Blogging Tips & Tricks: Create Content

If you’ve been in the marketing and promotion or blogging world longer than a nano second, you’ve heard the chant: “To build an audience, push content.”

To your way of thinking, that’s one of those pieces of advice that’s simple, but not easy. In fact, you may be tired of hearing this from every Tom, Dick, and Harriet. Maybe you want to shout: “Okay. Content. I got it, but how do it get this content?”

Sure. You can purchase content from a retail articles site, but the real answer is to create your own. Maybe you’re not a professional writer with the ability to knock out a post in the time it takes you to read this one, but, I have some secrets that might make it easier for you.

The Truth

First, let me be honest with you. Pro writers don’t just turn on the tap and wait for ideas to gush forth like water from a spigot. However, we do know a few tricks of the trade.

1. Make a commitment to blog on certain days each week. My goal is to blog every day. Sometimes I don’t reach that goal, but most times I do. If you’re just starting and have a lot of time constraints, just choose one or two days a week to blog.

2. Establish an editorial calendar for your blog based on the number of days a week that you commit to blog. Let’s say you’re going to blog on Sundays and Thursdays. Print out a monthly calendar. Then mark the days you’re going to blog by outlining that day’s “box” in red.

3. Brainstorm with pen and paper. I actually have one of those no-spiral notebooks that I use for blog brainstorming. Get one if you want to keep track of your ideas. Sit back and start brainstorming on paper.

If you already have a focus for your blog, this will be easier. If you don’t, but you know that you want to share something with the world, this will give you a way to discover what you wish to share.

List everything that interests you enough that you’d like to talk about it with someone. Read over the list and circle the words that really resonate with you. Next, below these words, list something that you either know or want to know. Do any of these things kind of clump together in areas of interest? If so, those are your “umbrella” topics that lead to your Categories or Labels, and you’ll write about these topics again and again.

4. Assign an umbrella topic or Category/Label to each day you want to write.

5. Immediately, write 2 blog posts under each category and notate the title of your post on the appropriate day. Upload the article to your blog dashboard and schedule it on a specific day. If you plan to blog 2 days a week, that immediately covers you for 2 weeks and takes the pressure off.

6. Mark your next writing day on your calendar. Don’t let more than 1 day go before you are brainstorming and writing again. Ideally, spend 10 minutes each day brainstorming ideas based on your Categories so when your writing day rolls around, you know what you’ll write.

7. Capture ideas. Keep a small notebook or use your cell phone or some device that’s easily accessible to note ideas as they crop up. Once you start writing and thinking of ideas, you’ll be amazed at how easily ideas come to you.

Example

Look over at my Categories. These are the things that interest me all the time. I write a lot in Internet Success and Writing Biz to help other writers or those who just want to blog because it’s fun or they’re trying to make it part of their business marketing plan. I always have something to say about that because the topic is of broad interest to many and covers virtually anything that helps you succeed with words.

Each week, I print a weekly calendar with each day having a specific overall topic of interest. For instance, Review is on one day. Writing Advice on another. Internet Help is on another. This calendar isn’t an ironclad must-follow plan but a jumping off point for my imagination. My Categories fall under these broad “umbrella” topics.

I may have read something in the daily paper that I want to talk about instead. But, if I ever find myself in the creative doldrums, I can just look at my “umbrella” topic for the day and know I can write something about it.

It’s like cooking dinner at night. If you lay out the package of frozen chicken in the morning, it’s there when you come home in the afternoon so you know you’ll be cooking some kind of chicken for dinner. If you don’t lay out something, you come home and wonder: “Geez, what am I going to fix for dinner?”

Takeaway Truth

Professional writers know this truth: the more you think; the easier to find ideas, and, the more you write; the easier the words flow.

Tags: blogging tips, blogging tricks, create content, Internet Success, Writing

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