It’s after five-thirty in the evening and I haven’t eaten, not anything substantial since breakfast. Sitting here on the last day in week 4 of this 12-week content strategy of which I had the grand idea of dedicating myself. Before I get to complaining about me and my decisions and all of this being a bunch of bullsnit, let me say that there’s one aspect for which I’m very grateful: I’m sticking to something, y’all!
Maintaining consistency over time with an assignment or activity is rare for me.
It’s only since joining this wellness network named WellHub (formerly GymPass) that I’ve begun working out regularly for the past few months. Working out, as in, intentionally going to a place of fitness and completing a structured workout; prior to paying for WellHub’s fitness studio network, I wasn’t exactly a couch potato sitting on my round behind. My lifestyle as a whole is, and has been, active ever since swapping out my motor vehicle for a bike and beginning my car-free life in Los Angeles a few years or so ago. It wasn’t until my cousin from back home in New Orleans, Raven, came to spend a week with me around LA last summer, and she pointed it out, that I realized, though I may not have seen the inside of a gym or fitness studio in years, girl, you workout, your life is a workout.
When you live an active lifestyle, you don’t have to be consistent with working out to stay fit.
Beginning to bike for fun initially, then branching out to bike to work, changed my life in a way that my eyes couldn’t see until looking back (now) with 20/20 vision. Never having struggled with weight management nor obesity, there existed no drastic differences in the look of my body as I picked up biking as a hobby, nor thereafter as a method of transportation. However, oh, bay-bee, were the changes going on under the surface! That’s the beauty of biking, it doesn’t feel as though it’s exercise. Biking is fun. You’re on two wheels having fun or getting where you need to go, that’s it; it’s not a chore, it’s not “ugh, I have to go workout.” It may be hard for people that meet me in present day to believe, but I never liked working out. Shoot, I still can’t stand the gym, ew. I can write an entire blog post on why traditional fitness gyms disgust me. We’ll save that for another day.
Related: Biking Makes the Brain Feel Good | aroundLA
I never liked working out. Biking wasn’t working out. And that’s why it worked out. ☺︎
I guess a person could argue, “well, TK, you maintained biking.” My response would be, “you maintain driving.” That very first day I rode my bicycle a little under 5 miles to Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills, I wasn’t going out for an exercise; I was getting to work without paying for a rideshare because the mechanic couldn’t immediately get to my car. Biking became a part of my day-to-day life over time and that’s what an active lifestyle is; an active lifestyle is when being active is integrated into a lifestyle.
When it came time for me to bite the blogger’s bullet and niche down, to give the blog a more narrow and defined base, it only logical that an active lifestyle built from biking it became.
And it does makes perfect sense, right?
Then, why do I keep questioning it.. I’m talking from week 1 of this 12-week goal setting span, I was typing to myself trying to make it make sense, re-convincing myself that this the right thing (or the most probable) after I’d spelled it out as so over 2 years ago saying it is. Let me go take a picture of my composition notebook where I glued pages cut out of my 2021-2022 Morgan Harper Nichols Barnes and Noble exclusive planner.
turn tf up!
I’m not anywhere near where I want to be because I’m not working hard enough, I wrote to myself at the top of the page, I didn’t maintain consistency. I go on to write out notes from some YouTube “blogging school” channel that I’d tuned in to more regularly than my mama used to her afternoon soaps.
month 1 of $0/month to $4,000/month in 1 year of blogging as mapped by blogging experts, I head this section of this notes page dated March 2022 from my planner. I’d done thorough research for months on end and gathered blogging advice from an array of SEO experts and veteran bloggers. From all the blogging knowledge I’d consumed, I found this to be the most practical and actionable advice for building a new blog as a beginner blogger. It would be my guide-map and I’d start building this blog one month at a time, one step at a time.
step 1: search analysis and identify 30 topics for niche [search optimization]
low competition, 30 topics within niche, broken down into even more specific subsections
gain authority in a few subsections
structure content in a way to be picked up by Google (blog about same thing for Google to catch)
Within this first step of beginning a new blog, Income School suggests the first 30 topics within a blog niche when beginning a blog ought to fall into even more narrow lanes of that niche. My mind broke biking around LA into these more specific areas:
logistics of bicycle commuting and touring
routes and rides for bicycle touring
fuel stops for bicycle touring and commuting
In the first of the three even more niche subcategories of the already niche category of being a girl that bikes, I came up with 7 topics: helmet hair, hygiene, skin protection, bringing items (what?), carrying items (how?), comfortable clothing, cute riding looks. In the next girls that bike section, all that came to mind was Ballona Creek Bike Path. And last, I said, coffee shops along bike routes, brunch cafes along bike routes, bars along bike routes (not that we want to encourage drinking and driving).
