ‘only’ of posting to hit that top tier, with encouragement to go out and read the content being generated and interact with the community the other two.
Just something to drive that inclusivity element, because I do agree it falls to the wayside in the current structure. .. Or can at least, I’ve also seen some bloggers be really successful after a start with Blaugust, and stick at it — but I can’t help but wonder if this ‘success’ rate might yet be improved with a shift in focus.