3 Things Every Great Blogger Does Just After Breakfast

Let me first say this: I'm not a morning person. There's the whole "waking up" thing, which given the obnoxiousness carried out by my alarm, is rarely a pleasant experience.

Then there's the whole picking out clothes that are socially acceptable for the work environment. (Sorry sweatpants and hoodie, but here is where I must leave you.)

By the time breakfast rolls around, I've finally come to terms that this is actually happening. I'm awake, appropriately clad, and ready to take on the day as a fully functioning adult. So I spoon the last of my Cap'n Crunch into my mouth, and off I go. 

So you can imagine my surprise when during my commute on any given day, there's always a new article detailing "Things Successful ___ Do Before Breakfast." Well, I'm calling rubbish. 

Because let's be honest, the period of time before eating breakfast holds very little – if any – consequence on how the rest of your day will go in terms of productivity at work. Instead, I've decided to highlight what successful bloggers do just after breakfast, because let's be real, that's when the rubber meets the proverbial road.

3 Things Great Bloggers Do Just After Breakfast 

1. Read All About It!

Being a great blogger is similar to being a great comedian. Relevance is largely dependent on how topical your material is. (Tweet this)

Ask any great blogger, and they'll likely have no problem 
waxing poetic on the importance that their favorite news aggregator has on inspiring their next great blog post. As a marketer, it's critical to the "stickiness" of my content that I stay ahead of the curve, and given the frequency in which Google changes its algorithm, this proves to be an unenviable task.

Therefore, I arrange my news based on importance in the following order:  

1. Tech news and updates
2. Other industry related news
3. Narratives from publications I frequent

You can do the same. First, explore and identify your news aggregator of choice. There's a plethora to choose from, so it all comes down to personal preference. My personal favorite is Feedly, however LinkedIn Pulse (now depreciated) and Facebook's new app, Paper, are also frequent stops for me. 

2. Check Their Email

Spam emails and nightmarish internal email threads aside, there's a lot to be learned from your inbox on any given morning. After all, a lot may have happened while you were sleeping.

Customers have questions. Prospects have feedback. Your coworkers may even have some valuable suggestions or experiences of their own to share. All of these greatly contribute as idea fodder in order to avoid the dreaded blinking cursor staring back at you from the screen. 

By checking your email prior to blogging, you'll also ensure that any possible distractions that could keep you from completing your work have been discovered very early in the day. Address these before getting started, as having a wide open window to complete a blog post is as productive as it is liberating. 

3. Track and Measure 

Noticing a trend? If you could sum up the characteristics of a great blogger in just one phrase, it would be this: well-informed.

Never is this more applicable than in regards to the performance of past blog posts. There's a wealth of information to be learned on a daily basis just by looking at how your previous posts are performing. 

Things like:

• Posts still generating a high volume of traffic months later
• Posts with a lot of social media shares
• Posts that fell flat
• Posts that inspired discussion or debate

This kind of information is invaluable to a marketer, as it provides an actionable plan moving forward based off of what we already know. Take 10-15 minutes every morning and take an audit of your more recent blog posts  – perhaps the previous two weeks. 

What can you learn from this data? What should you do more of? Less of? What types of questions or feedback are you hearing? Most importantly, how can this inform your blogging strategy moving forward? 

Breakfast of Champions 

Moral of the story? Relax. Enjoy your breakfast. And once you do, start getting in the habit of being more informed, through information and data, in order to write blog posts that truly gain traction. 

Not bad for just after breakfast.