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How to Avoid Blogger Burnout
If you follow the mom blogging community carefully you will probably deduce that the stakes are high and the competition is fierce to become one of the best mom bloggers on the Net. In large part you would be correct in your assessment. Moms are working around the clock to become notables in our blogging niche. To achieve “blog fame” it takes a lot of hard work, commitment, and dedication. But, as moms we also have a ton of other responsibilities on our plate that render blogging “24/7” a virtual impossibility. Many of us start with the intention of posting every day and connecting like mad women on social networks, but it most often leads to burnout. Here are three ways to avoid it.
Be Honest With Your Readers: Honesty goes a long way with readers, especially with fellow moms who understand that as a mom yourself you cannot be expected to keep updated content on your blog each and every day. Let your readers know up front that you enjoy your blog and making connecting across the blogosphere, but that your blog doesn’t define who you are and you are certainly not chained to it. That way, you have the freedom to post excellent entries as opposed to mediocre ones at your leisure and you do not have the added burden of updating your posts every single day.
Set Your Schedule: Determine the days you will blog, whether it’s Monday-Friday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Tuesday and Thursday or once a week for that matter; it’s entirely up to you, but I do not recommend posting seven days a week. Look at some of the most popular mom bloggers like Dooce and Amalah. They are great bloggers, but they don’t post each and every day.
I recommend posting on a set schedule and combining your blogging with Twitter. That way, on the days you are not posting, your avid readers can still read about what’s going on in your life.
Be Realistic: I don’t know what your personal goals are with blogging, but nothing should stand in the way of your sanity. When you feel as though you cannot handle blogging any longer, take a brief hiatus to refuel and breathe again.
Blogging, especially if you aspire to become an A-List blogger, can become dangerously addictive and can alter how well you care for yourself. Make sure you back away from the computer, your laptop, or your PDA for long stretches of each day and focus on really taking care of you so that you will be the best mom you can be as well as an awesome blogger.
Where Mom Blogging is Headed
Sidebar Note
By Jennifer James
The future is bright for many mom bloggers. Those among us who can maintain exceptional writing habits, post consistency, and have mastered the fine art of networking will see many new opportunities in the near future. In the next few years I foresee mom and even some dad bloggers see their popularity soar even higher than it is currently.
Mom Smarts
The first thing that will begin changing is, as a group, we will become a lot more savvy about the business end of blogger and brand relationships. Mom bloggers will collectively understand their worth and see the big picture about how valuable our community is to brands because just like an exec at a Fortune 100 company told a group of us recently: Brands cannot connect with moms the way bloggers can. In other words, they need us!
Blog Sponsorships
I believe brands will begin sponsoring individual mom blogs cutting out the need for ad networks. For moms, the financial rewards will be lucrative enough to cease running ads from ad networks and the need to sell their own ads will be nonexistent. For example, a brand could sponsor a blog for six months or an entire year and essentially take over the ad presence on that blog for the duration of their contract. That will free up sidebar space for bloggers to use creatively and brands can align themselves with influencers on the bloggers’ turf. I also believe this won’t be on a small scale. I can conceivably see 20-30 blogs solely sponsored by one brand where the synergy between the brand and the bloggers makes the partnerships a great fit.
I used my review blog as an example below of how this could potentially look. It’s official: Brands need to align themselves with bloggers and this can come in the form of official sponsorships of blogs because, you guessed it, traditional banner ads DON’T WORK! Bloggers can run custom content, giveaways, and even non-traditional ads from the sponsoring brands.
Rise of the Third Party
As brand/blogger relationships grow I also see more mom bloggers needing agents to act on their behalf to negotiate contracts for spokesperson and brand ambassador opportunities.
Community Fix
I believe many more bloggers will begin creating their own communities. Dooce and the Pioneer Woman have already paved the way with this trend and other mom bloggers will follow suit. Using white label forums and social networking platforms and plug-ins mom bloggers will create their own communities that will elevate them from individual bloggers to niche Web neighborhoods. This will bolster the aforementioned sponsorship idea, but the communities will need to be owned by the moms in order for sponsor logos and branding to be placed on them. In other words, Facebook fan pages won’t work.
