My creativity, focus and energy wane though when I’m solely writing to meet a deadline. When my only motivating factors are a paycheck and keeping an editorial team happy, someone is suffering, and that’s me.
Writing should be engaging, exciting and rewarding.
Maybe these feelings don’t pop up during every visit to the keyboard, but they should be the overall vibe you get when doing creative work. If not, you need a break. (Google: Burnout at work)
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Reflect and Refresh in 2021
In the year ahead, I’ll carefully comb through the Web Writing Advice blog as well as my lifestyle website, Cupcakes and Yoga Pants to see where my content can be improved and updated. More than once in the early years of those two websites, posts were written to keep up a blogging cadence and I’ve felt I wasn’t able to fully flesh out my ideas or add enough resources to provide guidance for my readers.
And, I’m not proud of that. So, it’s time to polish those posts.
As I work through this refresh and reflect in 2021, I’ll post about my process and progress as well as links to the updated posts on Twitter, this blog’s Facebook page and LinkedIn. I’ll also share updates with my monthly email list subscribers.
I’m not sure how long this process will take, but I have a handful of landing pages as well as 270 blog posts on Web Writing Advice and another 325 blog posts on Cupcakes and Yoga Pants to review and refresh or delete. So, I’m giving myself the year ahead for this task, and will go from there.
Why Do All That Work?
I’m tackling this project to declutter and improve upon the work I put out into this world. Really, it’s the same reason you clean out a closet or tidy up the living room. My blogs feel messy and need some TLC, so it’s time for a deep clean to revamp what’s live online.
I was inspired to tackle this process after reading Andrew Wheeler’s post on The Content Standard titled You’re Sitting on a Content Gold Mine, You Just Don’t Realize It. I’ve been a cheerleader for website, business and content audits for years to keep search engines happy. But, hearing about it from a colleagues’ perspective helped me see things in a new reader-focused light.
Andrew explains in the post that content decays in quality over time, which leads to revenue loss and disgruntled readers — because no one really wants to spend their time reading about outdated trends or defunct apps.
I laughed when reading his post as I thought about a few of my own that need to be trashed, including information about Klout, the long-gone ranking app and the pre-Reels mini video app, Vine. Remember those? Content about them no longer deserves a spot on the Web Writing Advice blog. Why? It’s no longer relevant or useful — other than maybe for a chuckle over antiquated publishing trends. Remember when…
Plus, the more irrelevant, outdated content I host, the further down the SERPs my content will tumble because it’s no longer popular among readers. And, why would it? Nobody is searching for how to improve their Klout score in 2020!
Do you audit your business and/or websites at the end of each year? Tell me about your process and reasons why in the comments below! I’m curious.
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Note: This post was last updated on November 8, 2022.
