Blogging: such hard work

Blog inertia is a real problem for a lot of people. You start writing and updating on a regular basis, but even though you understand the importance and benefits of the practice for your music business, sooner or later you just kind of run out of stuff to talk about.

But it can actually be a breeze, rather than a dreaded chore - if you just take a few minutes to develop a bit of a strategy for those down times when the inspiration seems to be in short supply, it can be something you can do easily, quickly, and at times when you just don’t feel like it.

There’s a simple solution, and it’s one that I’ve recently implemented myself.

Have a list of topics on hand that you are likely to have things to say about. You can write about whatever you want when you’re inspired - but when you run dry, you’ve got a stock of prompts on hand that you can fall back on whenever you need to.

Like jazz for blogs
I’ve worked with a lot of jazz musicians, and they tell me that improvisation can be tough. Coming up with new, fresh ideas on the spur of the moment can be a slog. Even if you’re moved and inspired by the players and the tune you’re stretching out on, you’re going to need something up your sleeve to play when you come up blank.

So they have a stock of phrases and a vocabulary that they know they can reliably play over a certain chord progression. It’s not wrong or lazy - it’s just good strategy. It’s a good base from which they can leap into flights of imagination.

Do the same with your blog. I’ve solved the problem for myself by having a bunch of questions that I keep getting asked about online music (and I have a list of categories that I can pontificate about if even that strikes me as uninspiring) - but you might have a stock of things that you tend to return to.

Here are some suggestions by way of example:

For a band:
- War stories from the rehearsal room
- Instruments (favourite guitar, drum tuning, worst keyboard ever…)
- An album we love
- What we’re planning to do next
- When we were just starting out…
- Down our street today…

For a label:
- What Artist X has been up to this week
- Something funny happened in the office
- We all went out and saw an amazing gig
- One of the best things about working at our label
- Right outside our record label today…

And so on. You get the idea.

Come up with a list of categories of blog post, so that when you come up dry, there’s something to talk about. I’m guessing you’re never going to be short of something to say if you’re passionate about music - you just need the prompts.

Remember: not every blog post needs to be promotional. In fact, it’s way better and more effective if those ones are in the minority. This is the long game.