Some days, I fire up the laptop, open the word processor and sit motionless. I just do not know what to write. I know who I should be writing for, I know, broadly, the subject matter I should be writing about. However, I am just unable to find that initial impetus to get started. If you are a blogger then I am sure you are familiar with the feeling.
Here, I want to talk about some of the methods I have found useful in getting started on a blog entry.
i. Read other blogs in your niche. Reading the efforts of other bloggers can often ignite ideas for your own posts. For instance, you may disagree or wish to pose a contrary viewpoint to the article.
ii. Read the comments on popular blogs in your niche. This can be even more inspirational than reading blog posts as there are often many good supplementary points made in response to good blog posts on busy blogs. The responses and perhaps your response to them can help shape your own ideas for a post.
iii. Join busy, active forums in your niche. Good, informative forum posts are often like mini blog posts: they can be succinct and pithy, and contain good information for furthering a discussion. In an active forum thread you often see many arguments and counter-arguments, all of which can help provide ideas and information for your own posts.
iv. Keep abreast of offline media in your niche. Despite a great shift to online media in recent years, there is still an overwhelming majority of matter in print. With strong competition from online publishing, newspapers and magazines have been forced to raise the bar in the quality of their content.
v. Listen to talk radio. There is a great amount of excellent discussion that goes on via radio. Some might see this as a dead medium in the 21st century, but the argument made above in (iv) about offline media outlets raising the bar in the face of online competition applies to radio too. BBC Radio 4, NPR, and many other local and national talk radio stations provide a huge amount of challenging and informed discussion daily, much of which can be used to shape your own ideas for blog posts. Of course, the degree to which talk radio might help will depend on your niche – for news, current affairs, politics and sport, radio coverage is almost unrivaled.
v. Watch TV. Although there is a lot of “background noise” and advertising on TV, there is still good solid programming that can be converted to blogging material. A lot of (v) above applies.
vi. Re-visit previous material. Over time your ideas and stance on particular issues develop. It’s natural. Therefore, you might like to look at previous entries on your blog and see how you can embrace and extend them
vii. Niche related press releases. Staying abreast of recent releases in your niche via PR releases can provide you with cutting edge information that you can weave in to blog articles.
viii. Article directories. Read the better efforts in your niches posted at some of the larger article directories (such as Ezine Articles or Go Articles).
ix. The buzz on social networking sites. Check your favourite social networking media to see what people are discussing related to your niche.
x. Try a list. See whether you can make an original list based article for your niche. This might be along the lines of “10 best ways to…”
