Abby Lawson is a blogger and teacher extraordinaire at Just a Girl and Her Blog. In the podcast and blog post below, we dive into A: the art of balancing PASSIONATE writing/content with OPTIMIZED content (for marketing, SEO, Pinterest, etc).
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How to balance passion, style, and personality–with optimized marketing within your blog content.
Abby said it best:
“New bloggers often get so bogged down in the details.”
But that’s true for all of us, isn’t it?
- Getting our Yoast SEO plugin showing all green lights
- Diving deep on our Pinterest group board strategies
- Asking question after question in Facebook groups
- Spending insane amounts of time on small website design details
(guilty as charged on that last one)
In fact, we bloggers are so focused on marketing strategies and optimization–that we fail to spend the proper time and energy on making our content good and useful to our audience.
Spending time on detailed strategies or engaging in Facebook groups is obviously important, but so is producing interesting content.
So how do we find the balance?
(semi-related reading: The #1 thing holding my blog growth back)
Forget optimization (for now). Focus on content.
This is awkward coming from somebody who teaches people about blogging on the internet.
But even if it puts me out of a job, this still holds true.
SEO strategies, Pinterest group board hustles, Tips, tactics, hacks, and hints–these things MUST take a backseat to relevant, timely, engaging, interesting, and useful content that changes the lives of your readers.
I’m NOT saying optimization isn’t important.
I’m saying it’s secondary.
(Also, Abby also pointed out that sometimes it’s the non-optimized content that unexpectedly goes viral. While I don’t think it’s a prerequisite, I do think it confirms that notion that “content is king.”)
My 2 most popular posts on this site are:
NEITHER of those is optimized for SEO, Pinterest, or ANYTHING besides what I want to say from my blog.
So–how to infuse personality into optimized content?
As I dive deeper into SEO content myself, I have struggled with this recently.
I’m constantly looking for content guidance from blogging tools like Yoast, Ahrefs, KWFinder, LSIGraph, etc. When I write the way I want–those tools push back at me for “under-optimization.”
The answer?
Push past the fear and screw those tools.
Confidence–develop the confidence to publish what you want to publish.
It’s YOUR blog, and you get to run it how you see fit.
If that means publishing a poem that’s only 222 words and not optimized for anything? DO IT.
But it takes a certain amount of courage to do that, only because there are tons of bloggers shouting at you to learn and implement SEO, Pinterest strategies, Twitter engagement, video, podcasting, content, headlines, intros, opt-ins, freebies, etc, etc, etc.
Buck up and make the content you think needs to be said.
That’s it.
How to balance blogging with family (specifically when you have young kids or are otherwise super busy with full-time jobs)
The answer is simple:
Work when you can, no matter what.
I know this answer sucks by the way. Simple, but ludicrously difficult on any given day. I get it
But sadly, that’s really the only option for those of us who DO NOT HAVE large chunks of time every day to sit down and blog.
We have to work in small chunks, and whenever the opportunity presents itself–no matter how annoying it might be.
- During kids naptimes
- On your lunch break at work
- On the bus commute
- That 35-minute window between when kids go to bed and you pass out from exhaustion.
Kids or no kids–ALL busy bloggers need to remember the key to productivity:
We need to sit our butts down in front of the laptop to get work done, even at “non-ideal” times.
Work when you can. There’s often NOT an “ideal circumstance” to work.
Did you enjoy this chat with Abby? Do you struggle-sauce with balancing personality and marketing?
Drop me some comment love below! 🙂 🙂