Maintaining a blog isn’t always easy. Sometimes the ideas flow like water and other times your ideas are as dry as a desert. When the ideas are no longer flowing, you stop writing and your blog is forgotten until you come up with new content. Here are some simple but important tips I remind myself of when it’s time to write.
Search the Web for Topics
If you find yourself experiencing writer’s block, search the web for blog topics. There are several websites that list hundreds of topics to dive into. Some websites offer blog topic generators. They aren’t the best, but they may help stimulate your mind.
Brain Dump
We’ve all heard it before, but brain dumping is wonderful. Writing random words, thoughts, things you need to get done, just anything and everything can be therapeutic. You can place items in order or scribble randomly on paper or in a program similar to Microsoft Word, but I highly recommend paper. If you still can’t figure out what to write, walk away from your brain dump and revisit it later. The more you do it, those random words become phrases, full sentences, and the next thing you know, you’re writing a full blog.
Don’t Worry About Order
This is an interesting habit I’ve discovered about myself. When I write for clients, I tend to write things out of order then rearrange it before submission. For clients, I follow the inverted pyramid format. If you’re unfamiliar with that, it’s a writing style that features the most important information at the beginning of the article and filters down to the least important. The goal is to retain readers from beginning to end.
When I write for my blog, I don’t pay attention to the order… all the time. My only goal is to write. When you worry about the order, the structure may not come to you right away causing you to not want to write at all. When you have an idea, write about what comes to mind first. If you’re writing a story and you have a clear vision of how it ends, write the ending. Don’t wait until you write the beginning and middle. If you have to, write the story backward.
It Doesn’t Have to be Deep
You don’t have to write a thesis. A blog can be as little as 300 words or images of your favorite quotes. This is called microblogging. Creating short and quick posts to stay active or to keep your community updated on life events, your brand, etc. works just as well as full-length content.
Hit Publish
I won’t go into whether or not your grammar is correct, if your writing has flow, or if your blog is SEO friendly. There are other articles on the web for that. I’m here to encourage you to simply start writing.
Once your blog is complete, read over to see if you missed anything, and hit publish. Release it into the world wide web and feel the accomplishment of publishing content. There are amazing writers in the world, but it doesn’t come easy to everyone. Don’t doubt yourself. The more content your produce, the more hitting “publish” will be an afterthought. Just keep writing and have fun doing it!
Yappinist 