7 Tips for Starting a New Blog

This post was originally published on my old blog, Ellipsis, over 3 years ago. I've learned a lot since then, so I've adapted the post to fit the current blogging climate. 

When I started my blog, I really didn't have any advice to turn to. I started blogging because I wanted to be just like Gala Darling (cringe!) but I've definitely grown since then. I see a lot of talk about advice for new bloggers. Here are my simple, 7 tips after blogging for almost 10 years. 

1. Start with clean, simple design. 

No matter what platform you use (Blogger, Wordpress, etc.) pick a theme that is clean & simple. I see a lot of "cluttered" looking blogs -- huge headers, double sidebars, crowded sidebars... it's incredibly overwhelming for readers! I'm a firm believer in less is more & I personally like designs that have one sidebar with a clean, organized look -- not too many icons, no random text, etc. Beyond that, remember to pick a readable font for your body text! The other day I went to a new blog that used cursive as the body font, that was near impossible to read. 

2. You don't need a fancy camera. 

I love my Canon Rebel t2i, but honestly, I don't use it as much as I used to! Most of the time, I use my iPhone to take photos or I use stock photos from websites like PicJumbo and Unsplash. If I'm writing a review post, I'll use my Canon to take those -- but an iPhone or point-and-shoot camera takes photos that are just as good. Remember, you don't need perfect photos -- just photos that clearly demonstrate what you're trying to show! 

3. Content is king. 

Your content matters -- from formatting to what you're actually writing, your content is the most important piece of your blog. The other day, I clicked to a blog that has 1000+ followers & had received a box of samples from Benefit -- really! -- and the first paragraph of that blog post? About 30 lines of text with not a single period. It was so stream of consciousness and it read horribly. Content matters. The amount that businesses pour into content marketing makes that very clear: write good posts and you will reap the benefits. 

4. Pick 2-3 social media platforms & use them to their advantage. 

Most of my traffic comes from Twitter and Pinterest. I also get a lot of traffic from Google+, which I don't even really use! Lots of people try to use every social media network, but that's not really necessary. Pick the ones you like best & work them! Post consistently, post intelligently, and post your links! (And if you decide to use Twitter, participate in chats whenever you possible can! I like #lbloggers, #fblchat, and #blogtrends the best!) 

5. Network. 

The blogging community is just that--a community. My blog is primarily read by other bloggers. If I find a blogger doesn't interact with the community, I'm much less likely to read their blog! It's totally fine to be busy, but replying to people on Twitter, asking questions, participating in chats, joining communities... it'll help you go further in the long run. 

6. For Love, Not Money. 

Ok, I have something to tell you: the blogging bubble has burst. There are just too many bloggers. It is certainly possible to have a creative career, but blogging will only be one part of that. To be truly successful, you have to have multiple streams of income if you are an entrepreneur: you can't rely on just a blog or just an etsy shop. You have to establish multiple ways to be successful & work hard at all of those things. Have passions, hobbies, and a career outside of blogging. It will all fall into place someday! Don't blog to get rich -- you'll only end up disappointed! 

7. Be yourself. 

This is something I cannot stress enough. I see so many blogs that are just carbon copies of each other. You don't have to have the perfect, pin-worthy home, an expensive camera, or new everything all the time to be successful. You just have to be yourself. When you blog in a way that is genuine to who you are, you will be successful. 

The Benefits of Being Treated Like an Adult At Work

This post originally appeared on my old lifestyle blog, Ellipsis, over 2 years ago. This is a minor rewrite. If you'd like to see the original, click here. 

Sometimes, I feel like I've tricked people into thinking I'm an adult. The amount of responsibility--for other people's companies, for their public images--I'm handed every day is kind of astounding, despite the fact that I feel like I should still be answering to someone. And yet, sometimes--when there are dishes in the sink, or the stairs need vacuuming, or I've run out of clean socks--I find myself wishing I could opt out, have someone else be the grown up and take care of that. 

I'm a little obsessed by age--acting my age, acting like a grown up, acting like a kid. There are times where I feel like I really shouldn't be 27--I feel about 14 or 15, tops. And I'm not the only millennial that feels that way. Even though I have a child now, I still often feel like I'm not the adult in any given situation. I look to other adults to help me out, more often than not. 

