How to Maximize Your Blog Reading Using a Journal

Journaling is no big deal, right?

Yet by opening an online journal you can fundamentally change the way you blog and increase your power to transform lives – including yours.

Are you getting more visitors to your website than ever? Visiting blogs and carrying on conversations with more and more people every day?

Want improve your lives and intentionally make the most of those blogging contacts and conversations?

Even if your blog is at a standstill, rather than surging like you expected, don’t despair. Time to change what you do.

Expectations

In this post, you will learn what programs are available for online journals, steps to create a Google Doc online journal, and 51 tips about what to write in your blogging journal. Apply these 51 insider secrets that will skyrocket the quality of your blog and your blog visits.

So What?

The Always Write Blogging Journal concept is designed to augment your blog reading and build relationships between you and your blogging colleagues.

These relationships will transform your life and your blog. An online journal works well as you read blogs mostly because it improves your memory by the power of a terabyte. Better yet, you can cut and paste URLs, quotes, and correctly spell the author’s name.

7 Steps to Set Up Your Blogging Journal

1. Although it is not the only product for creating journals,  Google Docs works well as an online journal because
   1. It is free,
   2. takes less time to open than Word, 
   3. saves automatically, and 
   4. you can access it from anywhere.
2. Read how to use a Google Template like the Always Write Blogging Journal Template. 
3. Rather than just start writing, organize the journal in a way that works for you. In the heading, write the title of your journal and the date and a goal for your journal. The free Always Write Template primarily will assist you in keeping track of blogs you visit. However, you will learn 51 more uses of a blogging journal as you read on.

4. Journals also help you organize the information you reference often by using links. The Always Write Template uses tables to separate information. Tables separate your writing and make it easier to read.

5. Keep your monthly Journal Doc open whenever you are online. 
6. Get the Google App to use with your phone. So you can surf the web and copy into your journal from your phone as well.
7. To maximize and augment your blogging journal experience, apply the ideas below.

51 Tips to Use an Online Journal As You Blog

General Tip

1. Although you can, experts recommend that you keep your journal separate from your calendar. Schedule your posts on a calendar and link it to your journal doc for easy reference.

Keep It Focused – Write Lists

Keep lists on separate Google Docs to link to your daily or monthly journal page

2. List your posts that need editing.
3. List blogging goals.
4. Define success for each goal. The Always Write template defines the goal of reading blogs and success as reading three blogs per day.
5. Create a daily to-do list. 
6. Reflect on what you accomplished rather than crossing them off of a list.
7. List passion projects – your garden, traveling, writing, or world peace.
8. Your niche – Create a list of URLs and titles of your published posts listed by categories.
9. Your Favorite URLs – sites of friends’ blogs
10. List your friends’ Twitter handles
11. List your friends’ email addresses. This works best in a spreadsheet that you can link to your Google Doc. Journal.
12. List 100 friends who would enjoy getting a monthly email from you.
13. Your Social Media URLs for quick reference
14. Your Passwords for quick reference
15. Your Best Post Titles using power words with a Coschedule Headline Analyzer score of 70+ 
16. List Writing Prompts and online writing challenges or create your own challenges
17. Photo Challenges – online photo challenges you enjoy or create your own ideas
18. Create your own blog post checklist or link to someone else’s, or create a list document of great checklist ideas
19. Make a table to collect ongoing data. – COVID 19 cases in your state or city, blog statistics, numbers of comments on a post, numbers of likes on your last five posts

Create Narrative Writing

“Writing accesses you’re the left hemisphere of the brain, which is analytical and rational,” says Maud Purcell, a psychotherapist and journaling expert. “While your left brain is occupied, your right brain is free to do what it does best, i.e. create, intuit, and feel. In this way, writing removes mental blocks and allows us to use more of our brainpower to better understand ourselves and the world around us.”

