Blog topic
I need a good topic for my blog post this week. The blog I have on my website. I really think I need to write about how hard it is to work and try to run a small business. How I think that's the best topic I can come up with. Mainly because I am struggling right now. I want to get traction for my business, but at the same time I don't have enough hours in the day to get everything done that I need to get done.
You know what? Let's focus on that for a minute. I do my best "thinking" here, so let me think this through and see if I can come up with a solid plan.
So first, let me just list the things I need to do in no particular order:
- Make things - real things and designs. If I plan to sell online or at markets, I need physical things to sell. If I plan to make designs, I need to make the physical things to sell the designs. So making things has to happen.
- Social Media - my weakest link. But I have to do it. I have to do it in advance because if left to my own devices, it won't get done. I also need to be social. I need to comment and respond and like and all that stuff.
- Photos - another weak link. I don't know what I'm doing here so I tend to not do it. I put these off to the last possible minute, then rush through them and post some crappy old photos. Then they have to be edited and processed in Canva. So much time.
- Creating listings - this takes some time and a little research. Not a lot, but some. I need to edit the photos, find the proper keywords, get everything written.
- Watch things - there are videos or meetings or whatever you want to call them every week that I would love to attend. Since most happen when I'm working, I need to watch the replays and I frequently forget.
- Courses - there are courses I've signed up for and only gotten half way through. I need to finish them and I want to finish them.
- Marketing - I have some ideas for marketing to local businesses that I would love to implement but just don't have the time.
- Learn new things - I have so many ideas that I would love to do but it requires learning new skills and techniques, all of which take lots of time. Learning is slow.
- Shops - Etsy and Shopify - I need to spend time on these things and get them in better shape than they are.
That's all I can come up with right now. As to which one is more important, that depends on the day and the circumstances. Importance is a moving target. So how do I find time in my very limited day to get all this done? Because as a teacher, my day until around 4pm is booked solid. So how do I do this?
Many nights when I get home from work I am just exhausted. It's hard for me to do much of anything. It's okay if I'm physically exhausted because I can just sit on the couch and work on mental things like listings. But when I'm mentally exhausted also, there's nothing that I can do. Nothing.
So how do I tackle this? Do I assign a day for different things? Monday I'll work on designs, Tuesday social media, etc??? Is that the way to go? Do I keep a running list of things that need to be done and just work on what I can during the week? I like that idea, but I tend to get overwhelmed if the list is too long and it's always too long. Do I keep a checklist for different projects and work through them as I can? I just don't know what would work best for me. Maybe I should devote weeks to one thing. Like this week I'm working on designs only and that's what I do every night. Then another week I work on listings. Another week photos. That might work because the list of things to do would be a lot shorter. So if I'm working on designs, I would only have a list of three or four things to work on. Same with photos. I would only have a couple of things to photograph at a time, so it would be a doable list. That would also allow me to focus on one thing for a few days and really get into it. Hmmm, maybe I'll try that for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. Then I can write blog posts on what I'm doing that week. Working on designs??? Blog post about designing. Working on photos?? Blog post about photos. I think I might be able to do this. At least this idea sits easy in my brain. My brain goes in a 1,000 different directions most of the time and there are times when I find it hard to switch gears. This might help for all of that.
Now, let's talk about social media for a minute. I do not do well when restricted to a certain topic. I discovered that in the past three weeks by trying to focus my social media around my blog post. Yeah, that sucks. I also need to get better at planning things out. At the same time, having specific days for things doesn't seem to work for me either. Motivation Monday, Fun Friday, bleh..... I want to post things that are authentic and don't sound phony. But sometimes I literally have nothing to say. I think I need to get my own voice in there too. I need to be me. I'm sarcastic, humorous, highly irreverent, and really don't like to take things seriously. So why don't my social media posts show that? Why are my post so freaking serious and straight laced? I can use ChatGPT to help me lighten things up.
Okay, I have a lot to think about and some really good ideas here. I'm going to try and flesh them out into some sort of plan I can stick to. Wish me luck.
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