Blogging is a piece of cake when mountains of new products are flooding to your doorstep on a weekly basis. But for us average folk, there isn’t a constant intake of new products to talk about, making it sometimes difficult to find topics to blog on. I for one go through product droughts like no body’s business where I have to rely on creativity to keep the blog content flowing. It’s time I drop some blog knowledge on you if you can’t scrounge up new products to talk about.
- When in doubt, lifestyle posts are always a great way to flesh out your content. Write about what you’ve been enjoying lately, your favorite shows, or how you spend your Saturdays. Life is constantly changing and there will always be something going on in your life you can blog about.
- Collection posts make it easy to take products you’ve already talked about and showcase them in different ways. Share your blush collection, favorite pink makeup products, or favorite historical fiction books. Whatever you blog about, you can always do collection posts in different categories to rearrange products in new way.
- Share your expertise and write a few “how to” posts. Maybe you’re great a photography for blogging or are wicked good at keeping to a schedule. Or maybe you’re good at something completely non-blogging related. Share those experiences with your readers.
- Don’t be afraid to talk off blog topic. Nothing frustrates me more than when blogging friends say they have nothing to write about because they feel like they have to stick to what they’re blog is about. Just because your blog is about books doesn’t mean you can’t talk about other things. Books extend beyond just tangible things to include a whole variety of similar, but different things. Plus no reader wants to hear 24/7 about one topic over and over again. Variety can not only help you figure out what to write about, but it could increase your reader engagement too.
- Start taking photographs of random items together and you’re sure to come up with some ideas off of photographs. I tend to come up with a post and then take the photo for it, but if I’m ever struggling, I just take whatever photos inspire me and see what comes from it. Maybe two blushes look great in a photo together and suddenly you have a brilliant idea to write a post about blush combos. You never know what’ll come from putting your usually blogging process on its head.
Blogging on a budget or no budget at all can seem like a daunting task when other blogs are featuring the newest items, but there are still tons of ways to keep blogging without having to buy new stuff. Leave any of your tips or suggestions in the comments so we can keep the discussion going!
Yours till the blog posts,
Kayla
Today marks the second anniversary of starting Oh, Hello Stationery Co. I owe this company so much that I felt the urge to reflect on how much it has taught me in the past two years.
I’ve learned a lot about myself while running this business with my now husband. I’ve never been more passionate than I am when it comes to running this small business. I’m also surprised at how protective I am to keep it a small business even though it has the potential to grow larger and more profitable. I find myself happy with where we are and not too eager to trek into uncharted territories on the hopes of an expansion I don’t really want.
I’ve also become aware how terrible I am at leading. I find delegation hard, and asking for help even harder. I’m a lone ranger when it comes to a lot of things in my life, but I’ve had to learn how to let other people (and their ideas) in to make sure this business survives. It’s a daily struggle not to clutch on to Oh, Hello with dear life, keeping it away from others out of fear they’ll change it. Collaboration is what creating Oh, Hello, and it’s how it’ll be successful in the future.
It’s also just as obvious today as it was the first day I started Oh, Hello, that being self-employed is terrifying. Every day I worry about maintaining a lifestyle I’ve grown to cherish and crave. If sales drop it becomes a panic about whether or not Oh, Hello will fail. I’ve never had such a looming fear of failure like I do with Oh, Hello. Alex and I have risked so much to work on this business full-time and even though we’ve rounded two years, we’re still an incredibly young business.
These two years have taught me I don’t want to do anything else. I want to make stickers, videos, and blog posts for the rest of my days. I’ve never been happier than I am right now, so here’s hoping for many more years just like this one.
Yours till the post cards,
Kayla
My blog’s layout isn’t the only thing to get a switch up this past month. I’ve been keeping a tangible blog content schedule for as long as I have been blogging, but it felt time to change. I’ve been using Google Calendar to plan on content on this blog and my YouTube channel for a few weeks now and I’m definitely loving the switch.
