Blogger’s Block? How to Overcome Blogging Apathy

Two tigers resting. One sleeping, one looking. Both look very apathetic.

Do you experience so-called “blogger’s block”? Are you unable to write for some reason? I can help!

Over the years my blog became repeatedly silent for a number of reasons –

that were not related to the blog itself. Sometimes blogging made me tired though! Why?

Is it the common “blogger’s block”? I asked myself then. Often it wasn’t. What else?

Publishing less frequently may mean something different. What’s the problem? Is it even one?


When Blogger’s Block is NOT a Problem

I usually don’t experience bloggers block. One time I had a different problem – the established blogger‘s apathy!

That’s not the same thing! Once the blog gets some traction the question arises: what more can you do when

  • you have lots of subscribers
  • you succeeded on Google search
  • you became popular on social media sites numerous times?

Once you succeed repeatedly the motivation to prove that “you can” do it diminishes over time.

Also many people want you to write for them, you start new blogs and work on other projects.

You end up with less time, energy and motivation, unless of course you earn money directly with your blog.

When you get hired to write the money arrives faster and more reliably in most cases.

In my case the client money is usually easier to get so there is not enough energy left to make me blog like I did in the early days of the SEO 2.0 blog.

Is this really a problem? It depends of course. Ideally you don’t neglect your own blog (like I did).

Once the client gigs ended my own blog was already forgotten and it was hard to reach my audience again.

This of course led to additional frustration and disappointment. What was once easy started to be a pain.

I still had enough ideas about topics to blog about but what’s the point when nobody is listening anymore?


Writing for Blogs While Frustrated and Angry?

Of course there are ways to reignite your inner fire! Some may backfire though, especially on business blogs.

You should think twice before you write for blogs when you are frustrated and defensive for example.

You can write when you’re angry or otherwise very emotional.

Or you can write without much affection by creating a schedule and recurring tasks like most professional bloggers do.

I tried the first method with success but only few times. You can’t get angry each time a troll messes up the Web a little more.

After a while you grow wary of such people and don’t give them the attention they crave but do not deserve in the first place anymore.

In the worst case you ostracize you actual readers when you just cover negativity and focus on criticism.

What then? Well. I’ve written about ways of engaging your key audience, the subscribers and returning visitors.

Also never underestimate the value of your older posts. Now just combine both and there it is one solution how to overcome the established blogger’s apathy: updating and optimizing existing content to make it evergreen.

When you update and optimize existing content you get more Google traffic, especially when you republish those posts after an overhaul or at least show the “last updated” date like I do in recent years.

On the other hand you may want to keep on blogging regularly as you did before. There are ways to achieve that as well.


How to Deal with Complacency When Your Blog is Successful

When your blog becomes successful you risk becoming complacent for a variety of reasons.

Creative writing requires a lot of energy by itself. External factors can heavily impact your ability to write creatively.

As a professional blogger who also writes for clients I tried a regular writing approach providing posts covering specific posts on particular days.

The idea was writing 3+ posts every week as 3 posts a week were my measure for a healthy flagship blog.

1. One post could be a regular “Refresh Monday” column. Each Monday you could update an existing evergreen post. Simply rewrite it in a way suitable for today’s Web. Add fresh links, quotes, images etc.

I have lots of resources that have to be updated regularly. Some tools I covered once do not even exist anymore. Other articles simply need an update because they are not true anymore.

2. A blogging series of posts covering the same topic in-depth could go on for a while. One article is often not enough to cover a topic extensively.

When you announce such a series people actively await the next post any you are bound by your obligation to deliver a sequel.

3. Do you witness a lot of things that make you angry? Publishing a rant once a week or so to vent this anger by ridiculing the usual suspects could be be very liberating. Also people love emotional posts!

On the other hand very emotional or negative posts don’t work well in the business realm so that you should rather go for a walk, enjoy yourself and then write something inspiring with that energy.

4. Once a week you could publish either a list post or a subscriber’s delight post that won’t work on social media probably but with regular readers. “The best links of the week” is a popular way to achieve this.

You can also decide to ignore the search engines for that one post and only focus on what your faithful audience prefers. This will enable you to connect more deeply with your most ardent readers.

5. You can also add some short posts with a review or link. You can consider to publish things you otherwise would only share on social media like Facebook or Twitter.

Sometimes things you save locally or just bookmark are perfect for a “look here” post.

Why give away short-form content to third parties? Some tiny anecdotes or helpful tidbits might be actually more useful than that huge essay or tutorial nobody has the time to read or implement.


Not Excited to Blog Yet?

Doesn’t sound exciting? Well, you can make it work! You can make the boring things exciting.

I bet many of you don’t read other more conventional SEO blogs because they sound all the same.

What do you think? Do you really need to read the same news or advice more than once?

It’s better to add your unique personal take. That’s the essence of actual blogging.

Being true to yourself and your personal preferences is prone to rekindle your blogging fervor.

So whether you experience the more common blogger’s block or the rather rare established blogger’s apathy there are ways out of the void.

Do you have other suggestions? What do you do when you lack the energy or motivation to write?

Tell me about your secret sauce in the comment section below or on social media!