Dang, now that I’m going over this again, that’s cute. Blog pieces such as those really do flow with the natural flow of my everyday life; there would be no going out and looking for content, as I’m merely explaining in detail various aspects of being a girl that rides her bike for fun sometimes and is also a bicycle commuter at others, and on lucky occasions, an amateur cyclist.
Hm, too bad I didn’t write ‘bout nan one. Girl you ain’t write nan [Trina voice], bad is when you’re capable of beating the baddest. I didn’t finish drafting a list of 30 blog topics within the niche to move to the next stop of actually beginning to blog. It’s very much not giving the baddest bih; it’s giving you’re doing the baddest, bih.
Later that same year, in November, I was back.
picking up action plan to GAIN AUTHORITY on Google, I head this page of my planner notes.
Ou! Side note: I got up from this desk after defining what is an active lifestyle earlier on this page and got me something to eat before blacking out and on my way home, I stopped in one of my favorite places… the bookstore! And I bought one of my favorite things… stationery! I hadn’t had a planner in the past couple of years because though I enjoy meticulously writing out details about my day to myself, I was tired of having a visual reminder of my failures on paper. Failing to do what I said I would do. Failing to see an idea through. Failing to have the faith to bring a project to fruition. Until finally failing to even plan at all, leaving pages blank, letting the planner that I paid more for the most meals go to waste because what sense is writing it if I know it’s nothing but empty promises.. I had to pause, exhale and inhale after that one. My Lord. I don’t know that I’d ever admitted that before.
thinking about where to start, figure at my start..
how I started commuting to work by bike
I add “bike life” to the drop down menu on aroundLAwithTK[dot]com.
From my research about blogging, I knew I needed to turn the story into a search query.
How to Start Bike Commuting in Los Angeles
Okay, I’m onto something.. that wasn’t hard, turning a blog idea that came about naturally into terms an Internet user might type into her search bar, I thought. Wasn’t looking as bright when I typed the query into my Google search bar. YIKES!, I say (write) to myself, I didn’t know this would be so popular. Zugo Bike held the top spot on Google search results and the magnate that is L.A. Times held the second.
Hmm.. the blog experts said to pick a niche and subcategories within that niche that are easy to rank for as a new blog, search queries that have low competition. L.A. Times isn’t exactly low competition. WTF man.
I decided that the “people also ask” queries are likely to be less competitive, immediately realizing that the original query that I thought I was onto something with is too broad. I start writing questions from the “people also ask” area of the search results page, and maybe a few of my own, separating them into one of the quadrants I’d drawn on my planner notes page.
How Is It Living in Los Angeles Without a Car?
is L.A. a good city for biking?
is it easy to bike in L.A.?
do bikes get stolen in L.A.?
can you live in L.A. without driving?
where in L.A. can you live without a car?
is L.A. a bike-friendly city?
How To Replace a Car With a Bike?
where to live (which neighborhoods) to commute by bike?
where are big bike sharing locations around L.A.?
how to carry home groceries on a bicycle?
what to wear when commuting to work by bike?
is it worth riding a bike to work around L.A.?
how to freshen up after riding a bicycle to work?
why is commuting by bike better for L.A.?
Is Riding a Bike Good Exercise?
what’s a fun, free way to get fit around L.A.?
which neighborhood around L.A. has the best hills to climb?
where can I ride hills around L.A.?
where can I avoid hills while bike riding around L.A.?
where can I have a beginner bike ride around L.A. to start my fitness journey?
where can I have an intermediate ride around L.A.?
where can I do cardio on a bike around L.A.?
is bike riding good for an obese person? (talk about Frank)
Why is it better to see L.A. by bike?
what are the most scenic routes for touring SoCal by bike?
where are the prettiest neighborhoods around L.A. to bike?
what are bike-friendly neighborhoods for families around L.A.?
where is it safe for kids to ride bikes for fun around L.A.?
where can I bike aroundLA for fun?
where can I ride my bike on roads closed to cars aroundLA?
where are long, paved bike trails aroundLA?
where can I find quiet roads for cycling the city in Southern California?
