It’s officially the first day of my fourth run at Blogtober! And though it’s later in the day than I was hoping for, here we go.
Because this has become a bit of a tradition for me, I’ve noticed that it gives me a slightly new challenge every time. Last year, my big thing was focusing on getting it done—and that left me wondering for this year, what was left to do? I’d technically won the challenge, as it were.
But worry not, this year did have something for me to try.
Let me distract you with a little math first.
Every year since I started doing this challenge, I’ve outlined what I wanted to post about ahead of time so I didn’t get stuck and lose motivation.
Over the years, that’s amounted to 93 blog posts—and even though I may not have completed all of them, it means the ideas already lived in my head.
Given my average is to post about once a week, that’s a little under twice as many posts as I usually do in a year.
Wait, why am I doing math?
Because that was something I couldn’t get out of my head when I started. I realized that this year was going to be another 31 topics—and there are only so many times I can write about fall-themed gaming decor before I want to throw all of Pinterest out the window.
What was I going to do to shake things up this year, so I wasn’t just repeating myself?
That was going to be the big challenge—and here’s sort of where I’ve landed on how to keep things fresh for this year’s run.
Tip 1: Look for evolving trends, especially on social media.
We’ve probably all heard the jokes about TikTok brain; trends these days pop up and wilt on social media faster than we can keep track of them. Sometimes, that’s frustrating—but it’s honestly great for content planning because it’s an endless pool of inspiration.
So if you’re feeling stuck, check your social media feed. Even if there isn’t a new trend, maybe there’s something within a current trend that speaks to you!
Tip 2: Show what's changed since last year.
In a similar vein, part of the fun in an annual tradition is seeing what’s changed since the last time you did it. So if you’d written one year about a cute decor trend, you could show a trend that’s appeared since then, and refer back to your previous post to show that change over time.
Tip 3: Read through your past posts.
Because I got stuck in my brainstorming, I looked back through several of last year’s Blogtober posts to see what I’d already covered, and in those posts, there were a few spots where I’d written about hopes for ways I could build on those ideas later.
I’d completely forgotten about those hopes, and they ended up becoming quite the inspiration for this year’s topics!
Tip 4: Create libraries of still-useful posts.
If you’ve got some posts from previous years that ended up being a little more evergreen, and still have ideas that can be useful for people, they can also be great content for roundup posts and lists.
One of my favourite things to do with posts like that—though I haven’t really done them here on the blog, it mostly happens at work—is to mix in related posts from other sites and blogs, so you don’t just feel like you’re recycling your old work.
Tip 5: Ask others for ideas.
Full disclosure, I actually did most of my brainstorming live on my stream a couple of weeks ago, and my friends got to see me get stuck trying to think of ideas for the last nine slots on my calendar.
I did feel a little embarrassed about it, if I’m honest, because I do still struggle with feeling like I have to look like I have my life together when I’m live, but in hindsight, I’m glad it happened.
Sekan and a few of my friends ended up sharing great ideas that you’ll see scattered throughout this month—a reminder to my overly independent self that it’s okay to ask for help and ideas sometimes!
