Anyone who blogs consistently knows how hard it is to come up with fresh content all the time. And when you do, it can take hours and hours to perfect that article before it’s ready to go live.
Say you work on a post relentlessly for two or three hours one day, and a few days later you go back, make your final edits and set it up to publish next Monday. And then the Friday before you see that someone else has gone and posted their spin on the exact same idea that you worked SO hard on.
You run into a fork in the road – do I publish my article as is no amendments? Do I delete it and cry over the hours of hard work? If I publish it are people going to think that I saw XYZ’s blog post and copied the idea? Do I include a link to XYZ’s post to show camaraderie?
I’ll be honest, when I have experienced this (and it happens at least once every other week to me!) I get so angry at myself. I kick myself when I’m down. I scold myself and question why didn’t I just post it when I first had the idea. Why did I put SO much work into it, and not publish right away. Than I usually sit on the post for a few weeks before I put it live, unless I think it’s really, really good and want feedback and to share it right away. A few times I have gone back and reworked the post to be a little bit different that what XYZ published and often included a link or reference to XYZ’s post as well.
What would you do?