Campaign Consultants
As brands seek to effectively reach savvy digital moms online, they will need to work with mom bloggers while they create campaigns to ensure they don’t blow up in smoke once they hit the Net or the airwaves. Instead of calling moms in to give advice once a campaign has been trashed by influencers, moms will be called in to consult on campaigns in the ideas and planning phases instead of after the tweets hit the fan, so to speak.
I also believe the fashion and cosmetics industries will begin to reach out to mom bloggers far more than they are now.
Only time will tell whether any of these predictions will come to pass. I do strongly believe at least two will definitely transpire in the next few years. Once the economy rebounds and budgets stabilize — watch out! More than anything, I hope more moms will become hip to how very influential they are.
Comments
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(Posted on 2010-05-15 18:25:00 by )
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My blog has not been touched by a brand. That is my goal. How? How? How? and without an ad network - that would be awesome!!
(Posted on 2010-05-13 13:53:00 by ) -
Great article! I'm a new mom blogger, and I'm just navigating the waters. Good inspiration!
(Posted on 2010-04-14 20:23:00 by ) -
Hi Michelle -- Thank you for your comment. The days of fully authentic blogging is over, unfortunately. I don't know one blogger who hasn't been touched by a brand in some way. I've thought long and hard about it and none come to mind.
I have been blogging since 2004, so I have seen the mom blogging community evolve into what it is today. Certainly there is room for everyone and if a blogger chooses not to mingle with brands, that's fine. My article touches on the many ways that bloggers who are interested in working with brands, have a greater opportunity to do so.
(Posted on 2010-03-30 12:46:00 by ) -
So basically, what you're saying is that the future of Mommy blogging is business. business. business. And big business at that. And while that's good for most, if that's what they're looking for, I think I am going to be amongst the minority voice of dissention and wish for simpler days when blogging was more about sharing your life and experiences than building your blog business. While I do run advertisers, I am wary of the idea of the brought to you by so and so blogging. To me, too many sponsors warps or skews the authenticity of a blog.
(Posted on 2010-03-26 06:32:00 by ) -
AMEN! We completely agree. We are not with an ad network and work out integrated sponsorships directly with companies.
Fantastic new site Jennifer!
(Posted on 2010-03-17 06:28:00 by ) -
Wonderful insight regarding the direction of mom blogging. As a former marketing/ad executive, I am fully aware of the dramatic shift that our industry has taken. More and more top companies are relying on mom bloggers to drive and influence their brands. Your traditional billboards and magazine ads aren't working. Most even pulled out of the Superbowl to pursue social media and other forms of digital advertising. For this very reason and many more, mom bloggers need to realize their worth and not be taken advantage of.
Wonderful article, Jennifer! Can't wait to read more.
*Kela*
(Posted on 2010-03-15 23:45:00 by ) -
Jennifer, you are brillieant as always, and of course ahead of your time. I love the idea of blog sponsorships.
(Posted on 2010-03-15 21:45:00 by ) -
I kinda like the idea of going ad-free and just having one sponsor. I think it would make my blog look prettier, too. I'm not sure what I think about communities yet- I like my community of Twitter and my readers' comments on my blog. That just works best for me right now (I don't have a FB fan page and don't plan to create one!)
Steph
(Posted on 2010-03-15 21:13:00 by )
Jennifer James is the founder of the Mom Bloggers Club and founding editor of Mom
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Jennifer- I know nothing about your past business experiences, but all I know is that YOU ARE A MASTER. Great article and although I am more inspired by the romantic notion of being recognized as a talented writer and journalist, a little lucrative business opp coming out of the whole thing would not be a bad thing! I see how massive your site is becoming. and growing exponentially. Girl, you must need another pair of hands. I offer my writing services to you and would be honored to help you in any way in this endeavor. ;)
Sincerely,
Darah Zeledon