I always joke with my friends that blog writers block is the lamest possible type of writer block in the world, but it’s still a problem that a lot of us have. If you set yourself a commitment like I have with ExpertPhotography, where you have to write three posts a week, it starts to get a small bit hard to come up with excellent content thoughts. This website is even harder, we post five times a week, but we do have the help of 3-4 different authors. In this post I’m going to help you get out of your writers slump and start producing content that people want to read.
Read This
As someone who has been blogging for nine months, I’ve learned a huge amount along the way (oooh there’s a the makings blog post ‘What I’ve Learned from 9 Months Blogging’), and I’ve written 125 different posts, each one of them different to the rest. IncomeDiary has over 260 posts in print now, with that number going up by five every week. We still manage to keep our content fresh though, and give the readers what they want to read, and what they need to learn, and that’s because we come up with excellent thoughts.
The pledge first thing that any of you need to do is to take notes. No matter what, where on earth you are, when you get an thought, write it down. I can’t even start to tell you the amount of thought that I’ve had that have been lost because I didn’t write them down honest away. You should keep a notebook just for this purpose, as well as notes on your phone, and notes on your notebook. On my Mac, I have loads of these stickies on my instrument panel where I can write down all the thoughts that I get, so I never lose one.
This is part of the problem that we all have; we reckon we can do it in our heads. How often do you start writing a post without putting some notes on paper first? If this is all you ever do, then I reckon you’ll be pleasantly surprised when your start taking notes first. It’s so much simpler to have everything down in one place, getting all your thoughts out of your head and onto paper, before they expire. The same goes for coming up with blog posts. You can’t just sit down and expect the thoughts to arrive, you have to invite and promote them out of the depths of your brain.
Brainstorming is an obvious choice for coming up with content thoughts, and that’s because it works. The excellent thing about brainstorming is that there are no terrible thoughts. I mean observably there are terrible thoughts, but they’re not terrible in the sense that they can often spurn new and stuck-up thoughts, which you may not have though of if you hadn’t place that thought down onto paper.
Back of the Mind – Not as Simple as it may Seem
I credit my enhancement as a photographer over the past year to the moving of my camera the world over. The world over I am, I’m moving my camera, so I’m always looking for the makings photos to take. If you can work out a way to walk around with your blog in your mind, then that’s half the battle; the thoughts will just come to you.
One of my post well loved posts, my beginner’s guide to photography, came about when I didn’t have any excellent thoughts for my website, and it was a Sunday and I had to get something written. I went out for a roast dinner with some friends, but I always had it in the back of my mind. When it came towards the end of my meal, it struck me, and instead of sticking around for another pint, I headed home and got to work. I didn’t really want to work that day, which is what made this post ideal, because I was mostly collating parts of different tutorials and sticking them all together in one place. It was my bone idle state of mind, and continuous thought in the back of my mind, which made me come up with one of my most well loved posts yet, which has led me onto making a product that I can sell about it. If you keep your blogging hat on, then there’s no reason why you can’t come up with new thoughts everyday, which will be different all the time, depending on how you’re feeling.
Search your Competitors
This is one of the best techniques that I can urge, and it involves using your competitors as inspiration. There are certain things that all in your niche is going to write about, that you simply might not have covered yet, so it would be a excellent thought to see what people more successful than you are doing. If it’s something basic, like exposure would be for photography, you simple copy the subject matter, write your own content, and give it a better name.
This is also a really excellent way of coming up with potentially better titles than they have, and something that I have done in the past. I saw a post called ‘how to take fantastic photos with a pop up flash’ or something similar, and I came up with my own post on the back of that, which was very successful, called ‘When you SHOULD and SHOULD NOT use a Flash’. Just by browsing what other people are writing, you can see what’s been well loved, and come up with something original for yourself.
Clever, Creative Brainstorming
You’re probably in need of brainstorming because you haven’t come up with enough decent thoughts yet for your blog, and you’ve hit a wall. This happens all the time, don’t worry. The first thing I would suggest would be to look at your most well loved style of posts on your website, and for me, that’s my tutorials on the basics. Now, I know you’re not stupid, you know how to brainstorm, but there’s more to it than that.
