“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

If there was ever a post that hit home run for me, the How to Blog when You Work Full time is the one for me. My blogging journey begun a little over 3 years ago. I even shared my thoughts on Blogging 3 years later, if you are interested in seeing that post definitely give it a read, as I have poured my heart out. Am definitely am the full definition of started from the bottom, now we here – Thank You, Champagne Papi. Because I jumped into the blogging world without a parachute or having a single clue how much of an investment and commitment it was going to be. 3 years later and I am still yet discovering new things every day.

I can definitely say, Blogging for me has been a roller coaster ride. I have done it both ways and then some. If I am being entirely honest. I have had an interesting blogging journey. In my first year of blogging, I was a full-time student doing Masters in Nairobi – My final year to be exact. During my 2nd year I blogged fulltime and in my 3rd year, I began blogging and working on an 8 AM to 5 PM job.

It was at this time, the question on How to Blog when working Full time began coming my way. – This begun after I completed the 30 daily Blogmas post back in 2017. In all honesty, I had the same questions too, How in the world was I going to manage to navigate these two completely different industries and not go insane HA? What kept me going during all through this incredible-i-wouldn’t-trade-this-moment-for-anything, well except time, Ha! was my Passion for Content Creation. I have also learnt and encountered ways, tips and tricks on How to Blog when You Work Full time. The good news is that I am excited to share them with you, as I think I might have finally cracked the code it, – if I do say so myself.

How to Blog when You Work Full time

1. Believe you Can.

One thing you need to know about blogging is that its hard work! On contrary to what people think, when it comes to blogging you are the creative director, the stylist, the voice, the model, the CEO the manager, the photographer, the creative director, the copywritter, the marketer, the finance person and the list goes on, and you do this all at the same time and every day of the week.  If thats not all, you have to be your own damn chear leader and clap for Your damn self. To handle all these tasks, You have to come to an understanding that you have got this, if you think you don’t, fake it till you make it is the motto.

2. Run your own Race.

When it comes to blogging, it may look as the most saturated game field, and it is if am being very honest, it is. Funny thing is, there is nothing new being written 90% of the time. It’s just the same conversation told a hundred ways with 100,000 different people. The same people can write the exact post, word for word but only one of them will reach a larger audience. The take away here is, know your value, know what you bring to the table and never ever be afraid to eat alone. Run your race, grow your blog, and don’t compare yourself to other bloggers, everyone has a different race and everyone starts somewhere. As long as you are being your authentic self, success will find you

3. Bulk up your content

This is the biggest lesson I learnt in my blogging journey. Creating content in bulk. This includes sacrificing a few hours during your day or one day during the weekend to create a lot of content that can be used in the future. Ideally, if you are a blogger, photography is a huge part of it all, for your blogs and social media contents. What you do is plan your outfits, recipes or whatever it is you blog about and shoot at least 5 different items and use them within the coming week. This way you don’t have the excuse of not having enough. Think of this as content banking.

When it comes to editing your pics, find a style You are happy with and stick to it, this way, your editing time is minimizes, because we both know, editing can take forever.

4.Content Planing & Brainstorming

This goes hand in hand with point 3 above. Find time to brainstorm your post ideas for the coming week. Depending on the amount of times you post a week, and create contents around it. If you post once a week, and You came up with 4 ideas. Then you will have a whole month worth of content. I post 3 times a week so I try to have at least have a weeks worth of post every time. If I end up having a busy week with no time to spare. Then I know for certain I have great content lined up for that week. I usually set aside my sunday afternoon to write down posts for the upcoming week and I have been doing it a while now to a point that it feels like clock work.

Within the week I try to find inspiration and jot down anything that will spark my interest. This then creates a skeleton for my upcoming post, making the whole witting part quite seamless.

5. Time Crunching

Having to work fulltime means, less time on Your hands. Which also means every second counts more than ever. The easiest way to use as much time as possible being productive is by time crunching your tasks. Its one thing to set time aside for writing but a whole other process to actually time your tasks. If you want to write 3 posts within 3 hours, the easiest mathematics will be divinding each into 1 hour. This will only work if you did follow through with point 4 above; content planning ahead of time.

6. Do editorial on the same day.

Writing a blog is the easiest part. Editing is what takes the most amount of time. And quite frankly what will separate a great blog pos to a mediocre one. When you write a blog post make sure you do the editorial on the same time while ideas are still fresh. This will also save you the headache of editing and reading the post again the next time. Remember to proof read, because nothing is worse as a poor grammatic blog post. I use a couple of tools to simplify my editorial, as seen below.

• Yoast SEO – to get my keyword games and grammar on A one.
• Grammarly – Think of this as a writing assistant add on. – Because no one hates bad grammar than I do.

7. Scheduling and Automation.

If there was ever a free gift to bloggers were these two, Scheduling & Automation. After you have done the due diligence on all your post, writing, images, and all the necessary zhush for a killer blog Post. – Read the 10 Things You need to do before Publishing your post. The one key secret is scheduling your post at the same time everyday. So that your readers know when to expect your next post. If you use WordPress, You can schedule you blog post even for the entire year, and it will go live on time when you are clocking your busy 8-5 day job.

Automation has come a long way since, thanks to the power of the internet. You can schedule your post and its supporting pieces to your social media. And go about Your day job as You would like. Below are a few options I stick with.

Tailwind: Schedule my post to pinterest , Facebook & Twitter groups and tribes.

UNUM: To plan my feed and schedule my Instagram posts.

WordPress: Posts a teaser of my original posts on all the social media sites linked to it.

Having to Blog while you clock the 8-5 job is no fun, but it is definitely worth it. Especially if you find the sweet spot to balance it all. Because lets all be honest, turning your blog into an overnight success is not a norm for the majority. I hope you found this tips useful and I wish you the very best of both worlds. Let me know Your take on How to Blog when You Work Full time on the comment section. Till then, Happy Blogging.