Are you a blogger and feeling the pressure to take part in Blogtober? (ie publishing a blog post every day for the month of October.) Well worry no more; I have five good reasons why you shouldn’t do it!
- You don’t have the time. No seriously, you probably don’t. Unless you’re my friend Kathryn, who, in the space of twenty minutes at our village writers’ group, can write a well written, fully plotted short story of about two thousand words; or you’re that girl who put her hand up for seven extra sheets of paper during her GCSE English exam, really think about how long it takes you to write a blog post. Particularly if this isn’t your full-time gig and you’re also doing a ‘proper’ job and/or looking after a family. Unless you’ve been planning Blogtober for a while and have a stash of posts ready to go in advance; when exactly are you going to do all this extra work?…..
2. Are you willing for the quality of your blog to drop? Ok, so I don’t want to make unfair disparaging assumptions here – you may be able to churn out blog posts of equal quality to your usual standard of writing, but I know I still have a couple of those ‘filler’ posts sitting in my Drafts folder leftover from Blogtober last year, while I wonder whether I should publish them or not. Don’t forget readers and brands probably don’t know about Blogtober and if they are visiting your blog for the first time, they will judge you on your most recent two or three posts and decide from them whether they want to follow you or work with you. So really, regardless of the month (and a lot of people don’t bother looking at the published date anyway), you really should keep that standard up as much as possible. (If you’re someone like Kathryn though, then I know this won’t be a problem!)
3. The Great British weather. Unless you live in the south-east corner of England (and even then it’s not been brilliant), you’ve probably been looking out of your window at, at best, drizzle and fog; and at worst gales and hale for the last couple of months. The forecast at the moment looks like this isn’t set to change. How then, if you’re a fashion or out-doorsy blogger, are you supposed to be able to get your photographs taken for every single day of October? Particularly as the nights are drawing in sooner and sooner each day and daylight photography hours are limited. Waiting for a glimpse of clear skies and rushing outside to take a month’s worth of photos as quickly as possible is very stressful indeed!
4. Your social and social media life is likely to suffer. This goes back to point number one really and depends on how much spare time you have. Even if you do agree to stay for drinks after work, you’ll probably spend the whole time wondering how late to bed you’ll be once that day’s blog post has been written, edited, photos added, links added, engaging title thought of, tags written, SEO checked, and then finally published and promoted on all your social media platforms. Which brings me nicely to the second part of this point: Even though they probably won’t be, and assuming that you actually manage to keep on top of telling your followers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook about your posts, you’ll be worried you’re annoying them by telling them every single day about the blog you’ve written. It’s unlikely you’ll have the time to enjoy your social media, let along look at or engage with anyone you actually follow!
5. You’re far too busy planning your YouTube videos for Vlogmas anyway! Bring it on!
These are only excuses if you don’t really want to do Blogtober – but if you are taking on the challenge, then I wish you all the best. Please leave your blog links in the comments because I’d love to have a read. (Because I will have the time! Haha!) 😉
PS. If you enjoyed reading this post, a share with your friends is always appreciated. 🙂
