Blogging can be a great way of attracting your target audience to your content and keeping them up to date with the latest goings on with your business or personal interests, however it can sometimes be tough to keep up with it each and every day… or even a few times a week or month, depending on how life gets in the way.
So what can you do about coming up with topics each and every week and ensuring that your audience stays interested in what you are doing or purchasing the products or services that you might be promoting?
Remember why you’re doing what you’re doing…
It can be easy to get all wrapped up in coming up with relevant and timely content designed to promote your products or affiliate products in order to generate an income online, but from your audiences point of view they’re not just reading your content to find out about the latest product you are using or the next offer you have lined up.
If your goal is to truly help your audience and relate to them on a personal level, sometimes the easiest thing you can write about is what’s going on in your life at any given moment. Transparency and honesty will help you to build that connection with your audience and show them that it’s not all good times and roses, there are struggles too.
There’s no better way to communicate the reality of any given lifestyle than to display it warts and all, and not to be afraid of letting your audience see the real you, as scary as that may sound. In my opinion, the things that make it really hard to connect with so called influencers and celebrities is the constant stage-managing of anything that they share with the public, and god forbid anything is released that hasn’t gone through seven stages of approval first.
The fact is, people are people and we’re not perfect… no matter how hard we might try to make others think it is so.
So, embrace the nonsense or the bullshit and share it with your audience and bare all, your audience will likely thank you in the long run and you may even find that these “warts and all” posts are better received (and helpful) than your other content.
Just start writing…
The more you write, the easier it will become.
Even if you don’t end up with a publishable post or content to share, sit down and write about how your day has gone or what it is that you are trying to achieve (or tried to achieve last week). Similar to the point above, rather than spend a bunch of time considering what the latest keywords are and the density you need to achieve in order to entice the search engines to promote your content, just sit down and write about how you are feeling.
There’s been plenty of times when I’ve tried to “plan” what I wanted to say over the course of a week and in reality I just found myself boxed into the plan and not writing at all when I couldn’t decide exactly how to deliver the content I thought I should be writing.
On other occasions I’ve just sat down at my laptop and started tapping away and lo and behold a decent post has come of it… and while we’re on the subject, who but you gets to decide what constitutes a decent post in the first place?
If you’re happy with a few sentences sharing your latest high, low or somewhere in between then so be it.
Screw trying to come up with the best at all times and just get your thoughts out there. Not all of your content is going to resonate with everyone, and quite frankly if you’re trying to be all things to all people then you are likely to fail far more miserably than just being yourself when you share what’s going on in your life or business.
If you want a plan, make one…
There’s no reason not to make a plan if that’s the type of person that you are, but the key is to keep it simple.
Don’t make any plan too complex or over-egg it with focusing on whatever the latest hot topic is or what everyone else seems to be doing, write about the things that you find interesting and relevant. Most people will be able to tell when someone is passionate or interested in the topic they are writing about as it will shine through in the writing and not feel robotic or like it’s “trying too hard”.
So by all means, sit down at the start of each week and think about what you want to write.
Plan which days you are going to publish on and then consider what’s going on in your world or business life that you think would be good to share, but don’t paint yourself into a corner. Leave some room for spontaneity or to react to world events, especially if your an active consumer of other people’s content or news etc.
There’s no harm in leveraging other people’s content to generate your own and actually linking back to an article you have read or a podcast you have listened to, with your own opinion attached, is going to well received by both your audience and the author of the original content.
Be realistic with yourself…
Don’t feel bad if you find yourself with nothing to say on any given day or week.
Start small, maybe by committing to a new article once a week and then once you’re in the swing of things bump it up to 2 articles a week and then if you’re really keen make it 3. Sometimes less is more and you’re audience will be more interested in higher quality content less often, than seeing something every day that doesn’t provide any value.
And I wouldn’t be too picky about content length in the early days either, I’d rather read something short and to the point, than wade through a bunch of waffle in order to get to the nuggets sprinkled throughout. You’re not trying to win a prize in a writing competition and have to deliver 3000 words every time, your goal should be to provide value and connect with your audience.
So in conclusion…
Don’t take “writing” too seriously.
If you need a plan, then create one, if not, just write when it suits you and be realist about how often that is. Don’t be afraid to share the “reality” of your business or life, and be conversational when you do write… don’t get inebriated by the exuberance of your own verbosity (see what I did there).
Have fun with, share your story and experiences and your audience will thank you for it.
