What happens when someone decides to create a blog? You have to decide what platform to use, what hosting company to choose, and what domain name to purchase. And that’s only the basic technical setup. You then must decide what you’ll write about, or in other words, what’s your content?
As they say, content is King, and readers don’t visit blogs because they’re pretty, they visit blogs because their content rocks! This is where potential bloggers first get hung up. It can be overwhelming to choose a specific topic or highly related topics if you are passionate about many. How many friends do you know over the years who have purchased all of the above, but have never written one blog post. The “Hello World” or “Blog Under Construction” sign has been up for months or even years. All because of Content. In the world of traditional writing this is usually referred to as “Writer’s Block”, but in 2013 I like to call it “Blogger’s Block”.
So how does a newbie overcome the dreaded “Blogger’s Block”? Here are 3 ways in my opinion to do just that…
1. Know thy Audience
The first question you should ask yourself is “Who is my audience?”. Why will they be visiting your blog? Take out a sheet of paper and write down the top 5 things your target audience is looking for. these topics must be relevant or interesting to them. Then ask yourself “How do they like to receive that information?”: long posts, short posts, videos, podcasts, etc? Knowing who your audience is should always be the first thing to tackle when producing content of any type.
2. Narrow thy Focus
The second question usually seems to be the easiest of the the three, but in reality it’s always the hardest. “What should the focus be of your content?” The narrower the focus, the better. It’s best to own a niche space in the virtual world since there’s less competition. Readers will begin to look to you as an expert in a particular topic and be more likely to subscribe to your blog. You want to carve out a niche in the virtual world of information and become a trusted source of knowledge as well as an influencer for your chosen topic(s). You will probably know what you are passionate about, and what you want to blog about at first, but you must decide what inside that topic you will be focused on. In my case “marketing” is a very wide term that covers many broad areas; instead of just blogging about “marketing” I’ve chosen the more focused topic of “marketing technology and productivity”.
3. Understand thy Time
The third question to answer is the most practical, yet also can be the most overlooked. “How much time can I invest in blogging per week?” Most blogs die within the first 6 months. Bloggers get excited and will blog for a while, but eventually they get bored and move on to other things in their lives just like children with ADHD. They may still be passionate about their topic(s), but they’ve lost their mojo and haven’t remained consistent and posted content in a timely manner. To beat the odds and make it more than 3 months follow a few practical steps of organization. First write down how many posts of content you want to publish per week. Can you commit to 3 posts or are you a stay-at-home mother of four and can only create content for one hour a week, thus one post a week? Next, create an Editorial Calendar for your blog. Schedule for the next 3 months a piece of content or blog post topic to be published each week. This will keep you accountable and be your best tool to overcoming stagnation and eventually the death of a blog.
The purpose of the 3 simple steps above is to overcome “Blogger’s Block” and get you started. Most bloggers never get past the first post of content, but by using the 3 steps above you will.