20. Create a News Block to summarize or list major happenings during the month.
21. Summarize or note the weather during the month especially odd weather patterns and your response to them. 
22. Keep your journal fairly free form – Filling in forms stifles creativity
23. Write a letter – Screenplay/book/guest post pitches 
24. Write a letter – to your audience 
25. Outline your email newsletter: an update, what’s coming up on your blog, a copy of a post, or a compilation of material on a topic
26. Create personas of your blogging audience
27. Respond to quotes from Tiny Buddha or your Momentum dashboard,
28. Respond to Writing Challenges
29. Add a picture and write a response to it.
30. Response to the same questions every day
31. Mind map or brainstorm a topic. This is best done by hand, then scan the document and add a link to your journal.
32. Draw, doodle, sketch on paper and scan in the photo of it. Elaborate in your journal
33. Write a poem – try a new genre or follow the guidelines of a poetry prompt
34. Write from a different perspective – someone you disagree with, your audience, an animal , an inanimate object ( car, house, rock)
35. Describe a place you visited. Add the emotions you felt while you were there.
36. Describe an event you attended. Add the emotions.
37. Review a book, record your emotional reaction to the book. 
38. Write your thoughts first thing in the morning. 
39. Describe your dreams. 
40. Ramble about a topic for 15 minutes.

Release Your Emotions

“Michael Grothaus notes that there are studies suggesting journaling can strengthen the immune system, drop blood pressure, help you sleep better, and generally keep you healthier (2015).”

41. Let your journal guide you through difficult situations without venting on your blog audience.
42. Record dialogue from conversations you have had. Fights even. Be honest even if your side of the conversation is nasty and mean. Assign those horrible words to some character in a story you want to write.
43. Journaling by listing alternative actions or responses to bad situations reduces harmful ruminating (Scott, 2018) This activity will move a blog post from a rant to something helpful to others.

Detach and Analyze

44. Research for posts – Create a separate Google Doc for each topic and link to your monthly Journal Document.
45. Look for patterns in your reading and writing to make decisions about what posts to write and determine your writing niche.
46. Determine when or how to take your blog to a different level based on the patterns and data you find.
47. Analyze your emotions. Describe your body language when you felt that emotion. Fiction writers need to know how emotion plays out in all five senses.
48. Write a performance analysis of your hobby, work, trip, or activity. What did you like about it? What would you do differently the next time?
49. Cut and paste quotes from other reviews of a book, event, or place into your journal. Agree or disagree with their ideas and explain why.
50. Write your own Bible commentary. Quote a verse and respond to it. Look up its historical significance. What was going on at the time when the biblical author wrote it. Write a conclusion bringing the quote up to the minute.
51. Revise a rambling, ranting entry. Write it from the opposite perspective.

Useful link to have in your journal 

100 Benefits to Journaling An infographic listing 100 benefits to journaling. 

Conclusion

Not many articles help bloggers with the enormous task of reading blogs. Yet, there are millions of articles urging bloggers to read voraciously if they want others to be read their blog. Reciprocity takes a lot of time.

I hope the Always Write Blogging Journal Template and explanation help you make sense, keep track of, and use your blog reading to transform your blog and your life.

The form is the least important aspect of keeping a blogging journal. Yet, I have experimented with so many forms, some work and some don’t. This one is shortened and is the easiest to use that I’ve found.

In 2017, the Always Write (formerly Transformational) Blogging Journal made it possible to write this roundabout post which was one of my most popular at the time.

Since it has moved to a different site, the likes don’t show up on it. You can be the first. The bloggers, for the most part, are still friends. Some of them did interviews, guest posts, reblogged posts and hosted me as a guest post. I smile at the fond memories that pop up as I scan this post.

You stand on the verge of improving your blog, making new friends and enjoying the 100+ benefits of blogging.

Why are you still reading?

Get started!

Let me know how you keep track of the blogs you visit, and how you make new friends.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it. 🙂 I look forward to hearing from you.

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