I’m probably having two blog posts this week. The next one will be my synopsis of the Blogging While Brown conference I went to over the weekend. This one is about hitting 1,700 posts… a post late. That’s okay though; at least I realized it and now have something new to talk about.

As I did with Post #1,600, I get to mention highlights of the past year as it pertained to my life, positive or negative, and then I get to highlight some of my favorite posts of the year. While that’s always fun, I’m going to begin this one by talking a bit about my present blogging mood.

My mood is kind of “meh” lately. It’s not because I don’t still enjoy the process of blogging. The issue is that real life has been affecting me more than anything else. I’m worried about my mother’s mental health, and it seems to be carrying over into my own health. I’m averaging 2 1/2 hours of sleep a day, which sometimes includes a nap; that’s not great.

It means that my mind is a bit foggy, which I really can’t afford being self employed. It’s also affecting my overall writing, which means my income. Other than this blog and my business blog, I’m not paying much attention to anything else. I’m not even doing as many videos as I usually do, although I did do this one which, though geared towards YouTube, applies to some of the folks who comment here from time to time:

https://youtu.be/pcAzF39wdeQ

Still, I get by, so if you’re worried about me don’t be (like you’d worry lol). After all, within the time it took to write the last 100 posts, I’ve had some intriguing things happen.

I had the anniversaries of both my 14th and 15th year of self employment. I had the 8th anniversary of this blog in December (which I forgot to write about) and the 11th anniversary of my business blog. I wrote my 2nd book on leadership titled Leadership Is/Isn’t Easy. Finally, I was interviewed by podcast on the topic of leadership by Jesan Sorrells, whom I also interviewed on YouTube.

That’s not too shabby, even if I still had bigger plans for myself. I’ll get beyond this brief funk I’m in, hopefully inspired by many of the people I’ve just seen at the conference this past weekend I work best when I have something to compete for. 🙂

This is usually the point where I’d just list all my favorite posts of the year. I’m still going to do that but, because these days people are also hoping you’ll share something of value that they can use, I’m going to write 5 tips that have helped me this past year, things for you to consider:

1. Be consistent

As I mentioned earlier, I wrote at least a post a week on two of my blogs this year, and those have proven to be the most successful. Except for two anniversary dates, I posted the blogs on the same day, this one on Monday, my business blog now on Wednesday, as it used to be Thursday. It’s helped because people get used to looking for a post on a certain day, and that helps keep visitors coming.

2. Promote

I started promoting my blog posts more in 2015. I realized that I wasn’t promoting them enough, as I was only doing it twice at the most. Now with each blog post I promote it twice on the first day, and then at least once the next 4 days (sometimes I’ll skip either Saturday or Sunday) and I stagger the times. An important time was late at night for me because the other side of the world is just waking up so they’ll see it early day where they are.

3. Some automation

I’m not big on a lot of automation, but I finally acquiesced this year and started using first Tweetdeck and now Tweeten to schedule both older posts and my little motivational missives. I realized it not only saved me time and allowed me to concentrate on other work, but I get to select what people are seeing that I’ve previously created, and I’m not hammering the same thing over and over so people can get tired of it (you should see my files lol).

4. Writing ahead

Most of my articles are written at least a couple of days ahead. When I can, I’ll write multiple articles on one day, at least 2 or 3. That helps to cover those times when there are other projects to get to but I still want to get a post out. It’s what helped me write a post a day on my business blog last December. I need to get back to that for my other blogs because it’s really a good idea.

5. Be authentic

A few month ago I fussed about people who write things that not only seem to be carbon copies of what someone else has done but are boring as sin. What I’ve noticed on blogs I visit more than once is that a lot more of my blogging favorites have started to do the same type of thing, and that makes what they’re doing more enjoyable. It kind of touches on the concept of pure blogging that Danny Brown talks about all the time, which he’s absolutely correct on.

There you are; if you can’t do anything with those 5 tips you’re not even trying. lol Enough of that; let me share my favorite posts in the last 100 so you can get on your way. There are more than normal, and this is because last year I started trying to write more comprehensive posts so, in my opinion, the quality went up a bit from what I was writing previously. Of course this is my belief; hopefully you’ll agree with some of these. 😉

9 Relationships Between Blogging And Social Media

The Stuff You Haven’t Been Told About How To Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

5 Things You Should Do Before Commenting On A Blog

Why I Hate Auto DM’s And First Contact DM’s

6 Answers To Questions From New Bloggers

The Ethics Of Social Media

7 Definite Rules Of Marketing Online And Offline

10 Ways To Find Inspiration To Write About In Your Niche

9 Social Media Mistakes People Make

9 Reasons You Need To Keep On Writing

Someone’s Still Going To Hate You So Do Your Thing

The Proliferation Of “Fake” On Social Media

The Case Against DM’s On Twitter As A First Contact

Controversy, Publicity And Social Media

Try Something Different, Say Something Different On Your Blog

Popups Ruin A Blog Readers Experience

Misleading Titles, Disappointing Blog Content

31 Big Mistakes People Make Blogging And In Social Media

The Spam In Our Blogging Lives

What Muhammad Ali Meant To Me And The Social Media Lessons We Can Learn From Him

The Syracuse Orange & 5 Lessons To Learn About Social Media

How Are You? Life And Blogging

What Muhammad Ali Meant To Me And The Social Media Lessons We Can Learn From Him