Oh dear, there’s a clear gap in this diary, a three-month hiatus. Let me explain.
Readers will know, about six months ago I decided to blog part-time for the enjoyment of it. I already had an occasional football blog but decided to expand the subjects covered. In the first couple of months I took to it quickly, it went surprisingly well, but I lost sight of what I was trying to achieve. I wanted a hobby to enjoy in semi-retirement; instead, I turned it into a chase for clicks.
Over the summer, while preparing posts, I drew up a manual spreadsheet of Facebook groups related to my topics. The plan was to contribute a couple of times a week and then share my posts there. Sensible if you want clicks, but not enjoyable. Robotic and tedious. It started to feel like a job where you tick boxes to justify a means to an end, not an expansion of my horizons.
I also shopped around different publishing platforms, looking for ways to pick up readers. I tried a few, experimented with AI for hashtags and optimisation, and within weeks had built a little system I didn’t really understand. Interesting, yes, but not how I want to spend my time. I’d quickly, within two months, been blown off course.
As I’ve mentioned before, my semi-retirement also centres on writing my first book. That’s why I’m back. For the past three months, I’ve been writing it, and I’ve now finished a full draft and sent the final parts to the editor. While I was busy chasing a few extra readers for the blogs, I couldn’t find the focus for the book, so I stepped away.
I’d only been blogging seriously for eight weeks, yet by adding around thirty posts to my main Lewes FC blog, I tripled my Google search views, achieved simply by writing reasonably good content regularly, not by building systems to chase readers.
The break has been useful. Search traffic has held steady. It’s clear that if I write four or five posts a week for a couple of years and allow the blog to grow naturally, the readers will come. I know my tendency is to make everything as efficiently quick as possible rather than choose what’s best for me.
This pause allowed me to apply the brakes and reset, write because I enjoy it, publish it, and let the search engine do the rest. Leave most social media alone, except where it helps with the book. For now, with my writing and blogging, I’m moving from 20% writing and 80% promotion, pre hiatus, to 80% writing and 20% promotion.
Next week I’ll restart the diary about building the blog, with some interesting updates and news.
#Blogging #Blogging For Amateurs #Self Publishing #Blog Diary #Learning To Blog
The Rights of Fans. 