My Secret Hack to Blogging Consistently

Shift how you perceive blogging to stay consistent in the long run

Do you struggle to blog consistently? You are not alone. Everyone who writes online gets stuck sometimes, and those who aren’t are liars. There were days I got stuck in front of that white page, and I was not in the mood to write in the first place on other occasions.

But I’ve discovered a cool hack to overcome that and stay consistent with my writing. Since I adopted that hack in my blogging journey, it has kept my curiosity at peak levels, allowing me to publish posts persistently.

My secret hack is particularly relevant to blogging on a website, but it’s also helpful to writing on Medium and other platforms where you build an audience around a niche.

Approach your blog as if it were a puzzle

Raindrops drummed on the window as I scrutinized the pile for the next piece. The hunt became a dance, but a tranquil one, maintaining focus. One piece and another were put together, and curiosity drew my attention to the remaining unexplored rocks corner of the new lake puzzle. I must finish that part before sleep, I pondered.

It’s been a while since I assembled the lake puzzle. However, I vividly remember my curiosity to reveal more of that nature’s beauty.

As I blogged and got stuck too many times, it ultimately hit me — why not use the puzzling experience to boost my blogging motivation?

My secret hack is treating your work like the lake puzzle.

This hack is inspired by the ‘play’ energizer illustrated in the new ‘Feel Good Productivity’ book (Amazon affiliate link) of the successful YouTuber Ali Abdaal. While he relied on video gaming experiences, like adding side quests to our work to make it fun, I got energized by the curiosity to puzzle my content work.

Seize the energy of assembling hundreds of tiny puzzle pieces to reveal a big, astonishing picture.

Perceive each piece of content, each Google query you target in your blog post, as a piece of the puzzle.

You write the post as best you can to help with your readers’ concrete problem, but that piece is only a tiny fraction of the bigger problem.

Instead of being concerned about writing your post, write it as part of a more definitive value you are eager to share with your audience. Keeping that in mind helps you always aspire to the next blog post.

Your curiosity remains high this way, as publishing one or a handful of posts is not enough to reveal the bigger picture.

With that mindset, as you publish more content in your blog, you gradually reveal how you help your readers solve the more significant problem they face or one they aren’t aware of yet need to solve.

It could also be your overall expertise that is further established or the coverage of your topic.

Reveal the bigger picture to become a topical authority

Recent Google updates made the topical expertise ranking factor more pronounced than ever.

In SEO, it’s called “topical authority, “ meaning covering a topic above and beyond so Google and readers see you as the expert. Each cluster of content in your blog is a topic but also embodies a puzzle piece for the overarching topic of your blog.

That means adequately answering the specific query and correctly setting relevant other queries comprising the overall topic are essential. When covering a topic thoroughly, you move on to the following related topic.

Let’s say you write about smartphone photography. You cover the location finding, the required skills, filming and editing apps, equipment review, object photography, and view photography, each of which can be a content cluster. So, assembling all the queries on each topic and ultimately putting them together would make you the expert in helping your readers take incredible photos with their smartphones.

Topical authority is a widespread blogging term, but why not use this ranking factor for motivation?

It’s a tiny mindset tweak that can change everything. See each topic as a puzzle you are curious to cover and observe.

As with an actual puzzle, you see the sample blog picture at the beginning (‘topical map’), but the fun is assembling it yourself by placing all the content pieces in the proper structure.

This made me more eager to complete content clusters in my blog during topical mapping and keyword research and when writing posts.

Moreover, this puzzle hack is relevant everywhere you write to an audience. For example, on Medium, you also write in a niche or focus on several topics you have value to offer.

So, think about covering topics thoroughly so that every story covers a slightly different angle of the topic — not only for your audience but for the fun of seeing your expertise solidified.

Even if you stop at some point (we have to eat and sleep and all that jazz) or lose your train of thought, your curiosity to reveal the bigger picture will motivate you to keep writing what you write and structure new posts afterward.

So, get ahead with your blogging goals by planning and assembling your topic posts.

As with the original game, the more pieces the puzzle comprises, the more patience you need until the big picture is revealed. But the kicker is that the bigger the puzzle, the more satisfying the completion, and the higher the traffic and passive income.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is for educational purposes only and doesn’t substitute professional advice. Results may vary. The link to Ali’s book is an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.

My Secret Hack to Blogging Consistently was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.