This week I received an email from a reader and after a couple emails, I realized something. A lot of you (me included) are so caught up in the creation phase of your new blogs, that you’re spending months and months working it instead of getting your content out there. You’re afraid to launch your blog before you feel like it’s truly ready to be launch.
If you’re a perfectionist like me, it’s really difficult to actually RELEASE something before you feel like it’s done. But then with some projects, you never feel like they’re complete. This pattern is so easy to fall into when creating a blog.
This is why I set a specific date to launch my blog (December 1st) and told myself no matter what I did, I would launch of this day. I made sure I had necessary elements completed first (a homepage and a theme I could live with until I found or created something better), and then wrote things from there Whatever I had available by December 1st was what I launched with.
Now this doesn’t mean you have to do a launch, but that’s what I did with this blog. I did it more for me than to have tons of people coming to my blog on day one. If I knew if didn’t set a date, I’d never get it out, and it was just so satisfying to be like “Yes! I did this thing on this day!”
So with this post, I’m telling you to just get out there and start writing and promoting. You can always change things as you go along.
Stop Being Afraid to Launch
The truth is, unless you’ve really gained a huge following already, almost no one is going to see the first stages of a new blog. I’m sure most of you have never seen my very first homepage or my very first theme.
As a new blogger, you have a chance to try things out and change them whenever you please. Use that to your advantage! Your traffic is low so you can afford to experiment. You might not really find what you love best until you’ve had more experience writing and promoting your posts. You may slowly grow into a certain theme or design that you didn’t have come up with right away.
SO, I’ve decided rather than go back and update some of my posts, I’m going to leave them as-is. Why? Well, I’ll get to that in a bit. Hint: it’s all about you!
Why I’m Not Updating All My Old Posts Even Though My Branding has Changed
The longest title ever for maybe something a little bit crazy.
It’s an excellent learning tool for YOU
The goal of this blog is to allow people to follow along with its progress and see how one new blog grows into something amazing. If I go back and change a lot of things, I kind of lose that progression.
I’d like to show my own growth so you guys can feel better about where you are as a beginner. Show that my blog was definitely not 100% polished when I first started out. While it’s only been a few months right now, as time goes on and I keep growing, the differences will become more obvious.
I’m still not 100% there yet
I’ve literally thought “okay, this is it” every time I’ve changed something. And then one day I would be playing around and realize WOW, I REALLY LIKE THIS OTHER THING BETTER. So for right now, I’m going to slow my roll on making too many changes. I’ll add things, update information, but graphically? I want you guys to see what’s been going on.
Maybe it’s a good excuse to be a little lazy?
Okay there’s one thing that I SHOULD DO but I really hate doing… and it’s updating old stuff. Just talking about this right now reminds me of the three (!!) times I overhauled my entire virtual store inventory, which is hundreds of products. Which maybe means that I should start updating things right now.
Either way, I kind of hate it, but I’ll do it anyway. Just… not right now. I’ve got to write all these other awesome posts for you guys, right!?
What I WILL Update
Probably the Pinterest graphics on each post. Seems kind of important to make my stuff super marketable right? I’ll leave the old ones there too, though.
And of course, my theme! And any information that needs to change.
LESSON: You won’t have it all figured out when you first start out
And that is absolutely okay. Unless you’ve got a team and can afford to dedicate months of planning to get everything just right, you will be changing things a lot.
Waiting for this to happen is just going to cost you precious writing and marketing time. You change as you get used to blogging and start getting a better idea of what you want. A lot of us just don’t know that when we first start a project.
The important thing is that you’re willing to change and grow as you go along.
What YOU Can Do
If you’re feeling stuck, just stop for a minute. Write up a post. Create your marketing graphics. Publish it. Pin it, Facebook it, Instagram it, or tweet it. Get SOMETHING out there.
Thousands of people won’t be knocking on your blog’s immediately, so don’t worry about perfection right now. Keep creating and your identity will slowly creep up on you as you go along.
Still not convinced? Check out my friend Kimi’s experience with her rebrand launch. She makes a lot of great points, especially about how no one really cares about your launch as much as you do.
I’m inclined to agree. You have to make them care over time with your awesome blog content! Until you have tons of followers on social media or somewhere and people are literally just waiting for your blog to be released, it’s not worth the extra stress. Get out there and start blogging!
