Tuesday, May 13, 2008

How Do I Find Time to Blog?

You know, one the main challenges I face with this blog is making the time to post new, valuable content to it. My employer pays me to develop new business opportunities and manage the ongoing marketing efforts for the agency. This is a full time job.

The rise of blogging and social media over the past four years or so have been interesting in that they didn't really replace any of the day to day activities that I'm responsible for. I still need to network, call people, email contacts, research companies, monitor competitors, update and clean databases, maintain the website, prepare newsletters, schedule events, contribute to the agency's internal daily email, manage my relationships with my colleagues and keep abreast of the latest trends and developments in business as a whole, the technology community specifically and the PR industry too.

Now, add in time for blogging, twittering, etc. Yes, that's adding in time. You see, blogging and participating in social networking doesn't really replace any of the above items, it enhances and supports them. Being a credible participant in the social networks I chose to join requires that I create valuable content for others to consume. That takes time and effort...and most importantly, thought. As I've said before, content is king.

But there is a limit to how much content I can create, given all my other responsibilities. I've been posting roughly 7-ish posts a months for over a year now. That's less than twice a week. I've tried to boost my output lately and have gotten good results in terms of traffic. But I've found that blogging more is coming at the expense of other things I have to do. So I've tried to increase my productivity and blog more efficiently: ie, write drafts for several posts, so I have backups ready to go if I can't think of anything interesting to day. But I know I can get better.

Do you have any tips/suggestions for how to blog/comment/twitter more efficiently without it becoming a time suck?

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