Social Networking is a wonderful thing and sites that offer valuable connections for bloggers, such as BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog, are very popular among bloggers. It is a wonderful way to make friends, interact with your visitors, create and join neighborhoods and groups. New bloggers are strongly advised to join as members on those sites, and indeed, most eventually do.
What a beginner blogger has to realize is that social networking is addictive and time consuming. It is fairly easy to get caught in the routine of adding new friends, searching for friends on your friends’ friends profiles (notice the depth of digging) and visiting as many sites as you can to get noticed and maybe added as a friend.
This creates a deficit of time, especially for those having a day-job, wife, kids, and eventually, the quality and quantity of the blogger’s writing gets affected.
I usually spend 4 hours a day on blogging, and it takes me approximately 2 hours to write an article, including research and tea brakes. After joining BlogCatalog, 3.5 hours a day were spent on socializing. Several days of this and I slapped myself hard across the face (our cat almost soiled his pants). I didn’t have time left for quality writing.
The solution for this is simple – plan your blogging routine.
Decide how much time would you like to spend on the following activities:
Scanning your favorite blogs and RSS feeds for new posts, and getting up to date with latest news
Commenting on your favorite blogs
Participating in forums of your choice
Socializing
Writing your article(s)
Planning your routine like this will be beneficial on several different levels:
You will become more efficient with your time
You will not be caught in blog-hopping
Your writing will become something that has to be done. You wouldn’t be able to make excuses for not writing that day
And, this will set you up to know you have only 30 minutes for socializing, for example.
This is when you start to learn how to make the most of it. A fascinating study, but this is a different article.
- Alex
Technorati Tags: social networking, blogcatalog, mybloglog, friends, community, time deficit, hopping, commenting, scanning
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Good advice. As a newbie to blogging, I am caught in the same trap you warn about. Thanks for being my Blogger MD today, because I sure did need a prescription for the hemmroids I am getting from sitting in the computer chair.
Theresa’s last blog post..STINKY SPRAY & TOILET PAPER
Thanks Theresa. Here’s your prescription:
2 hour computer shutdowns x 2 times per day, for a month.
Thank will do the trick.
thanks for posting this up for me to read, Alex.
I think I know what you’re trying to tell me now. I somehow got sucked into the social networking sites and without realizing it, wasting my time away from actually doing what i gotta do.
Consciously I’m thinking that going into the social networking sites is actually what I need to be doing in order to gain more traffic and put my blog out there more than how it is now. but yet I’m spending more time on socializing and digging when I can be spending more time working on the quality of my articles and projects.
I think i should work this out more with my schedules. one of the reasons why im always on late IS because of the wife and kids. During the day they take up most of my time, especially since my two sons is determined to make me do everything with them! Time management is hard on folks like us, but if we’re determined then we should be able to work something out.
You’re posts and comments are always helpful, Alex. I appreciate your advices and I really mean that, and not just a commentator or fellow blogger on the Internet, but as an actual human emotion that I’m expressing =]
Pheak Tol’s last blog post..MyBlogLog – Know What Makes Your Readers Click
Glad to help!