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Writer’s block. It’s a nightmare, I know. There are few things worse for a blogger then sitting down and being completely uninspired to write because of a lack of ideas.
But, just because you have writer’s block, it doesn’t mean that you can’t work on your blog. Here, I’ll give you 6 hacks for working on your blog to ensure that you’re being productive, even with writer’s block. I’ve also included some tips for ways to avoid writer’s block in the first place.
Did you know that having alt tags associated with your blog’s images is a great way to improve SEO?
On your WordPress dashboard, go to ‘Media’ and select your images. Click through your images and add alt tags to those with alt tags missing.
Alt tags should describe what is in the picture. The purpose of the alt tag is to provide a description for someone who cannot see the image. For example, if they are using a reading device for the internet because they are partially sighted. The alt tag explains what is in the picture.
In order to be relevant to your blog post, you should try and include key words from the relevant blog post in your alt tags. However, don’t keyword stuff. The description needs to be concise, but still make sense to anyone who needs to use the alt tags.
Clear out your unattached images
Have you ever uploaded images to your blog, only to then not use them? Yup, me too!
There’s nothing wrong with this; we all change our minds. But, images being stored on your site which aren’t being used can slow your site down.
An easy way to check if you’ve got unused images in WordPress, is to locate your ‘Media’ folder, click ‘Unattached images’ from the drop down list. You can then delete any unattached images that you don’t want anymore.
It’s a simple activity which could really contribute to your site speed!
Revise old blog posts
There is nothing wrong with revising old blog posts! It’s a healthy way to see how far your writing style and technique has come! Plus, it’s great to review old posts to ensure that the information you’re providing is up-to-date. It could even be something as simple as adding in internal links to posts you’ve since written which link with your older posts.
I’m not saying that you have to revise every single blog post you’ve ever written, but even revising a couple could just give you the inspiration you need to write a new post. Plus, you’ll have up-to-date information on your old posts for your readers. Win-win!
Research affiliate links
If you’re into monetising your blog, take this time to look further into affiliate links. Have you just purchased or installed a new plugin which you think others will like? Find out if they have an affiliate programme you can join and use on your site.
Or have a check on the affiliates you already have. Are they running a promotion or a sale which you could update your readers about, or even write a blog post about?
Have you been meaning to set up Google Adsense and just not got round to it yet? Now’s the time!
Take the time when you aren’t inspired to write to be creative in other ways. Hit up Canva and create some new pins or other images for social media. Use a scheduling app such as Tailwind to schedule your pins to Pinterest to increase the traffic to your blog.
Not such a fan of creating Pinterest images from scratch? Tailwind have this fantastic new feature called Tailwind Create, where with a few clicks of a mouse you can have countless Pinterest pins created for you. You just need to select a colour palate and you’re good to go!
Work on your SEO
The phrase ‘SEO’ can put the fear of God into new bloggers. But SEO doesn’t need to be difficult, especially not the basics.
Check out my blog posts below to help you improve your SEO whilst you’ve got a lack of inspiration to write and see the impact it has on your site’s traffic!
Research site speed and choose a way to improve yours
Site speed can be a real deal breaker for getting people to read your blog posts. For example, did you know that statistically, if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 40% of potential readers will click off your site. That’s a crazy amount. Especially when you’re first starting out and every click and reader really does count!
You can check your site speed using a variety of websites including:
Each one of these tools will give you a score for your website and a list of tips for improving your site speed. Everyone has a personal favourite site speed tool. My personal favourite is Pingdom, but this is just because of their layout.
Some of the solutions given by these sites are easier to fix than others. But the important thing is gauging where you are roughly with your site speed and then creating an action plan for improvement using their recommendations.
Check out my posts below for top tips for improving your site speed.
Step away and do something else
Sometimes when you have writer’s block, you’re just so uninspired that you just have to go and do something else. There’s nothing wrong with this. Quite often, my best blog post ideas come to me when I’ve shut my laptop down and I’ve gone and started doing something completely different.
Other things you can do when battling writer’s block include:
- Going for a walk
- Baking
- Having a cup of tea in front of the tv
- Sitting outside
- Reading a book
- Doing something for another hobby
Ways to avoid writer’s block
Before writer’s block sets in (or before it sets in again), let’s consider how we can prevent it from happening in the first place.
One of my top tips for avoiding writer’s block is to keep a list of blog post ideas which you can dive into when you have no idea what to write about.
Generally, I tend to write about whatever comes into my head on a given day and schedule my post to keep to my blogging schedule. However, I also have a spreadsheet of approximately 26 ideas of potential blog posts at any one time. As I post every week, this means that at any given time, I should have around 6 months’ worth of blog post ideas to choose from.
How do I build this list? Quite simply, I keep an eye on blogging forums. As this is a blog to help people new to blogging and to WordPress, I keep an eye out for questions that new bloggers put on the blogging Facebook groups I’m part of. This list of questions then becomes a list of potential blog post ideas for the future. Nifty trick, right?
You can do similar; keep an eye out for the top questions people ask in your niche and have a spreadsheet or list where you can pop down these questions and ideas for your future posts.
How do you prevent writer’s block from occurring? What do you do when it does strike? Let me know your top tips for writer’s block in the comments below!
This post was proofread using Grammarly.
