If you think of your blog as an online magazine (which you should) then one of the best ways to beat bloggers’block is to create an editorial calendar for your blog posts. Organizing your blog topics and future posts in this manner will help inspire you to write more and kvetch less about having nothing to write about.
What follows are five tips for creating your blog editorial calendar:
1. Pick five to seven general topics in your frame of expertise that you know you can generate good content with.
2. Brainstorm on each topic for 20 minutes. Write down every single thing that comes to mind under each of those content headers.
3. Look at the newly created content under those headers and divide it by days of the week. Remember if you can blog at least three days a week it is invaluable to your blog’s visibility.
4. Take the content you have and see if you can break it up into Friday tips, or Monday takeaways. In other words, establish an editorial pattern for your blogging. If you want to always blog on Fridays about how to find inner creativity, then that would always be a Friday post and you can create tons of future content around that specific topic.
5. If there are areas of your content that seemed much harder to brainstorm on then you’ll know which ones you need to do more research for and find outside sources as well as your own insight to incorporate into the blog posts.
Bonus Tip: Spend 30 minutes a day three times a week on blogging and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your blog starts building long-term community.
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In honor of Al Franken, I had to use his Stuart Smalley phrase in the headline of this blog. The bigger question in the headline is actually a phrase I hear all too often when I’m working with clients on their blogs who say, “I have nothing to blog about. Nothing.”
When you’re blogging, your ideas for content should be limitless. Don’t give into bloggers’ block and stinkin thinkin that you don’t have anything important to say. Everyone has something to contribute in this amazing time of Web 2.0.
While you want to keep your blog topics consistent, congruent and captivating, you can do this easily by establishing a theme for your entire blog.
When I was a magazine editor we always had an overall theme to each issue of the publication, you can do the same thing with a blog.
First, build a real editorial calendar (An editorial calendar shows the major editorial features planned for forthcoming issues of a newspaper, magazine, and similar. …), I use an Excel spreadsheet.
In the spreadsheet put down all the themes/ideas that you want your blog to convey.
Once you have those built, then you can start using that spreadsheet as your editorial guide for the entire blog. Break it up into days of the week to drill down even more what you’ll post, when you’ll post and what sources you’ll be drawing from.
If you blog three times a week then it might be on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
So for example:
Mondays – post 3 tips
Wednesdays - post 3 links to valuable insights from other bloggers in your peer arena and add one of your own.
Fridays – How-to post on your vertical – These are posts that establish and build your thought leadership in your arena, so depending on what you’ re doing they might be, “How to drive book sales?”, “How to get more b2b leads?”, or even “How to go green in the office.”
If you don’t want your blog to join the blog cemetery, where it gradually dies on the blog vine for lack of content and updating, then employing an editorial calendar is a great tool to keep the content lively.
The other bonus you’ll have by using an editorial calendar is that you’ll be able to find and repurpose your blog content more easily. You’ll also find that you might just see visitor spikes on certain topics and this will give you a superb way to track what content your audience is most interested in as well.
Other ways to beat BLOGGERs BLOCK:
1. Stop whining and start typing.
2. Ask your community to occasionally guest post to your blog
3. Read other blogs and news websites to keep ideas flowing
4. Build Google alerts around key themes or ideas and then use those results to spark your writing.
5. Keep in mind that blog posts don’t need to be all the same length. If a 500 word blog post sounds daunting, then set a goal of 300 words per blog post. If you use tags and categories for each post you’ll still be getting Google search power for the post.
6. Use excerpts from other content – case studies, white papers, articles on your website.
Remember as Stuart Smalley noted, “I think this is the best blog I’ve ever done. And you know what? I deserve it! [ turns to his mirror ] Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!” (Ok, he didn’t say blog, but he would have made a great blogger!)
I think this is the best show I’ve ever done. And you know what? I deserve it! [ turns to his mirror ] Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!
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