I recently read an article about the benefits of treating employees like, well, adults. The United States in particular has fallen into the trap of treating employees like students and/or children: dress codes, strict times to show up and leave, strong rules of how to do things, specific procedures, and limited creative freedom. Boooooring. Isn't that supposed to be the benefit of leaving school? You start getting to work and act like an adult? 

I've started to wonder if my own inability to see myself as an adult is tied to the fact that my jobs, up until two years ago, all treated me as if I was a child. 

At one of my last jobs before my current one, my boss had a rule that I had to tell someone when I was stepping into the bathroom for even a minute. About 9 times a day I was telling my boss and/or one of my coworkers that I was going to the bathroom, and they were doing the same thing. It was obnoxious and embarrassing. What kind of boss really needs to know when I'm taking a 45 second break to run to the restroom?

I know I'm not alone in having stories like that. It seems like workplaces overwhelmingly lean towards treating employees like overgrown babies who need a lot of rules to do basic work. And, surprise! Research shows that when you treat employees like little bitty babies, they are act more irresponsibility. 

As well, treating employees like children allows bad employees to fly underneath the radar. We've all know a coworker for followed all the rules--showed up on time, followed procedures to the letter--but never actually did any work. Those kind of employees thrive in environments where the procedure matters more than the outcome--and being a "good employee" is all about following the basic policies. 

This article explains the entire idea nicely: 

What works is focusing on results. If your employees are nonexempt, you do have to pay them by the hour for their work (and pay overtime, when applicable), but if they are exempt employees (that is, professionals or managerial or outside sales workers), let them be grownups. Set expectations. If problems come up, address the problems. If their work is otherwise good, who cares if they check Facebook eight times per day?

There isn't any real, concrete reason about why this has happened. With the rise of the Internet & the abundance of smart phones, I think employers have grown increasingly concerned about not paying their employees for downtime. They focus on the minute-by-minute action of their employees days, instead of seeing the big picture -- did the project get done? Was the work good?

In the end, you get employees who resent their bosses & act like kids. 

As millennials increasingly enter the workforce, I think we'll see employers re-evaluating their policies when it comes to how they treat their employees. As it is, millennials as a generation feel very stuck by where we are--most of us moved back in with our parents right out of college & some still do until they can afford their own places. Millennials are resisting buying new cars and homes. (I do love that these articles are trying to find a reason for this. Here's the reason, guys: most new jobs are part-time & do not offer very competitive wages, nor do they offer many benefits. We aren't buying homes and cars because, duh, we don't have the money for them, plain & simple. Paying student loans on part-time wages and trying to buy a car or a home would be beyond financially stupid.)

And while us millennials struggle to feel like adults (often because we are being reduced to feeling like children because of our living situations, our difficulty finding good paying jobs, and the media's increasing obsession with making us sound like the laziest generation ever), no one is ever happy being treated like a petulant child. 

For the first time, I work at a job where I am treated like a competent adult. Ultimately, it doesn't matter when I show up or how I do my work or how many times I run to the bathroom; what matters is if my work is good, if I get it done on time, and if I am a nice person to everyone around me. Easy-peasy. The feeling of satisfaction I get from my work simply because I'm treated like the adult I was taught to be is astounding.
 

Being a grown up is hard. There's no reason to make it any harder by treating people like children & then wondering why they act like children. As far as I'm concerned, I feel like I should still be 15--but that being said, I know I'm really an adult and I appreciate when others have confidence in my abilities.

20 Writing Prompts for Actual Adults

Danny and I taking part in an experiment together. Since we have more time in the evenings now, we are spending 20 minutes of them writing. This isn’t really anything particularly special. We both enjoy writing, but we have trouble “making time” for it. We both committed to Camp NaNoWriMo this July, but immediately found ourselves unable to keep up with even the tiniest of goals. However, we can motivate each other to write for 20 minutes on a very specific goal. That meant we needed writing prompts. 

And let me tell you: writing prompts for adults are sparse out there! 

We both also, generally, hate writing prompts: they are too vague or overly specific. They rely too much on making split-second decisions instead of just allowing the writer to tease out a little story. Or, as we realized, they are all aimed at getting children to write. 

It made me realize what a need there was for good writing prompts. Danny and I sat down together and wrote 20 writing prompts for our project. Our best advice when using these prompts is to allow yourself to create a story however you want; a prompt that might seem mysterious might be made less mysterious through clever writing. Because I love my fellow writers, here they are for you to use too! 

