Are you afraid to start a blog? A couple of people I know have expressed that they have some blogging fears when it comes to both starting and maintaining a blog – which is completely normal! Many bloggers have worries and there’s always ways to overcome the fear of blogging. Here’s some of the main fears I’ve seen people have (and I’ve had myself) and how you can put things into action to get over them.
Idea Generation
A big fear when you first start blogging is around having too many or too little ideas for blog content. Both are completely rational as ideation as a whole can be worrying for anyone.
Being worried that you have too many ideas for blog content is GOOD – if you manage it correctly. Make sure you take down notes in a place that you’ll go back to, like some phone apps. Or if you’re more traditional, carry a notebook with you for all your amazing content plans. This method also helps if you’re worried of having not enough ideas. Ideas can appear at all times of the day, and so writing down ideas as soon as you have them means you won’t lose the ones you do have.
Creating an editorial calendar can also be a helpful tool for idea generation because it allows you to plan out your ideas. It also helps you to commit to creating your content. Another issue with too many ideas is that you have them but can’t be bothered to actually write them all. With a calendar you can plan out your content and convince yourself to actually write.
Being Yourself
Sometimes it can be scary to completely be yourself instead of shaping yourself to be similar to other popular bloggers when starting out. Whether it’s fear from a lack of confidence or self-esteem, blogging can actually help you improve these aspects of your self over time.
Sometimes pushing yourself outside your comfort zone can be hard. But if you make sure you keep your tone of voice your own, and you write about content you actually enjoy it helps.
Does Anyone Care?
One fear is questioning whether anyone will care about your content. The internet is full of content and what actually makes yours any different? Why would they come and read your blog instead? So many questions go though mine and other bloggers heads about this exact thing.
Finding your community online (or even offline!) and the people who will care about your content can be complicated. But, if you find the right group you’ll know that there’s a group of people who do care about your content, and enjoy what you have to say. After that there’s also people who may not interact but are reading your blog – which is something you should feel proud of.
Not Good Enough
Is your content good enough? is something I ask after every post. But if you’re going to constantly seek perfection in every post you’ll end up never posting. Practice makes perfect is something you have to think about when blogging – you won’t be the best for your first, your first 10 or even your first 100 posts. But you’ll slowly learn to develop your writing, your photos, your everything in order to become better.
I’m Not Successful
Comparing yourself to other bloggers can often give you the fear that you blog isn’t as successful as it should be. But this is all about your internal thought process for how you measure your success and the value you attribute to that success.
Numbers don’t mean everything and so attributing your success to the awful views number can drive you crazy. Views are always fluctuating too – so just because you had less views this week than less does not mean you’re failing. So when you’re attaching your value to arbitary statistics, take a step back and ask yourself “So What?”.
Whilst this isn’t a comprehensive list of all fears – I think they contain most of the worries from the start of blogging and some steps to help.
Let me know what your blogging fears are or were and how you’ve gotten over them?