One of the most important and hardest aspects of maintaining a blog is to keep writing. Some people have a talent to keep writing, but a lot do have that writer’s block. When you write for your blog it’s very easy to get bored and skip a day or two – procrastinate. But it gets harder and harder to write the more you procrastinate. Eventually your blog becomes outdated without any fresh content. As I said in my first article in these series “Start Successful Blog: Brainstorming – Step 1”, you need to make a commitment.

2. Content Writing

When it comes down to writing you need to have stuff to write about, and sometimes it gets hard to know what to write about. This is where a lot of blogs fail.

You don’t want to start a blog with one post. That’s just not enough content for search engines and for your readers. You want to give them something to chew on. Before going live with your blog you should write at least 10 posts. You should change the date for each article to make it look like it was posted on different days. Your blog will have some good content for search engines to chew on and you readers will have more to read and brows through.

I want to discuss few ideas I’ve seen used all over the internet when it comes to writing content for your blog. It’s up to you to decide which one works for you and which doesn’t. Whatever you do DON’T PLAGIARIZE. For one, you will get caught; and two, it’s just unethical and you will face consequences. Plus, people like to read some original content.

Tips and Tricks

Some good articles that people like to read are tips and tricks on a specific topic. If you know some for the topic you’re writing than write about it. But don’t jam everything into one article, spread it out a bit. One trick or tip per article, then use some examples, stories, images, etc. to make your article longer. Articles don’t have to be long, a good article can have 4-5 paragraphs with 8-12 sentences each. Extremely long articles are hard to scroll and read through sometimes. If you do plan on writing a long article than think of a way to break it down into series of articles, this will be great for SEO and monetization when it comes down to that.

RSS Feeds

A good idea is to find a good RSS reader and start subscribing to sites and blogs that are related to your topic. This gives you a good flow of information in your industry. It gives you a great opportunity to write articles for your blog based on what others are writing, which gives you a better chance to be discovered through search engines.

When you see something in a feed that you like you have two options: 1. write a response to that article, citing it and linking to it. 2. Write your own article about what the other article is talking about, but do cite the original article and link to it. Give credit to the author. It helps establish your credibility, which will increase your chances of getting cited and linked to in other blogs; and get more readers.

Reviews

Another good source of inspiration can be found in reviewing. You can review practically everything, products, services, other websites, movies, albums, people, events, etc. This is a good way to draw traffic. Identify hot topics that people are searching for and see if you can write a review for whatever that is. This also applies to all other topics, try to write about hot topics and trends to generate traffic for your blog.

Sponsored Articles

This is a sensitive topic. A lot of people feel that writing sponsored articles is unethical, especially when you write reviews about products of your sponsor. A good way to approach this is by writing articles that talk about services and products casually, you don’t have to endorse them unless you like them. Plus, usually you have to mention that the article was sponsored by XYZ business. If you’re interested in making money on writing sponsored articles a good resource is PayPerPost.com

Interviews

Why not interview somebody? Interviews are a good way to make connections and establish your credibility. You don’t have to meet face-to-face for an interview. In this day and age emails work just fine. People you interview don’t have to be celebrities, find small business owners or other bloggers. Sharing knowledge is very important. Most bloggers will love being interviewed; it gives them another opportunity to promote their blog and share their knowledge. One day you will be interviewed as well, who knows. Just keep interviews short, maybe 10 questions tops. Concise, to the point interviews help readers stay focused and interested. They will love it and will come back for more.

You are free to write about whatever you want. These are few ideas that might help you generate meaningful content for your blog if you ever get stuck, or when you’re planning on starting your own blog. Feel free to share your ideas and comments below.

Next time I’ll talk about setting up your blog for success, where I will talk about what platform is right for you.