Stuck in a Blogging Rut? Here Are 3 Ways to Get Yourself Out!

All Photography by Xander & Thea

When we rebranded last year we also decided to give our posts a makeover, we removed some series and added others and over the course of 6 months a few died a death whilst others went from strength to strength. Towards the end of 2013, both myself and Jess had a conversation about how naturally we had found that we enjoyed writing some posts more than others, therefore it seemed only logical that we freshened up our post series in the new year.

As bloggers I think it is easy to get yourself stuck in a rut. You get into a habit of writing certain posts on certain days and like most things in life, if you have to much of it, it makes you sick. This is what had happened to us, we felt like we were losing our desire and creative eb and it was starting to reflect in our posts! So how did we conquer it?

Use Analytics

First it was important to do some research and for this we took a look at our analytics. Im not saying what you post depends on your views, but typically you will find that the posts you actually enjoy writing are those that capture your readers attention and naturally attract views. I honestly think your readers can sense the enjoyment you get from writing a post. For me the personal posts are those that I really enjoy writing and I know our readers like them as they often receive the most interaction, whether it be by comments on posts, Facebook, Twitter, even emails. The satisfaction I often get from writing these emails really reflects in my voice and so our readers get the same enjoyment from reading them.

As a general rule neither me or Jess check our post analytics often, I think it is too easy to get bogged down in the numbers and I want to write for the pleasure of writing not views, but that being said it is important to keep an eye on them. As we delved into our analytics we were surprised at what we found! Our DIY’s are something we really enjoy doing here at Bespoke Bride so we were completely shocked to find that the home, beauty and recipe DIY’s didn’t seem to be receiving anywhere near the interest our Wedding DIY’s were. Its obvious when you really think about it, we are a wedding blog so why would you come to us to find a home DIY? Both myself and Jess share a passion for home and living however we realised it was in the wrong place and therefore needed to be rethought. So for now our home and living posts will be on the back burner, but don’t worry we have a job for those later on in the year.

Ask Your Audience

Next we decided to take some advice from others. We are really lucky that we have some great friends that are both in the industry and are avid readers of our blog to speak to about blog related topics. As I mentioned earlier, personal posts are something I really enjoy writing and now and again we have dabbled in writing a more business type post, usually this happens if something has occurred in our own personal experience. Our friends mentioned how much they have enjoyed our business posts however we think there are way more experienced bloggers in this field so we decided to go down a slightly different route with business.

As the launch of The Online Wedding Show gets ever closer, we find we are being introduced to more and more amazing wedding suppliers, each of these an expert in their own right and each an entrepreneur. Four new guest contributors will be making their appearance on our blog for the first time next month and we will be adding a ‘Meet the Entrepreneur‘ section to our blog. This will focus more on starting and running your own business in various fields as well as introducing you to some of the very best independent business owners in the industry.

Set Goals

Last you must set goals! I have so many ideas swimming around in my head all the time that if I didn’t set goals I would be completely overwhelmed and would never get anything done. By setting goals you are able to prioritise what needs to be done and what you will need to do to get there. At the start of this year me and Jess wrote down what our goals were for this year. We had four things we wanted to achieve this year, some goals bigger than others. We sat down and planned each and every single step for each task, writing each step on a post-it note and sticking them in order of a priority on my office wall. Once a step is complete the post-it note is removed from the wall. That in itself is a huge satisfaction and I feel like we are well on our way to achieving many of our goals for our blog already and it’s not even the end of the month yet!

So tell me fellow bloggers have you found yourself stuck in a blogging rut? What have you done to get out of it?

Much Bespoke Love

Emily x