I have been performing market research for my blog for over a year now and it has been tremendously helpful in finding out what my audience struggles with the most and in turn how I can help them out by offering my advice. Every blogger has their own set of problems that may differ from person to person, but in my research, I have found the same 5 problems that constantly come up in my search results. Today I will be sharing these five common #bloggerproblems and my solutions for them.
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1 / Daylight Savings or cloudy days
This is one of the most common problems that I find people posting about. Either daylight savings time is over and it gets dark at 5:30 pm or itโs a cloudy day (not ideal when taking photos because natural light is preferred). To these problems, I suggest using a light kit! I stockpile photos on the weekend to use for my blog and Instagram. Since I only have two days to get it done, my first move is to take photos on the day that itโs not supposed to be cloudy. If both days are projected to be cloudy, I use my light kit. Since I have a small time frame to get my photos taken (within a two hour block when my daughter is napping), I canโt fully rely on the weather because tasks need to get marked off my list, and the tasks donโt care what the weather report is. A light kit is used for taking photos indoors when you need extra light sources. The bulbs that are used are daylight bulbs so it mimics natural light. Hereโs the light kit that I use; it has been such a help in keeping me on track regardless of weather conditions.
Along with using a light kit, you may still need to add a touch of brightness to your images during post photo editing. Bumping up the brightness in your photo editing program is the second step when youโre taking photos with a light kit. You may also need to adjust the temperature of the photos to make them cooler if your photos have a yellowish tint to them (this can occur when shooting with artificial lighting sometimes). The brightness and temperature settings are in different locations across editing programs, but they are common so they should be available in all of them.
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2 / Too tired to blog in the evening
I can totally relate to this. I work a 9-5 and am on the computer all day. The last thing I want to do in the evening is look at the computer again let alone use my brain again when itโs drained from a days work. However, sacrifices need to be made, so a compromise is to compose blog posts laying on the couch using voice dictation. At least Google can do the typing for you! Hereโs a post all about using voice dictation to create blog posts.
An alternative solution is to dedicate you work breaks and lunches to working on blog posts. At least this way it's not the end of the day so you should be more alert and have great thoughts to still work with (thoughts that haven't drained from your brain yet due to the 9-5!).
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3 / Don't know what to blog about
This could be a problem if you havenโt really determined what the purpose of your blog is or if you donโt plan out your content in advance. If you are blogging on the fly, meaning, you sit down at the computer and try to think of something to post about, youโre doing it all wrong. You should be planning out your content in advance. You do this by performing market research. Here are a few ways how:
- Use Google Trends to find popular niche-related content
- Set up an automated task to research twitter hashtags/keywords for you (here's the link to the free resource that I used to create this task for public use).
- Check niche related FB groups for questions
If it's still difficult to find topics to post about, maybe the niche that you are in isn't the right one for you. You may need to go back to the drawing board and determine what your area(s) of expertise are and build from there. This isnโt a bad thing because it may help you discover an area where you can be of better help to a different audience.
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4 / Too many ideas creating overwhelm
On the other hand, you may have too many ideas for blog posts and get overwhelmed. This is an awesome boat to be in because this is where planning content in advance comes into play. You may have 25 ideas for blog posts and not know what to do about it. Hereโs what you do:
Seamlessly organize your thoughts using Evernote (here's a post all about this).
Preplan/Schedule your blog posts out by adding them to your editorial calendar (If you have 25 ideas and post weekly, thatโs 6 months of blog content, sis!).
Yep, just two things, itโs that simple.
Related: 5 Reasons Your Blog Needs an Editorial Calendar
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5 / Not posting on schedule
I get so tired of seeing people tweet apologies for not posting in a long time and giving a million and one excuses for it. Honestly, spare us the details and give us the goods. Life happens and you're not going to post consistently all the time. People know this. So rather than opening a post about why you didnโt post in a long time, just write an amazing post to make up for lost time. Rather than tweeting about your absence, tweet that you have an awesome post up and share the link.
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So do you deal with any of these common #bloggerproblems? Tell me all about it in the comments!