How to Stay Motivated to Keep Creating Content

Sure, we can make ourselves disciplined about writing. But how about when we have crises of self-doubt and wonder if the particular kind of writing we’re doing is worth it?

Two years ago, I started with an article about Lady Sun, a Chinese princess who had an army of swordswomen. She’s a very interesting historical figure, but if you do click on that link, it shows that I was very new to the scene when I wrote it. You’ll see that I didn’t really have a good grip on exciting formatting or how to make a historical account really resonate with people today.

The worst part? I spent a month writing and tweaking a single post.

It’s natural for your early pieces, much like my early pieces, to not get a lot of eyes on them. It’s deterring, but it’s a battle of optimization and persistence to improve and keep at it. It takes time for your work to be seen and appreciated. If you're struggling to keep going, I've developed seven strategies to help me stay motivated to keep creating content.

Celebrate small milestones.

A lot of the time, I’ll read pieces from writers who get very lucky and have one of the first five pieces somehow go viral. They’ll make a few hundred dollars on their first couple of pieces. Kudos to them, but reading things like that make a slower, more realistic growth seem disheartening.

The reality is that you start out with cents, work your way up to dollars, and keep compounding from there. From a business perspective, that’s significant growth.­­ Celebrate your small milestones and enjoy those slow but steady increases in your pageviews and your bottom line.

Granted, we’re just writers, we aren’t businesses that have achieved enough to have a whole team of employees in Manhattan. But the point here is that growth is key. If your numbers are small than that, it’s okay. The important part is seeing growth, even if it’s small, even if it’s slow.

Promote your content shamelessly.

This is hinging on more blogging strategy than just a motivation tip, but share links to your posts on as many social platforms as you have. Growth is motivating, but you’ve got to make that growth happen. Share your articles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, every tool you’ve got at your disposal. Instagram is a bit trickier since if you have less than 10,000 followers, you can only put links in your bio and not in posts or stories, but try and mention your blog frequently and share things on there too. It’s all part of using social media professionally.

Every little bit helps and keep an eye out on what social platforms are getting the most engagement. If Twitter is working great for you but LinkedIn isn’t so much, work on connecting with more people on Twitter and growing your network on there. More people means more potential clicks on your pieces.

Small steps and growth will remind you to keep going and keep pushing when you’re feeling low.

Focus on topics you truly enjoy talking about.

Creating content can’t be a chore. Whether you're writing, making videos, or graphics, you've got to enjoy the subject matter.

The biggest thing I’ve struggled with personally is making my content interesting and helpful. At the end of the day, blogging isn’t what it was in the early 2000s, it’s not just telling people about what happened to you recently without any sort of lesson or knowledge shared at the end.

This is a harsh way to put it, but readers will always wonder “What’s the point?” None of us have a ton of free time, so people want to make sure they’re going to get something out of what they take the time to read.

Finding harmony in your own writing and what you want to write about and how to make it relevant and helpful is a huge challenge. However, keep trying to find different ways to do it, it’ll help make your content appeal to a wider audience and it’ll ensure that you still enjoy writing it.

Try working in sprints.

Put a big chunk of time aside and turn it into a content creator sprint. I try to write every day. I usually do succeed, but sometimes, in a very minor way, like just a few sentences or a few paragraphs. Most of my writing is done in sprints. I’ll spend one day on the weekend cranking out three or more pieces and then I’ll slowly post them throughout the week.

This way, the bulk and the higher-pressure parts of my writing are consolidated. I’ll do the bulk of the work on a Saturday or Sunday then just slowly chip away at things, a little bit here and there, for the rest of the week.

If the daily writing grind is wearing you out too swiftly, try sprints. This way, you can relax a little bit throughout the rest of the week and don’t need to push as hard. Having a sizable chunk of writing done in one day makes it easier to have a milestone to celebrate, which’ll help you combat procrastination when you should be writing.

Remind yourself of the intrinsic value of what you’re doing.

Inner motivation is just as important as outer motivation. Looking at the psychological definitions, instrinsic and extrinsic motivators can push you to keep going in different ways.

Does writing make you feel more fulfilled and accomplished? There’s the intrinsic value.

Did something thank you for one of your recent pieces and you felt great afterward? More intrinsic.

Did you make a little money? There’s the extrinsic value.

I’m incredibly happy when something I’ve written can help someone or motivate someone. It feels amazing to spread positivity or motivation in a world where we’re all waiting for those good feelings to come in an IV drip.

To stick with someone, to find ways to keep doing it, and to make yourself enjoy doing it, a good balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators helps.

You must believe in it.

You might feel like you need to persuade yourself sometimes. You might not like being persuaded. However, you must have faith that what you’re doing will bear fruit. Letting those shadows of doubt creep in just kills your motivation and your productivity.

It’s hard when you spend hours on something, and you get a couple of dollars. It’s hard to churn out a lot of content and wait for the time that it will eventually become profitable, but everyone starts somewhere.

If you compare yourself to others, do it in a positive light.

Learn from those content creators out there who have made it their living, their main source of income. Listen to their advice and try implementing it.

If you don’t reach critical mass as quickly as they did, it’s okay. You might think you’re not good enough because you’re not growing as quickly as others have, but flip that coin around and look at this in a positive light.

When you compare yourself to others, ask yourself what’s different and how you can improve. You don’t want to straight up copy anyone, obviously, but there’s a backbone of general content strategy that a lot of us are following. If you haven’t investigated all that stuff before, do it now.

Ultimately, when you compare yourself to others, think this: “If they did it, I can do it too.”

When you’re a content creator, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul.

Your mindset is important. If you're ready to put a lot of work in before you see dollar one, you'll be more prepared for the upward climb. Success doesn’t happen overnight for most people, only for the lucky few. However, even if you’re not the lucky few, you can still beat luck with stamina.

Focus on every little bit of motivation you can rustle up. Keep pushing. Try one of these, try all of these, see which ones resonate the most with you.