How To Get Out of a Blog Burnout

Hello friends! A few months ago, I wrote a post about blog burnouts, in particular about how I have managed to (mostly) avoid them during 6+ years of blogging. I loved working on that post and you all seemed to appreciate my thoughts and tips on how to avoid burnouts. While I am satisfied with that post, I do have more to say on the subject, mainly on how you can get out of a blog burnout if you ever feel stuck in one.

🤎 Related Post: How I Avoid Blog Burnouts

Today, I brought you tips that can help you if you are truly stuck or even as soon as you realize that you are heading towards a burnout. I’d love to hear your own tips and tricks on how to avoid and get out blog burnouts, so don’t forget to leave a comment if you have anything to say. 😊

Try To Find Out What Is Causing It

I feel like this is such a basic tip, but I still wanted to mention how import it is to try to find out what is causing the burnout. It might be something personal, like being stressed over your studies and work, but a lot of the time it will have to do with your blog. Try to sit down and think about your blog, consider why you created it, what you want from it, what you like and dislike about it. Most importantly, try to determine what aspects of blogging make you sad and what aspects make you happy. Some tips:

• If your stats are stressing you out, ignore them!

Not saying that you should never ever check your stats, but try to limit how frequently you check them if your focus on them seems to be the issue. If you want to work on growing your blog, you can try to look up posts on this topic by other bloggers. Remember that not every tip is going to be suitable for you and your blog, so seek out multiple posts and make notes based on them.

• Concentrate on what makes you happy!

Try to abandon the notion of what bloggers should write and instead, find which posts make you the happiest to write. Is it discussions? Tags? Something else? Focus on those posts and wait until you’re naturally inclined to go back to the post types you’ve had enough of. If that time never comes, so what? Most of us are not paid for our work, so your blog should please you first and foremost.

🤎 Related post: Things I Like and Dislike About Blogging

If you have interests other than reading, you can also lift them into your blog and discuss them there. Don’t exclude your other interests because you think people wouldn’t want to read about them, as I think it’s impossible to predict how well a post might do. My post about my favorite podcasts did quite well, and our post where we recommended books based on Taylor Swift’s folklore is one of our most successful posts ever. I’m shocked about the latter, so you might be surprised by what your readers like, as well.

Share Your Problem With The Community

Even though the book blogging community is pretty big – and really supportive for the most part! – having issues with blogging can feel pretty isolating. I have read many excellent posts by bloggers who discussed what aspects of blogging made them feel disheartened, and many of them mentioned that they were reluctant to share their thoughts as they didn’t want to complain. Sharing our problems can feel like whining, but I swear to you, it isn’t! So write away, friends.

• Share your thoughts and issues in a discussion post!

Like I said, I’ve read excellent posts by bloggers about their issues with blogging – for instance, about feeling unappreciated by authors and publishers – and I loved reading them. I was able to relate to them, share my own thoughts in the comments and have valuable discussion with the bloggers that wrote these posts. Alternatively, you can share your thoughts on social media too, if that is the platform that makes you comfortable.

• Talk to your blogger friends!

As I said, many of the issues you might be struggling with are ones that other bloggers have likely also struggled with. That means that your blogger friends will be able to give you advice or just listen to your problems / rant away with you. For those who feel uncomfortable publicly discussing their issues with blogging, this is a good way to still be able to share your problems with someone.

Reconnect With the Community

This might not be true for everyone, but personally, my favorite part about being a blogger is visiting and commenting on other bloggers’ blogs. When I don’t have time for this – which happened in the past few weeks – my blogging mood plummets and I end up having to fully rely on my pre-scheduled posts.

• Read blog posts for inspiration!

In a way, this also ties in with what I mentioned above. If you seek out multiple blogs, you might stumble upon posts about bloggers’ issues with blogging. But the main thing here is that you remain connected to the community – you hear about the hot topics, new releases, as well as all kinds of other things. Furthermore, you might be inspired by the community, which is always a good think. That being said, don’t forget to ask for permission and give credit if you want to write the exact same thing another blogger did. Copying and stealing ideas is never acceptable.

• Stay connected through social media.

Personally, I don’t love social media, but even I can see that book twitter and bookstagram are places where book bloggers – including those on a hiatus or those who abandoned blogging – and readers have been able to still share their thoughts. If you want to stay a part of the community but have had enough of blogging for the time being, social media might prove to be extremely helpful.

Blogging Frequency and Scheduling

If you realize that your issue with blogging is the pressure you feel to post a certain amount, or to keep up a schedule you used to have, then these next few tips are for you.

• Scale back your blogging frequency!

Sometimes, we have to realize that we might not be able to post as much as we used to. When I started blogging, I’d post every. single. day. but that quickly became impossible to do. You’ve probably heard the advice that if you want to grow your audience you should be consistent and publish multiple times a week. While I’m not contradicting that, I’d like to point you back to what I said about stats – try to take a break from looking at them, from trying to gain a bigger audience, and just post as much as you are able to. If you ever feel like it, you can always go back to a more packed schedule, but if you need to take a break, do that.

• Work out a schedule!

This has been life-saver for me, and I’ve said this many times. For me, it is important to know approx. how many times I have to post each month, and to know which dates I’d post on. I don’t have a schedule that tells me when and how much I should write for the blog, simply because I know that sometimes I’ll write multiple posts a week, other times I’ll write none for weeks. This depends, in part, on my mood, as well as on my life. I know that the end of the semester / exam period is particularly stressful for me, so I always have posts scheduled ahead of time for that period.

• Abandon your schedule!

While a schedule works for me (and Sabrina), it might not work for you and that is completely fine. This leads us back to what I said about how you should be made happy by your blog first and foremost. Don’t overtax yourself – post as much or as little as you want and abandon a posting schedule if that doesn’t work for you.

Take a Break

All that being said, sometimes what you need is a break. If that’s the case, you can still try to stay connected to the community in the aforementioned ways, or you can take a complete break from it. In either case, try not to stress over blogging or force yourself to come back to blogging too early. And even when you do come back, it’s okay to take baby steps! For instance, if you like to schedule posts ahead of time, you can come back and work on posts quietly and start posting when you feel like you have enough.

Let’s chat!

I hope at least some of that was helpful! How do you come back from a blog burnout? Or how do you avoid them? If you want to share – is there anything in particular that can lead to a burnout for you, like feeling unappreciated?