Feeling stuck or overwhelmed with your blog? In The Ultimate Blog Roadmap, Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper share step-by-step strategies to help you gain clarity, grow with confidence, and build a thriving blogging business.
IE 443:The Ultimate Blog Roadmap: How to Go from Overwhelmed to Thriving with Amy Reinecke & Jennifer Draper
Amy Reinecke is one-half of Spark Media Concepts. She and Jennifer Draper started in 2019, supporting bloggers in their business.
Jennifer started blogging in 2013. She began as a food blogger and has two food blogs. Amy had served as Jennifer’s Virtual Assistant and started her own blog two years prior. They were also next-door neighbors.
One of them is right-brained. The other is left-brained. They joke that together they make a whole brain.
Jennifer had a vision to help other women create blogs. She shared it with Amy and helped Amy create a blog. Later, a woman approached Amy and told her she needed help to create a blog. It was the same vision that Jennifer had described to her.
Together, Amy and Jennifer created Spark Media Concepts to support bloggers. They have a membership and a podcast called the Ultimate Blog Podcast.
It is their goal to help women understand who they are, how they impact, and not to be afraid to use their voice.
They realized that others were struggling with information overload. They wanted to create something to cut through the noise.
They wanted to help everyone have a blog.
A website is the piece that you need because it is not rented property. Social media can be shut down or the algorithms can change at any time and you lose your people.
What are the biggest mistakes new bloggers make that lead to overwhelm?
The technical part of blogging often trips people up. They get in over their heads trying to set everything up without doing it correctly from the start.
They might set up a Square Space site rather than thinking through the step-by-step of what is going to be the best for their business. They might need to learn more about WordPress and how to set up a website.
They need to learn the backend stuff, even if you are going to hire someone else to help. This is the foundation of your business so you need to understand how it works and how to use it so you have the power to move forward.
Another piece that hurts bloggers is listening to too many people. There is so much information out there on Instagram or TikTok. You are on YouTube, reading so much stuff, and in Facebook groups.
There are so many people giving great advice but you have to really focus. You cannot do all the things and all at once. You have to find a tried-and-true resource, make a plan, and stick to it.
You cannot let all the noise in and feel like you have to create an amazing reel, go viral, create blog content, and many other things. If you are doing too many things, you are not doing one thing well.
Pick one or two things and focus on those to get started. Create your rhythm. Once you have mastered that, you can add new things.
You have to understand the pathway of focus and know what direction you are going. You have to make sure your foundation doesn’t have cracks in it.
That is the biggest thing that Jenny sees. Many of her clients haven’t set things up correctly and they have to go back.
They are not growing their email list. They don’t understand keyword research. They have grown their entire platform on Instagram. You have to understand what you are trying to do.
How can someone pick the right niche without getting stuck in analysis paralysis?
It is common for new bloggers to want to talk about all of the things. You do need to ask yourself the important questions.
- What are you really passionate about?
- What do you want to talk about?
- What are people asking you about?
You can have a blog that no one cares about. You might really love oil painting orange flowers. If no one else loves to learn about that topic, no one is going to come to your website.
You have to do keyword research and understand the topics that people want to know more about. What are you passionate about? What lights you up?
When you begin, you need to have a really solid foundation. People and Google need to understand who you are, how you serve people, and how you are showing up. If you don’t know who you are, no one else will either.
That can cause a lot of overwhelm and analysis paralysis. You are in a crazy mindset of feeling like you can serve a lot of different people. That doesn’t serve you or anyone coming to your website well.
Jenny’s clients tell her they are multipassionate and don’t want to get stuck in a corner. You have to be clear on who you are going to serve and how you will serve them. What problem do you solve for them?
This can change over time. You can pivot your content and change your topic moving forward. You don’t have to be trapped in a box.
Many people feel that when they choose their niche, they are married to it forever. They think they can never change, never have a different opinion or new idea. That is not true.
We are multi-faceted people. You are going to grow. Your opinions might change. The hill you die on today might be something you completely disagree with in five years.
Choose the path you are going down and what makes the most sense now. It doesn’t mean it is the forever path but just for now.
What are the essential elements every blog needs to start on the right foot?
The number one thing a blogger needs to know before they dive into this is their purpose.
It is going to be difficult. It is going to be challenging. You are going to have to learn new things you might not want to learn. It isn’t just fun and the passionate part of sharing content.
You have some things you are going to have to set up. Having the purpose written down and being able to look at it as you are going through the steps is critical.
Amy and Jennifer also believe it is a foundation to set up a self-hosted WordPress website. This is important if you want to monetize business, have ad revenue as part of your revenue stream.
You will need the appropriate plugins for your site speed, image optimization, security, social sharing, and other things. Knowing what you need so that your website functions appropriately is important.
A good theme works well so you don’t have to hire a web developer to customize a website when you are first getting started.
There are many expenses associated with starting a blog. You can keep these reasonable.
There are some things you have to invest in. It is also important to sign up for an email marketing service and integrate that into your website so you can collect email addresses.
Your email list is something you own and your direct line of communication with your followers and readers. You want to capture as many people as possible so they will come back again and again.