1. The absolute worst day
2. The absolute best day
3. I found tire tracks 
4. Save them all 
5. A summer feast
6. She found a bullet in the yard
7. A flag, a bottle, and a balloon 
8. He has a cold 
9. A new kind of myth 
10. A coffee cup, snakes, a sunny day
11. He suspects she’s lying 
12. Her last meal 
13. The new girl in town 
14. The one thing you need is… 
15. A voice in the distance screams “____” 
16. She found a flyer that say “____” 
17. The three lies she told her boss
18. An ice cream parlor on a hot day
19. A small town grocery store
20. A silver lily, a dog, a muddy book

Follow Up: Is It Possible to NaNoWriMo with a Newborn?

Months ago, in the time I refer to as "pre-Forrest," I wrote a little post about attempting NaNoWriMo the month after Forrest was born. At the time, I really felt like NaNoWriMo was both possible and totally impossible. So much of it depended on "how things were going" with the baby and, as I've written before, I had no reason to believe I wouldn't have the absolutely perfect little darling newborn. 

I got a comment recently on that old post about whether I succeeded at NaNoWriMo. In November of 2015, I had fully planned to write follow up posts--but if you go back in my archives, you'll see I posted only 3 times in an entire month. So that's how that went. 

I realize, however, that I never actually wrote a follow up. So here it is, nearly a year later. My NaNoWriMo with a newborn follow up. 

Did I Succeed? 

When it comes to success at NaNoWriMo, the deciding factor is, obviously, did I hit 50,000 words? The answer is no, I didn't. So I failed. 

However, I did write about 20,000 words in the first 2 weeks of November. That is obviously Not the Goal, but it's a sizable enough number, especially given the fact that I was caring for a very fresh little human, pumping every 2 hours, and taking care of a house. For the first 2 weeks of November, Forrest still slept relatively well in his swing for naps, so I could squeeze in 30-40 minutes of writing before I had to hold him and watch TV. (Not that I minded.) By the second week, however, he was rebelling against the swing, so I took to wearing him in my Boba wrap to write. This worked reasonably well until he started to hate the Boba wrap, so I was relegated to the couch again. 

In November, Forrest was still quite small and sleeping a lot--like, most of the day. If I got a few spare minutes, I was eating or making another pot of coffee or trying to clean up my house. I stopped worrying about NaNoWriMo and thus, gave up on it. 

I got about halfway there, which is farther than some people get. And, full disclosure, I also pumped about 800 ounces of breast milk in November, so who's a failure really? 

What I Learned

Life is nothing without lessons. Whenever I don't do as well at something as I expected, I try to at least take some kind of lesson from it. So, if you're expecting a baby and thinking of attempting NaNoWriMo with your newborn (or just-out-of-that newborn stage baby), here are my suggestions: 

• Be realistic. Not every baby will nap independently as a newborn. Some babies are great sleepers, but poor eaters, which means you have to keep a diligent eating schedule. If you are having your baby right before November, you have no idea what kind of baby your baby will be, so set realistic goals for yourself. 
• Know that you'll be exhausted. This goes without saying, but if you have a few spare moments to sleep, you'll take them--versus writing.
• Get a good wrap or baby carrier. I love my Ergo (I wish I'd gotten it instead of the Boba wrap). I still wear Forrest for naps in the Ergo now. It's easy to sit and work, or wash dishes, or do all kinds of things while you baby wear. 
•  It's ok if you don't "succeed." Realistically, you might not hit the goal, but if you try, you've still at least tried something. 
• At the end of the day, flexing your creative muscles, in whatever capacity you can, will keep you feeling human, even when your life is taken over by the tiniest, meanest boss you've ever had. 

Have you attempted NaNoWriMo with a newborn or young infant? Tell me about it on Twitter @michellelocke_! 

I Stopped Trying to Have a Perfect Home

In college, I watched the TV show Hoarders every week. I obsessively planned to watch each new episode. And after each episode, I would mop my floors, vacuum, fold my clothes and put them away, make my bed, reorganize my bedside table, clean out my drawers, etc. I cleaned, in short. I cleaned my house from top to bottom. 

As time went on, each episode got harder and harder to watch--and my post-Hoarders cleaning spree got longer and longer. I realized that Hoarders made me way too anxious. There is no reason to go through life making yourself miserable over and over again, so I vowed to never watch Hoarders again. 

