Part 3 – Blog Content Brainstorming
We have discussed how to write attractively, so now we are going to
discuss what we are going to write on. The very first option that I think a
blogger should write on is a topic that he or she feels passionate and
interested in. You’ve chosen to make blogging your career because you want to
escape a mundane job – forcing yourself to write about something that you’re
not interested in is as torturous as as your mundane job!
The other reason I ask you to write about something you’re passionate
about is because your feelings and emotion shows through your writings! If you
feel indifferent to a certain subject but still write about it just for the
sake of it, your readers will notice it. Remember the advice about writing with
a personality? Forcing yourself to write will not establish a welcoming style
at all.
Once you have chosen your main theme, start posting to your blog about
it and make it a habit to post at least once every day, even if it’s only a
comment on the newspaper article you read today. Think of yourself as a
gigantic train. It takes a lot of effort to get you moving. First, you might
just budge an inch, and later trudge slowly on until you finally reach your
full speed. Then, it’ll take a lot of effort to stop you instead!
However, no matter how well you know your topic, your brain is bound to
get exhausted over some time, so here are methods to brainstorm for content for
your blog.
1)
The very best way to brainstorm is
to see what other bloggers have to say about stuff happening in your field of
discussion. And the very best way to find related blogs is to use http://blogsearch.google.com/ or www.technorati.com. There are other
decent search tools too, you just have to look around. From other blogs, you
can gather more knowledge on your subject and you can also comment on what
others have to say on your own blog!
2)
Once you’ve established contacts
with other bloggers in your field, you’ll have quite an unexhaustible “conversation”
ongoing, so you’ll not need to actively search for content to write about.
However, if you’re still stuck, search for news articles related to your niche
in the local newspaper or online through sites like http://news.google.com and http://news.yahoo.com.
3)
You can also have conversations with
people with the same interest as you in the particular niche you choose, so you
will eventually build up a bank of questions and answers and interesting
discussions to write about in your blog. To do this, join forums related to
your niche, but don’t join every forum there is out there. Stick with one or
two with the biggest number of members or the one which is most focused on your
niche. This will also come in handy much later in gaining traffic and
generating profits.
Remember to keep up your momentum of posting at least once per day (or
more if you have a lot of content to write about) so that the major search
engines will know that your blog has fresh content everyday. This will attract
the search engines to spider your page on a more frequent basis, hence gaining
you extra traffic.
Don’t worry about the paragraph above about generating traffic and search
engines, because we’re going to talk about that in more detail later. For now,
remember to keep a consistent effort everyday and build up momentum like that
of a locomotive!