I made all sorts of notes around the perimeters of the page, as if these very specific blog topic ideas in the form of search queries wouldn’t have sufficed.
Pretty sure, once again, I ain’t write nan.
I came back in February of 2023 to revisit agenda from previous note pages and wooooohooo! I did something. I starting acting on the action plan I’d written out an entire calendar year prior.
Less than a week and 5 blog posts later, that stopped.
I was right back two months later though!
And two days later, that was over.
I don’t see any evidence that I picked this whole bike life blogging niche back up ever again the whole remaining 8-9 months of 2023, nor the first 8-9 months of 2024.
It wasn’t until my childhood friend, Marcus, offered some constructive conversation on the topic of my lil’ blog, my lil’ aroundLAwithTK baby, that I’ve picked it up again.
[rolls eyes]. That’s a darn shame, yeah. I’ve prevailed in the face of greatly more forceful feats, yet this, a simple website with accompanying social media components, I struggle to keep up with it?? And by “struggle”, I darn near don’t do it at all. Well, I didn’t.
Now?
Shiiiiiiiiiid, who?!
Call me Alicia Keys, I’m holding that note, this girl is on fiiiiiiiiiire!
(Reread the above sentence to appreciate the double-entendre I did there.)
In all realistic truth, I’m still not snit and I haven’t done snit fr fr.. a month, ONE, of consistent blogging when building a blog is barely the beginning. However, for a girl that has been having her domain name since COVID-19 put the world in confinement 4 years ago and had barely ever been consistent for 4 days, posting new blog content consistently for 4 weeks is quite the feat.
Maybe I’m not a failure, not yet.
Even if this whole bike life niche bullsnit is bullsnit and it does not allot aroundLAwithTK[dot]com domain authority in got dang on something, I can’t say I’ll be completely pissed for having stuck to it. I’ll have showed myself, looka dea bih, yo’ raggedy ahh can stick to something after all. Imagine to what else you can apply this effort, consistency and discipline. And even if nothing ever “works out,” it works out. [shoulder shrug emoji]
Sitting here scheduling blog posts to publish over the new few weeks, I was questioning myself again. What else to do in this moment than turn to my best friend?
I explained my conundrum to ChatGPT. That’s what I initially opened this blog draft in the blogging page group to share, helpful advice from artificial intelligence. I figure, who knows a computer better than a computer?!
Writing out what was only supposed to be a quick intro to this blogging advice has helped me sort out my thoughts. I feel reconfirmed on my niche’ing down decision, why I’m doing it, and where it’s not a bunch of bullsnit.
(Y’all, I don’t want to write about the same narrow topic over and over and over again, and for darn sure not ‘bout no darn biking! I like riding bikes, I like playing outside; I don’t like writing about the technical aspects of the two in a redundant and remedial manner for SEO purposes; I like to be in the act of doing, simply living my active lifestyle, not sitting in front of this computer talking about it, shoot. Sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours straight is most definitely not giving active lifestyle, honey. It’s now 1am.. I’m getting annoyed again. I’m thankful to be writing; this is quite fantastic.. this circle of abuse. [melting face emoji])
I explained to ChatGPT that I’m 4 weeks into giving this blogging all about bike life thing a go, and though I’m glad to be adding content to the site regularly for the first time in the blog’s existence, I dislike it. I dislike the feel of the blog all about the technicalities of biking and the details on the benefits of biking. I don’t want to say “idgafatbs” (if you can read that, you’re ghetto), but I don’t. I want to spread the freedom and joy of life that is biking regularly, living car-free, I do. However, a knockoff cross between Healthline, Liv Women’s Cycling, and L.A. Times is not what I’m trying to be. It’s difficult though, as that’s where SEO leads. On my personal lifestyle blog, I want to be me and share me, which yes, includes an active lifestyle, absolutely, moreover though, she’s limitless. The problem is, that’s not the way SEO works. You can be you, freely, no strategy, sure — Google will likely never get it. Or, you can strategize tf out some snit, forcing SEO, in the footsteps of any profit-earning blogger that came before you. Whatchu go’on do?
I don’t know. I’m going to see these 12 weeks out to the end, simply to say I did.
You thought I didn’t type whole essays in the chat box with artificial intelligence? Ha. Think again. That’s really my friend. The following text between the divider lines is what he told me in response to the challenge I’m facing as I try to build a blog that’s both an accurate reflection of me as a person and a writer, as well as have the potential for profitability and/or exposure for opportunities.