Despite the fact that I stopped watching Hoarders, my obsessive cleaning didn't stop... and my sense of never having a clean enough house increased. After I moved into my new home in December 2013, I have ping-ponged between "it's not so bad" and "I should just burn this house down." 

But sometimes, it just didn't feel like enough. When my house is dirty, I feel very anxious and easily angered, very on-edge. It drives Danny crazy. At times, I felt like my house would never be as clean and cute as I want it to be.  

But then, someone will come over and I'll mention how messy or disorganized it is, and they'll give me this look of vague disbelief. "Michelle," they'll say, "your house is, like, nearly perfectly clean and organized and decorated. You're crazy." 

My due date group recently had fun making home tour videos: everyone walked through their house, filming with their phone, and posted it. When I posted mine, I, of course, included, "It's so messy." And you know what? Most people said it wasn't messy. 

I look around and I see stuff; I see the dog hair I've been meaning to vacuum up for a week; I see the trash that needs taken out, the book shelf that needs gone through, the Goodwill piles I need to just load up and move. But other people don't see those things. 

My house is never going to look magazine-ready. My living room has been taken over by primary colored baby toys and a monstrous baby gate; my kitchen has a high chair in it, the counters are covered in bottles and formula, and I have a massive bottle drying rack next to the sink. Martha Stewart is never going to come here and compliment that. 

Growing up means giving up things that were important to you. One of them, for me, is the perfect house. As people, we are messy and disorganized. We don't always keep the counters clean or our desks organized into perfect still lifes. And that's ok, really. It doesn't need to be. It's ok to be messy sometimes. 

I Woke Up Like This: Top 5 Secrets to Getting Up Earlier in the Morning

We all know someone who hits the snooze two or three or ten times every morning. 

That person, for me, is my husband, Danny. He hits snooze for about an hour every morning -- so by the time my alarm goes off, I've actually been awake for 30-45 minutes. Thanks, bro!

Getting up in the morning can be difficult. I go through cycles where I can wake up easily -- and then go into a phase where I wake up groggy, hit the snooze, and have no motivation. It tends to cycle around my eating and workout habits, which is incredibly motivating. Just kidding -- it's not motivating at all. 

I have found a few tried and true ways to get up earlier. Here they are. 

1. Don't hit snooze. 

I know, that's the worst. But don't. As I've written before, the more decisions you make, the harder it can be to make other decisions. So if you spend your mornings hitting the snooze, every time you decide to hit that snooze button, you're reducing your decision-making abilities for the rest of the day. Oops. Yikes. Uh-oh. Plus, hitting snooze doesn't actually give you more rest -- it can actually make you more tired. Which isn't very good. 

2. Promise yourself something. 

Bribes are not always the way to get stuff done unless you really like bribes. If that's the case, they are a really good idea. Basically, what I'm saying is: if you need to tempt yourself out of bed by saying "you can have a massive Starbucks this morning," then you should do that. Sometimes, I bribe myself with a treat, like a bagel for lunch or my favorite dinner, or something else, like a new pair of leggings I've been wanting. 

3. Set your alarm across the room. 

I know, we've all heard this one before. But it's because it works. Whether you use a traditional alarm clock or your cell phone, putting it across the room is the easiest way to get up in the morning. I actually put my phone on the windowsill so I have to physically get up and move to the coldest part of the room in the morning -- this pretty much instantly wakes me up! 

4. If you're getting up to work out, wear your gym clothes to bed. 

That way you don't have to change into cold workout clothes immediately upon getting up. It makes it so much easier to just get up and go. You literally have nothing stopping you -- you're dressed and everything! I know Charlotte at Girl Next Door does this and she runs marathons, so that's very impressive. 

5. Have everything ready. 

Waking up can be a huge pain, especially if you have a bunch today. But preparing a lunch for your work day, picking out an outfit, and getting your coffee ready to brew can make a huge difference in helping your morning go smoothly. Every morning, I have breakfast waiting in a Tupperware to heat up and eat as I get ready, plus my coffee starts brewing as I'm showering; my lunch and snacks are prepacked in the fridge, Forrest's breakfast is ready, and I have bottles prepped for the day. 

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Have your own tips for getting up early? Share with me on Twitter!