Here are some tips for generating new thoughts, inspired by another post that you’ve already written. I’m going to use my beginner’s guide to photography post as an example.
- Write something clear about it like ‘Why being a photographer is Fantastic’, and then write the opposite, ‘Why being a photographer Sucks’. – You’ll find the negative side gets a lot more attention.
- Collect people/links to inspire your readers ‘Top 20 Young Photographers’.
- Interview someone on their encounter with the subject – how they got started as a photographer.
- Talk about your private encounter with the subject – ’10 Awkward Mistakes I Made as a Beginner Photographer’.
- Talk about what they can do with the in rank – ’10 Steps to Taking Better Photos’.
- How they can improve they can make money with this in rank – ’10 Quick and Simple ways to Make Money as a Photographer’
- Talk about aspects related inside the post, and extend them further. For example, I talk about arrangement in the post, so I could then talk about the beginner’s guide to arrangement, or arrangement tools to improve your photography.
- Lastly, follow it up with a sequel, people like sequels.
There’s a excellent chance that if you’re reading this post, you’ve exhausted your brain from coming up with blog posts, and that means that working with what you’ve already Written. Lets take one of my posts on ExpertPhotography as an example and see what we can do with it to come up with new thoughts. I reckon you’ll probably be surprised with what we can do. Do the same with your website, but make sure you pick a honestly well loved post. I’m choosing 4 Steps To Understanding ISO, which is my fifth most well loved post of all time.
Here’s a quick social class to the post. It covers one of the most fundamental parts of photography, which is exposure, and the reason for the popularity was because it was shared by the people at Adobe Lightroom on their Facebook and Twitter.
Let’s have a look at what I came up with from just 10 minutes of brainstorming, using the tips listed above:
So you see, you might reckon that there’s nothing more that you could write on a subject, but there’s still plenty, which can be largely written without overlapping. From my results, I would probably select three of them, so that I don’t bore my readers with the same subject matter.
Making them Killer
Ok, so you’ve come up with a load of thoughts by now, but this isn’t your average ‘how to brainstorm’ post, I’m here to help you make them killer. To do this, you need to take a excellent thought and make it better. The first thing you’re going to have to do is use Google to find out what your struggle is. Search what you’re writing about, and see what has been written before you, and then see what you can do to make yours even better. Don’t expect that just because your content is better, you’ll be higher up in the search results than your competitors, because that sort of thing takes time.
In a crowded market, you need to break yourself by the struggle, and the best way to do that is to be unique, and to be better. Do one or the other, or even better, both.
I’ve always said that when it comes to writing content, coming up with what I was going to write about was half the battle, and I really do believe that. When you’ve come up with a decent post title that will attract readers enough to click on the link (something that Michael is very excellent at), then you’ve done what you set out to do really, it’s up to them if they want to read it or not.
Lets take one of my brainstorming thoughts from above, and see how we can come up with a killer title that will promote people to click on my link, and spend time on my site. You need to start off with your keyword, so for photography, I might use the word ‘arrangement’. Then I like to include a verb, and because of the nature of the keyword, I would probably use ‘improve’, and then I like to add an eye-infectious phrase that will promote people to click on my link. Place all this together, and you may want to add a number as well, if you like writing in a list format. Lets break this down into chunks:
Keyword:
Arrangement Tools
Keyword with verb:
Arrangement Tools to Improve your Photography
Keyword, verb, and eye-catcher:
Arrangement Tools to Improve your Photography and Change the way you Shoot Forever
Number, keyword, verb, and eye-catcher:
10 Arrangement Tools to Improve your Photography and Change the way you Shoot Forever
Now tell me, which one are you most likely to click on?
Call to Action
Take 10 minutes now with some pen and paper, and come up with as many new thoughts that you can; don’t place it off or you’ll just use it as an excuse to place off writing. Leave a comment below letting me know how many you can come up with. If you want to keep up to date with IncomeDiary, please come and like us on Facebook.