7 Exercises to transform your blog from sloppy to savvy

Let me first appreciate you for running a blog. It is not an easy task nowadays.

The web is getting noisier by the minute and you have so much information put out there. People in fact have overwhelming amounts of information on any topic under the sun.

So even if you are running the best blog out there, the chances are you will go unnoticed by anyone.

But there’s good news. When you see a plateau in your earnings, or traffic, or your progress in general, there are certain things you can do to transform your blog.

The transformation is not only a nice thing to your blog and to your readers, but it is an uplifting thing for your business too.

And it is a mandatory thing to do. Here are 7 blogging exercises that will help transform your blog to the next level. By next level, I mean from sloppy to savvy – resulting in guaranteed success!

Let’s get started.

#1 Write everyday

I’ve already harped about this enough. If there’s one thing that you’ll do to improve your blogging skill and writing skill, it is to write everyday.

Writing everyday is just like working out everyday where you tone those muscles and you burn the excess fat.

The region of the brain that is responsible for your writing (let’s call it the writing muscle) is just like any other muscle in your body. The more you train it, the stronger it becomes and its performance increases.

You also become (and feel) fit if your workout everyday.

Similarly if you write everyday you get good at it, and you become more confident (just as you become fit when you exercise).

As a blogger I am sure you already know the importance of creating content. Not just for written content like blog posts, newsletters but also for video based content you need to do a lot of writing.

First, your daily writing practice is going to help you create the amount of content you ought to create as a blogger. That helps to take the stress out of the equation – you will be having the blog posts, the newsletters or the scripts ready on time and don’t have to sweat it out.

Second, you become good at writing over the time. Eventually it gets a lot easier for you to crank out content in a super fast pace. Your typing pace increases. As does your speed to put out your thoughts in the form of words.

That is the most important bit that makes writers slow – translating those ideas to words! By words, I don’t mean pixels on the screen, but words that carry life, emotions and words that actually connect with people and create an impact.

And with regular writing, fast writing becomes a skill which is much needed for a blogger.

Third, the quality of your writing improves dramatically. When you write everyday, you do a lot of writing. And just like anything, even with writing, practice makes it perfect.

Here’s what Jeff Goins says about writing everyday: Why you need to write every day

To start with you can go ahead and register at http://750words.com/ and start writing. Or use Scrivener, set yourself daily word limits and start doing it.

#2 Practice discipline

The second most important thing to transform your blog is to become disciplined.

This has a LOT to do with your blog.

As a blogger your blog needs you. Your audience need you. And if you aren’t disciplined you won’t be able to give your best to your blog and its audience.

For one, not being disciplined kills a lot of time. And time is a highly crucial asset that you don’t want to waste.

It takes discipline to close Facebook and get back to work. It takes discipline to sit down and write everyday.

It takes discipline to ignore the ringing phone while you are working on your client site; or to abandon WhatsApp for a few hours.

You know, all these contribute the transformation of your blog wherein, you can use the time saved and time gained via these disciplined efforts to improve your blog dramatically.

You can also give your blog that undivided attention it needs.

#3 Learn something new everyday

Blogging is not as easy as writing a blog post and publishing it. There are lots of stuff that are associated with blogging beyond writing and hitting publish.

You probably know that by now, right?

You should be using a CMS like WordPress. And if you don’t know the basics of using and maintaining it, you will be in trouble.

You could be using an email autoresponder service like Aweber or GetResponse. If you don’t know how to use it to send emails, or how to put up optin forms, you will be in trouble.

You could be scared to hear the word “SEO”. But if you don’t know anything about it, you will be seriously in trouble.

I am sure you can outsource a lot of these tasks. But my personal opinion is that (and I take this very seriously myself) – you have to have good knowledge about something you outsource, otherwise you can’t review the outcome!

As you go, make sure you learn something new everyday.