The First Story

I still remember the first story I wrote. It was about a girl who lived on a bus. I was 12 years old and had received a laptop for my birthday, something I wanted specifically to use to write. I'd written stories before, sure: tiny stories about my favorite band (98 degrees) or things for school. With that laptop, though, I felt like I could really become a writer. I remember that every day of middle school and high school, I got home and wrote. Every single day. By the end of high school, I had amassed hundreds and hundreds of pages of writing. 

The sad part: two years ago, I went through and deleted all of it. I had carried those digital folders of Word documents around on various laptops for years. It was time to let go. 

That kind of dedication to creating is pretty impressive and I haven't met the output of my high school years yet. Everything I wrote was pretty bad; I mean, that's why I deleted it. But I still wrote a lot. In journals, on my computer, online, everywhere. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I was always creating, always thinking, always having a new idea for something. 

I wrote significantly less in college. I filled a lot of journals, but I would argue that I never actually wrote anything. Pages and pages and pages of... nothing. I wrote a lot for school (including some papers for history classes and English classes that I'm still pretty proud of). My senior year was probably my most productive year, but that was out of necessity (several poetry workshops and a capstone), rather than actually wanting to. 

Since we started sleep training, though, I have had all kinds of time. After cleaning, washing bottles, putting away dishes, and generally doing all the chores I put off for nine months , I had more free time than I realistically know what to do with. 

So for the first time ever, I started writing again. In a few days, I sat down and wrote a short story, I wrote 6 poems, and I finished blog posts I have been meaning to write for ages . 

That first short story felt like the biggest triumph. Is it good? Not really. I would argue that it's actually pretty bad, but I wrote it and that's what is most important. It feels go to write again and to have the time to write again. I always dreamed of being the kind of mom that Forrest would remember writing and now I feel like it might be a reality. 

I Suck at Writing Subject Lines (But It's Ok & Here's Why)

Writing emails for content marketing purposes is, hands down, one of the most difficult things I've ever learned how to do. This is coming from someone who cried in their sophomore geometry class because proofs were so difficult and complicated. Well, sophomore-year-in-high-school me, you're in for a shocker: a writing task (writing! your favorite!) is even more difficult. 

Thanks to all the content marketing resources out there, I've gotten better (perhaps even "good") at writing email marketing. I wouldn't call myself an expert, necessarily, but I get the job done.

Most writers will tell you that subject lines (or titles or headlines) are the most difficult part of writing: how can you sum up everything in an article, a book, or an email with one succinct phrase--and still inspire people to open the email, click the article, or buy the book? 

The short answer: you shouldn't. 

Subject lines are my writer Achilles's heel: they are my ultimate weakness. They are my greatest challenge when it comes to writing. 

I've read every article in existence on writing better subject lines, how to write subject lines to get clicks, to get opens, to change the game. Trust me, I've done the legwork. I've attended webinars and signed up for email newsletters on the subject. I've done A/B testing; I've completed worksheets; I'm written and rewritten and rewritten again. 

No matter what, I come to the same conclusion: I suck at writing subject lines. And that's ok. 

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I can hem and haw over a subject line, or title, for hours potentially. I debate over how to perfectly sum up what I've written. Then, I have to take into account everything else: what will interest people? What will get the most clicks? Or opens? I can debate for hours. I can download all the ebooks and read all the articles. I can do as much as I can to avoid actually hitting send or publish. 

But the truth is: a subject line is just a subject line. You can do everything right and still not get as many opens as you wanted. There is no perfect formula to the perfect subject line or title.  Sometimes, something works and you have no idea why. Sometimes, something just clearly does not jive and you won't know why. 

That's ok. 

We want to believe that marketing can be brought down to pure math, that you can determine everything by numbers. But when you combine the power of words with the rigidity of math, it's never going to be perfect; add in the subjectivity of the average human and it's never going to make 100% sense. We can only know the basics of what works and even that is iffy sometimes. 

I'm always going to suck a little bit at writing subject lines and titles, mostly because I get overwhelmed at how important they are. And that's ok. It's ok to not be perfect at everything (as tough as it is to admit). It's also ok that sometimes subject lines flop, despite killer content; it's ok that sometimes you need to A/B test, tweak a title once it's published, or experiment. 

It doesn't have to be perfect from the get-go. Take the pressure off and allow yourself to experiment and find what works for you and your audience. But don't get too set on any one method or style: it will probably change tomorrow.