Further to last weeks post on Goal Setting, I now have the dilemma of defining ‘regular’. (as an aside I just learnt how to do that link thing and am quite impressed with myself for my technological-ness)
In January I pledged to become a regular blogger, then I wrote my first post of the year last week. A slight glitch in the matrix… or is it?
Birthdays are fairly regular things and they’re yearly. My power bill arrives quarterly, I get paid monthly. My Spanish class is weekly, I shower at least once a day and brush my teeth at least twice. So how do I decide what my version of ‘regular’ will be in terms of blogging?
Yearly would be completely achievable from my perspective, (and with this post I’d be over achieving) but I’m not a good enough writer to be able to build an audience who would hang around for an annual update.
Quarterly posts have an air of expectation and pressure. If I was only going to say something 4 times a year, it had better be worthwhile. Imagine wasting a whole post on whether orange was the new black, only to find out that is was, and everyone already knew it, or worse, that is wasn’t and I had to wait 3 whole months for the opportunity to redeem myself.
On the one hand, monthly seems like a good option, but it’s easy to find 3 or 4 things to blog about, just when you’re on holiday, and blogging about your holiday 4 months after it happened is weird.
Which leaves me with the real pressure options. At the beginning of the year when I decided to be a regular blogger, I had fortnightly in head. It seems like a good timeframe. Surely I can think of something to say twice a month. I definitely have the time to write it, just need to work on that wee procrastination problem I have. A goal within a goal if you like.
Daily is way to hard. I know myself well enough to know that I’d never follow through on that and I’m not keen on setting myself up to fail.
The only other real option to consider is weekly. That’s 52 posts a year. Surely I have at least 52 thoughts a year that can be turned into something interesting…. or do I? I am going away shortly and if my assumption of blog ratio to holiday time is correct, I’d have at least 4 posts up my sleeve.
And then there is the audience to think about. All 6 of you… (I’m picturing the movie deal as I type) If you’re going to blog, surely you have to offer some kind of regularity to an audience. Posting every day when you’ve got something fun and exciting to say then having massive gaps while you try to top whatever you did last time isn’t nice for an audience. It’s like when you see one new episode of your favourite tv show for 3 weeks in a row, then 42 re-runs before the next new episode…then a time slot change. It shits you right? Or is that just me?
Aaannnnwwayyy
The point is, I’m trying to define a realistic version of ‘regular’ for blogging terms. Something achievable for me, and potentially interesting/funny/quirky/distracting for an audience, and yet not so often that it’s spammy.
It’s all part of the follow through on goal setting. You can’t just say stuff and wonder why it never happens. It’s taken me a lot of failed new years resolutions to figure that one out. You need to have, or at least I need to have some kind of action and accountability as well.
And from the options above, I’m going to go for somewhere between weekly and fortnightly. Let’s see if it works.
Pania
The Chronicles of Pania 