So why did I change from my
previous method? I found myself switching around posts a lot more than usual and it creating a snag in my old system. Sure I wrote everything on stickers so I could switch things around, but there was just
so much content changing that I ended up wasting lots and lots of stickers. I wanted something that could adapt and update quickly without feeling bad when I needed to move something around.
I also found myself not always having my content calendar with me. I haven’t been carrying around my Erin Condren Life Planner too much so the content calendar also has been staying home. That made it difficult when I had a new post idea to keep track of where I wrote it down. Now that it’s on Google Calendar I can access it anywhere and create an event for any new post idea I might have.
Trust me, it does feel weird to turn my back on a tangible calendar for content scheduling since I’m such a strong advocate for in-the-flesh planners, but you have to find what works for you no matter what the format or combination is. For me I still love being able to write daily to do lists down and keep track of my day to day events on paper, but my content calendar seems much happier in the digital realm.
Have you switched up how you’ve been planning lately?
Yours till the alarm clocks,
Kayla
It’s definitely not how to throw a good party, either. Now that the wedding is a solid week behind me it feels like I’m finally out of the whirlwind and can reflect on the whole crazy experience. There’s one big thing I took away from the planning process besides the fact that the wedding guests are really the worst part of the wedding. Let me drop some knowledge on you.
If you make the wedding a celebration of the two of you, it’ll be a huge success. At some point in the planning process I stopped carrying about making it the perfect event. I just wanted to have people I enjoyed around me as I started the rest of my life with my favorite person. Everything about the wedding turned to be about Alex and I. It wasn’t about the type of cake or how smoothly one event transitioned to another. We wanted everyone to be a witness to our love. And the day couldn’t have been more magical.
I remember crying half a dozen times during my wedding day out of sheer happiness. There were many things that went wrong that day from most of my bouquet being dead to the ring bearer refusing to go down the aisle. Yet people still tell me it was one of the mos amazing weddings they’ve ever attended. To me it was the perfect little fairy tale. All because I stopped stressing about the failed chocolate-dipped pretzel party favors and focused on my love for Alex.
It seems like a no-brainer, but there’s nothing like a laundry list of things to do all the while people keep trying to add randoms to the guest list to distract from the real point of the wedding. No matter what, if you focus on the love between two people, the rest really doesn’t matter in the end.
Yours till the garter toss,
Kayla
If you’re rocking a packed schedule, it may seem like a daunting task to take a few minutes to sit down and plan, let alone decorate your planner. But taking the time to figure out what’s going on can really help ease the workload stress and make you more productive in the long run.
- Plan ahead. As soon as you know of an upcoming event or date, put it on a sticky note in your planner. That way you already have the time blocked off so you won’t overbook yourself. Plus putting it on a sticky note means that if the plans change, you won’t have to cross anything off and clutter up your planner.
- Schedule in time to plan so that you make sure you do it. A busy schedule deserves some attention to sort everything out. That way you can start every day with a clear understanding of what you need to accomplish without missing or forgetting anything.
- Create daily to do lists, but create them for every day of the week ahead of time. Sunday night create a list for each day of the week and start delegating tasks to certain days. That way you won’t try to sprint through everything on Monday and burn yourself out by Wednesday. There will be clear daily tasks and things will seem a lot more manageable.
- Develop a system that works for you so when things get really hectic, there’s almost no thought needed for the planning process. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, something as simple as color-coding will do.
- Don’t compare your planning style to other people. You’ll stress yourself out more and find yourself spending way too much time envious of other peoples’ spreads rather than focusing on your mountain of work. Planning at the end of the day is a personal experience, not a competition.
- Be willing to change things up if something isn’t working anymore. A planner layout that worked for you last year may not work for what you’re doing this year. Understand that planning styles change depending on what’s going on in your life. Be open to trying something new to ultimately make things easier.
Above all, don’t think you’re too busy to plan. Planning will be your saving grace when things get hectic so don’t write it off at the first sign of trouble.
Yours till the week ends,
Kayla
