December 18, 2010 by Daniel Sharkov|
The following article is a guest post by Tristan Higbee. Be sure to check the bio field at the end and visit his blog! I think I can safely assume that most of us brush our teeth before going to bed every night (if that isn’t the case, please do NOT let me know in the comments). Maybe you also wash your face and say your prayers. We do these things out of habit, and we do them to make our lives better in some shape or form.
Though you might not have thought much about it, there are also several blogging rituals that will make your blog better if you do them for just a few minutes every night before bedtime.
Though it seems like there are an infinite number of things we as bloggers need to do every day to have a successful blog, below are six really easy, really simple things you can start doing tonight. These will help you be a better blogger and have a more successful blog when you wake up in the morning.
While I can’t stand working in a messy or cluttered workspace, it happens more often than not. I’m a full-time blogger, and I spend a lot of time (maybe too much time?) sitting in my comfy Ikea chair with my laptop. All that time spent in one place translates into slowly amassing a pile of stuff around me by the end of the day.
In fact, as I look around me right now, I see an empty Coke can, several notebooks, a clipboard, a stack of note cards, a magazine, a digital camera, a shoe, a couple books, and some tissues. Not fun.
I’ve definitely noticed that I feel more uncomfortable and uneasy when I do a bad job of organizing my working area. So every night before I go to bed, I take a few minutes to stack the papers, put away the books, and throw away any trash.
When I wake up to see everything nice and tidy, I’m excited and ready to start a day of blogging with as few distractions as possible.
Quick tip : Take it from me… It’s best not to eat in the area where you blog; this will help ensure your workspace stays clean!
This is something I’ve started doing recently, and I’ve had great success with it. Before you turn off your computer and turn in for the night, retweet one of your posts. If anyone looks at your Twitter profile while you’re sleeping, they’re most likely to click on the most recent thing you tweeted. And when that most recent thing is one of YOUR posts, YOU get that traffic coming to your blog.
I’ve been doing this every night for about a week now. Every morning I’ve woken up to check my blog and found that the post I tweeted has been retweeted and commented on.
Quick tech tip
: If you consistently go to bed at a certain time, you can pre-program in all of these post retweets before-you-go-to-bed tweets. TweetDeckis a great (and free!) tool to help you schedule future posts.
It’s common Twitter courtesy to thank everyone who retweets your posts. It’s also a Twitter best practice to respond to everyone who asks you questions or engages you in conversation.
Why is it important to do those before you go to bed? Because you’ll either forget by the morning, or the person who retweeted your post or @mentioned you will have forgotten they did so. It’s also always great to start off the day without any “to do’s” hanging over you.
Quick tip
: Responding to people throughout the day is a great way to lessen the amount you need to do before bedtime.
It’s important to respond to emails promptly for the same reasons it’s important to respond to people on Twitter. Apart from being common courtesy, it shows that you really care about the other person enough to make them a priority. This kind of thing can go a long way when it comes to building up solid relationships with your readers.
With the amount of email all of us get on a daily basis, it’s easy for important emails to become buried and lost under all of the new ones. Replying within a day ensures that none of those important emails remain un-responded to.
Quick tip
: If you’re using Gmail, add a star to the emails that need to be responded to quickly. Then go back and answer all of those starred emails at the end of the day, after you’re done reading all of your other emails.
I’m a firm believer that anyone who takes the time to leave a comment on my blog deserves to be recognized for it. Replying to every comment assures people that their comment was read and appreciated.
By responding to their comments before you go to bed, you show people that they are a priority. When every reader feels like they are getting special treatment, they’ll come back to your blog again and again.
If you get a lot of comments on your blog, you can suffer from comments getting “lost” in previous posts. Your best bet is to respond to them as soon as possible so that they don’t become forgotten.
Quick tip
: If you’re using WordPress, check out the ReplyMeplugin. When you respond to a comment, the original commenter automatically gets emailed your reply. Pretty slick, eh? I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and have seen an increase in both traffic and comments.
Before you go to bed, write on a note card, on a sticky note, in a notebook, or in a document on your computer what your goals and to-do’s for the next day are. Write them out in order of importance.
I’ve wasted a lot of time in the mornings by just trying to figure out what to do first. By having a specific idea of what I need to do, I can start working right away and not waste that precious time.
Quick tip
: Teux Deuxis a simple, beautiful, easy-to-use, and free web-based to-do app. Go check it out!
All of these things shouldn’t take very long, and you will definitely see results quickly. The bottom line is that doing all of these things will save you time, bring more traffic to your blog, and make your life easier.
In other words, there’s really no reason not to do them!
I’d love to hear what you have to say about this.
Do you do any or all of these on a regular basis? What other things would you suggest that every blogger do before going to bed?
Tristan Higbee is a full time blogger who writes about blogging tipsfor smart people over at Blogging Bookshelf. He replies to every comment, both on his blog and on the blogs he guest posts on
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