Having just completed my 7th year of blogging, I have learned quite a lot. What started for me as simply a way to both help people and provide insights on a variety of topics, now has become part of my life and my persona. As my website has matured, I have uncovered nuances and patterns along the way, but I always seem to circle back to a few key words or phrases that drive my passion and my content: be helpful, be insightful, be humorous and be consistent. Some of these things I do better than others, but I do believe that it is important to adhere to goals and guidelines to drive your success personally or professionally.
But there is also another critical word that drives my writing passion and that propels me to move my website beyond being “just a blog” to being a business and a lifestyle: continuity. And there are two sides to this one word. There is the side that I’m directly in control of and responsible for and there is the side that is fairly dependent on external forces.
As a parent of 3 girls, I have learned that the 4 phrases I mentioned earlier (helpful, insightful, humorous and consistency) govern much of my parenting. As parents, one of our primary goals is to ensure that our children are prepared to tackle a (hopefully) wonderful world of opportunities in front of them. We do this through education, activities and love. One of the most critical things that my father outlined to me long ago as I embarked on being a parent, was to be consistent. There is nothing harder to understand as a child (or even and adult) than someone or something that is inconsistent. This is very different than change. Change is good when the timing is appropriate and when the opportunity is right. Consistency, however, directly affects confidence and inner strength and you want to adhere to providing your children a leveled playing field when they are developing.
When it comes to writing a blog or producing content in general, consistency plays right along with developing your theme or passion or niche. If you are passionate about writing articles about knitting sweaters for cats, do your best to consistently write about that. Sure, it’s fine to deviate occasionally or expand your subject mater. But remember your audience as well as they are like your children. Don’t throw curve balls unless you are willing to weave it all back into your general content strategy (if you actually have one).
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