Email marketing can feel tech heavy so Jenny drug her feet on email in the beginning. It is so much easier than it used to be. There are plugins that can connect your email.
Don’t let this be something that holds you up. You can find YouTube videos that give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to set it up.
Provide your readers with something in exchange for their email address so they can see your expertise and want more from you through your emails.
How can bloggers develop a content strategy that doesn’t lead to burnout?
Burnout is real for entrepreneurs and content creators. We feel that more content means you are better.
Being consistent is important and looks different for everyone. We can look too much at what others are doing and think that is the way you have to grow.
Instead, you need to ask yourself what it takes to grow. If you are constantly running someone else’s race, you are going to get burned out. If you listen to other people’s podcasts all day, join a bunch of courses, and have too much input, you are going to feel overwhelmed.
The best way to prevent burning out is to understand who you are talking to, understand your niche, and make a plan.
Understand your time. Do a time inventory. Write down how much time you spend on any given task, both personal and professional.
Nothing feels worse than thinking you can spend 20 hours working on your blog when you only have 10 hours to spend. You will already feel like you are failing.
If you have a clear understanding of the amount of time you have to spend, the most important tasks, then you will spend your time wisely instead of spinning your wheels.
Burnout comes from the inability to understand what is working for both you and your business.
You need to understand how you can repurpose content and not keep having to recreate the wheel each time. With one blog post, you should be able to get at least 20 pieces of repurposed content. This can prevent overwhelm.
If you can write one blog post a week and use AI to create other content from that blog, it will save time and lead to less burnout.
Look at the big picture. Understand how much time you actually have. Utilize that time to the best of your ability.
Some people may find that writing takes longer and you can talk better than writing. Start with a podcast as your content. Use the transcript as your blog post.
Use the video for YouTube. Have corresponding social media. Repurpose the content.
Get off the hamster wheel of continually turning out new content for every platform. There are AI tools that you can use to create video shorts to use on TikTok and YouTube.
Get smarter and don’t work harder.
What’s the best way to plan content to ensure steady growth?
You have to become a data nerd. As bloggers, we start with wanting to share what is in our heart. You have to combine that with being able to know what people are looking for.
If you want to ensure growth, you have to create content that people want and need. You can have a list of content but you have to dive into the data.
Use a keyword research tool and find out what people are searching for. Is this a topic you can teach or be an expert in? Do you have something to offer in this area?
Once you are creating content, you need to go back and review the results of how that content is performing. Go into your Google Analytics, emails, and DMs to see if people are responding to you about the content you are writing.
You collect the data. Look at the numbers and see what resonates with your audience.
You can find common themes and create more content that looks back and expands upon other things you have written. You will be creating the things people want to see.
Review the results of what you create on a regular basis.
Use the keyword research tool and find other things you can do. Finding content that people want and need will be what helps create growth instead of trying to find the next viral thing to get you a ton of traffic.
Be the resource for your audience. If you are a food blogger that gets a ton of traffic for cauliflower recipes, continue to build content around that to go to higher levels.
Be the ultimate resource for people so they don’t have to go to six different websites and YouTube because they couldn’t find all the answers. It makes a huge difference when you can provide the answers for them.
How can AI or automation tools help streamline content creation?
We can use AI as an assistant and not as a replacement. AI started with a negative connotation but can be a valuable tool.
Amy was introduced to AI at a conference and her world was rocked.
Creating content today looks different than it used to. To streamline our content creation, we have to find systems and processes that work for us and can be duplicated.
Every time we write a blog post, we should not have to ask ourselves how to use it. Ask what other pieces of content can be created from this. You can ask for topics that can be created.
We no longer have to rely only on our brains alone. We can use AI to help generate ideas. We shouldn’t be afraid of this.
How can you implement this in your business? AI can give you a broader array of topics to think about, consider, and understand how you can make an impact in a greater way. Test it out in different ways in your business.
Maybe you use it in email marketing to help you come up with ideas. It might not be what you need for other things, like creating an outline for your blog. The more you use it, the better it becomes.
Let yourself see if this tool can be a game changer for your business and prevent burnout. What can you do to allow your business to run more freely?
We have a lot on our plates as entrepreneurs. Not everyone has the capacity to hire a VA. How can you use AI as a free resource to help you get the content you need published, be able to make the impact you want, and connect with your audience?
Don’t be afraid to ask for help in that way. Anything that you might want to hand off to a VA, hand off to AI instead. Start asking those questions.
Jenny has even gone back into her products and used AI prompts to help. You don’t need to use Google to understand what people want when you can use AI to ask for ideas. AI can do your research for you and make things simpler.
Beginner Blogger Tips Playlist
This playlist was created for those at the beginning stage of creating a blog. What are some important foundational steps that you need to consider starting a blog? There are four episodes that take less than two hours to listen to learn how to get started.
Ultimate Blog Roadmap
This is a membership that was designed to support bloggers at all levels. This is for people who want to understand how to grow, increase their visibility, and how to blog the right way. Confidently grow your blogging business with expert guidance and hands-on support each step of the way.
