Stop Letting Blogging “Shoulds” Run Your Business

Originally published as “To Be Successful Give Up Your Shoulds” and substantially updated in September 2026. The seven original reader comments remain below because they capture exactly why this topic still matters.

Blogging advice is full of rules disguised as universal truths.

You should publish every day. You should publish less and update more. You should be on every social platform. You should quit social media and focus on SEO. You should build a huge email list. You should start a podcast. You should make video. You should use AI. You should never use AI.

Some of that advice may be useful. None of it automatically belongs on your to-do list.

Advice Is Not an Obligation

A strategy can work extremely well for another blogger and still be wrong for your audience, business model, skills, available time or goals.

That does not make the advice bad. It means advice needs context.

Before adding another “should” to your workload, ask:

• What problem would this solve?
• Does that problem actually exist in my business?
• What evidence suggests this strategy could help?
• What will it cost in money and time?
• What will I stop doing to make room for it?
• How will I know whether it worked?

If you cannot answer those questions, you probably do not need to rearrange your business because someone made a confident video about it.

Turn Useful “Shoulds” Into Decisions

Sometimes the pressure is coming from you because you already know something matters.

“I should send my newsletter” is different when your email list consistently sends readers to your site and generates sales.

At that point, stop leaving it as a vague obligation. Decide what you are going to do.

For example: “I will send one useful email every Thursday.” Now you have a plan you can test and adjust.

If you repeatedly say you “should” do something but never make room for it, examine whether it truly belongs among your priorities.

Watch for Contradictory Expert Advice

One of the funny things about blogging is that you can usually find respected people recommending opposite strategies.

That is partly because different businesses need different things. A news publisher, recipe blogger, author, local service provider and UGC creator are not building identical businesses.

Even two bloggers in the same niche can have different strengths. One may thrive on camera while another builds most of her traffic through search and Pinterest.

Your job is not to identify the one expert who possesses the universal blogging formula. Your job is to understand your own business well enough to evaluate advice.

Measure Instead of Following Rules Blindly

When possible, replace “successful bloggers say I should” with your own data.

If someone says you need to post five times a week, test whether additional publishing actually improves traffic, subscribers, revenue or another goal enough to justify the work.

If a platform takes ten hours a week and produces almost nothing useful, popularity alone is not a reason to stay there.

See Tracking What’s Working and Making Money for a more practical way to evaluate where your effort is paying off.

Be Careful With “Best Practices”

Some best practices exist for good reasons. Accessibility, security, clear disclosures, reliable backups and respecting contractual obligations are not merely trendy productivity suggestions.

But even legitimate best practices can become distorted into rigid internet rules that lose their original purpose.

Learn why a recommendation exists. Then you can distinguish a meaningful principle from somebody’s preferred workflow.

You Do Not Need Every Opportunity

A growing blog creates more possibilities, not fewer. You may be able to pursue affiliate income, advertising, products, UGC, sponsorships, subscriptions, courses, speaking, social monetization and more.

Being able to do something does not mean you should do all of it at once.

A business becomes easier to manage when you deliberately choose a few priorities and allow other good ideas to remain good ideas for later.

Build the Blog That Fits Your Life

The original readers of this article talked about wasting time worrying about what other people said they should be doing, generating ideas without implementing them and getting caught up in expectations. More than a decade later, bloggers face even more advice and more platforms telling them what they supposedly need.

The solution is not to stop learning.

Learn widely. Ask questions. Study what successful people are doing. Test ideas that make sense.

Then make your own decisions.

Building Better Blogs exists to help you understand your options—not to hand you another pile of rules. The goal is a blog that supports your life and your goals, not one built around somebody else’s definition of success.