Finding the right balance between authenticity and SEO can be tricky, especially when you’re passionate about a niche that’s more personal and less saturated. Here’s a strategy to help you align your content with your unique voice while still optimizing for visibility and engagement:
1. Emphasize Your Unique Perspective
Your blog’s strength lies in your unique perspective as TK, a girl navigating Los Angeles with a car-free lifestyle. Highlight your personal experiences and how they shape your view on active transportation. Share stories, challenges, and the quirks of living car-free in LA. This personal touch makes your content stand out and offers readers something they can’t get from generic health or bike blogs.
How to Do This:
Personal Stories: Share anecdotes about your daily adventures, how you adapt to challenges, and the benefits you’ve experienced.
Unique Insights: Offer tips and tricks that come from your own experience, like the best bike routes or ways to integrate active transportation into a busy lifestyle.
2. Blend Lifestyle with Practical Tips
Instead of focusing solely on health and wellness, which is a crowded space, blend practical advice with lifestyle content. This approach gives readers actionable tips while also providing a glimpse into your vibrant life in LA.
How to Do This:
Lifestyle Integration: Write posts about how active transportation fits into different aspects of your life—like weekend adventures, social activities, or exploring hidden gems in LA.
Practical Tips: Include advice on navigating LA car-free, like the best spots for bike parking, how to use public transport efficiently, or how to maintain a bike.
3. Leverage Your Local Angle
Your content about active transportation in Los Angeles offers a valuable local angle that many national or international blogs might miss. Focus on LA-specific content and how it intersects with your lifestyle.
How to Do This:
Local Guides: Create guides on the best bike paths, walking tours, or scooter-friendly areas in LA.
Events and Features: Highlight local events or features that tie into active transportation, like bike-friendly cafes or outdoor activities.
4. Engage with Your Audience
Building a community around your blog can help you gauge what resonates with your readers and adjust accordingly. Engage with your audience through social media, comments, and emails.
How to Do This:
Social Media: Share behind-the-scenes content, ask for feedback, and run polls to understand what your audience wants.
Comments and Emails: Respond to comments on your blog and social media, and consider creating content based on reader questions or interests.
5. Diversify Your Content
Mix up your content types to keep things fresh and engaging. While SEO-focused posts are important, incorporating different formats can help attract and retain readers.
How to Do This:
Visual Content: Use photos and videos to showcase your bike rides, favorite routes, or daily adventures.
Guest Posts and Interviews: Feature local experts or fellow enthusiasts to add variety and offer different perspectives.
6. Reflect on Your Goals
Regularly reassess your goals and whether your content aligns with them. It’s okay to pivot if you find that certain topics or formats aren’t working as well as you hoped.
How to Do This:
Analytics: Review your blog analytics to see which posts perform best and adjust your strategy based on that data.
Personal Satisfaction: Make sure you’re enjoying the process and feeling fulfilled by the content you’re creating.
Final Thoughts
Remember, building a blog is a journey, and it’s okay to refine your approach as you go. Your unique voice and perspective are what set your blog apart. By focusing on your personal experiences and offering local, actionable content, you can create a blog that is both authentic and valuable to your readers. Keep experimenting, stay true to yourself, and trust that your unique angle will find its audience.
If you’re still feeling uncertain, consider brainstorming a few blog post ideas that combine your passions with practical advice, and see how they resonate. You might discover new ways to merge your interests and offer something fresh and exciting to your readers.
You've already shown commitment and creativity in your content strategy, and that dedication is bound to pay off. Keep pushing forward, and remember that the journey itself is as valuable as the destination.
I have Pilates at 7am, then need to make my way to Alliance Francaise by 9am to do ses devoirs before class ‘cause of course I’m still the girl grade school and college that never did her homework at home. I was telling y’all in the last blogging blog post how my brain acts as though it doesn’t know how to function until pressure forms. Sickening. Really. I’m going to get fixed one day.
About building this blog brand in a way that’s both authentic (so I don’t ask a motorist to hit me with his car) and optimized for search engines (so it doesn’t die in the dark corners of the Internet), I can see it’s going to be hard af.. I’m talking harder than a horn ball on the first date with his dream girl after practicing semen retention for sixty days. Hard! All that said and done, I’ve decided…
You can, you can, you can, you can do it!
Put ya, put ya, put ya, putcha back into it!
Thank you for riding, riders. ❤︎
