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Quick Blogging Tip #6: Simple steps to never suffer from writers block again

Two simple steps:

One of the ways I ensure that I never run out of topics to write about is because of the way I keep track of post ideas. The first thing you need to do to generate more post ideas is to keep blogging in your mind throughout the day. By making an effort to think about topics to write about throughout the day you’ll be able to generate a lot more ideas than if you just sit down at your computer with the intent to blog.

Now that you are thinking about topics and ideas to write about on your blog it’s important that you find a way to keep track of your ideas. Regardless of where I’m at during the day or what I happen to be doing, I will always take time to record a post idea. If you’re forgetful like me and don’t take the time that second to write down the idea you may forget about it.

How I generate most of my ideas:

When I’m walking from the bus stop to the building I work at, people are rarely around me and it allows me to take some time to really contemplate ideas for my blog. As soon as I think of an idea I open up my phone and record the post headline and idea into a voice memo.

Other times I’ll be at work and an idea for a post will pop into my head. I’ll write a quick email to myself with the post topic and one sentence on the idea and send it off.

If I don’t have computer access or my phone handy and an idea comes to me whether by something I’ve seen or simply a thought process that has come to mind I’ll find a piece of paper or constantly repeat or think about the idea non stop until I can get to a computer. Yes, I’m that forgetful

Final thoughts:

The point is that by thinking about your blog on a daily basis and recording ideas as they come to you it will be a lot easier to sit down and write your posts. At this time I have about 14 post titles sitting in my Wordpress control panel waiting to be written. I already have a general idea and direction from these posts and if I ever experience a lack of ideas I can rely on the post titles I’ve set out for myself. These post titles and ideas have all come while during my daily habit of making a concentrated effort to think about ideas to write on and never from just sitting down at the computer with the intent to blog.

How do you come up with topics to write about?

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Quick Blogging Tip #5: What good is advice if you don’t take it?

This week’s quick blogging tip focuses on similiar concepts that I discussed in last weeks tip “Read less. Write more.” but I believe it’s important enough and different enough to warrant a seperate post. So here it goes:

On my way to and from work I spend some time reading other blogs or forums that focus on the web work I’m involved in. I will frequently see a wide range of great ideas from ways to improve traffic, increase RSS subscibers, make money online (lol. Such an over used term) and more. The problem is that for those of us that are still doing the 9-5 thing, it’s often hard to spend time blogging, marketing our websites etc. This could be due to a number of reasons, wether it’s lack of time, laziness or something else. So I’ve decided to really focus on taking notes on various things I need to get back to. As an example, if I read something that I know can be beneficial to my online business if I will write it down in my ongoing to do list.

Now that I have this to do list I’m able to keep track of all the great ideas I read about and can later go back set a time to execute them. With the to do list when I have some free time I’m now able to simply look at my list and see what stuff I want to work on first without having to try and come up with ideas without a clear record to act on. As an example, I’ll say to myself, “Ok, I’m going to work on my websites from 7:45 PM until 10:00 PM and then I can go watch American Gladiators on my DVR (lol I’m a Hulkamaniac).” Then I’ll open up my to do list and work on what’s I believe is the most important item first. Keeping a to do list is a terribly simple concept but I know that in the past if I didn’t take the time to write down what I needed to implement on my websites after reading about an idea it’d never get done.

Do you actively focus on implementing the advice you receive from others or are you just a passive reader?

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Quick Blogging Tip #4: Read Less. Write More.

How many times do you find yourself saying, “If only there was more time in the day ________ “? This blank can be anything. If you’re like me putting in 40 hours a week and trying to manage an online business while at the same time juggling a personal life that’s full of other hobbies and interests than you definitely know what I’m talking about. Even if you aren’t as “busy” as I am I bet you still only have a limited amount of time to spend writing for your blog.

For me, I’ve found that often times I get caught up reading what others bloggers have to say and not enough time to spend writing about what I have to say on my blog. Now I’m obviously not trying to tell you to stop reading other blogs I’m just trying to say that it’s important to find a healthy balance. What’s the point on catching up with industry news and reading other bloggers in your niche if at the end of the day you’ve failed to do anything with that information? I recommend that you re evaluate how you spend your time online. For me I’ve simply set a specific time in the day where the only thing I do is blog. That’s what I’ve been doing and it has worked out wonderfully. You may also want to re-evaluate which blogs you keep in your RSS reader. Now when you come upon my RSS feed you’ll obviously make the smart decision and keep it :). Also, I’m sure there are other sites that you don’t need to visit on a daily basis in order to free up more time to spend on writing.

Don’t become a passive follower living vicariously through other bloggers success. Write your own success story and stop spending so much time reading about others.

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As many of you know, I’m a part time web publisher. I run websites, forums and blog all in the time I have outside of a 40 hour work week. This schedule leads me to force myself to get work done on the weekend as well as during the week. One of the main things I was working on last week was a guest post for a fairly big blogger. I’ll let you know who if I don’t see it posted soon. I submitted the post on Friday and think that it is just as good or better than some of the other guest posts on the blog (yes I suppose I’m bias). But the thing is you’ll never know if the time you spent working on a guest post will pay off.

What I’ve learned last week is that you should never let the work you spend on a guest post affect the posting frequency on your own blog. I didn’t post as much as I should have last week and it was because of the time I spent working on the guest post that may or may not even get onto the site. Even if the guest post makes it onto the site, I still should not have let the time I spent on the guest post affect the time I spent on my own blog. What I plan to do next time I work on a guest post is make sure I have posts already completed and ready to publish on my own blog before I take on the task of writing a guest post.

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This quick blogging tip is one that I used to suffer from back in the beginning stages of my blog. I would frequently write posts on my blog just to be writing something. I never spent enough time to completely think through what I was going to write about and in turn this led to posts my readers weren’t as interested to check out. Bottom line, I’ve found it’s better to have higher quality less frequent posts than a higher post frequency if you can’t maintain that same level of quality whether it be because of time constraints or some other reason. I’ve seen blogs that post just to post and I just get the feeling that they’re just trying to fill a quota. With that said of course it’s important to maintain a consistent posting schedule and post as often as you can, but make sure you don’t post on your blog just to post. If your posts come across as forced readers can see that and will be less likely to subscribe to your RSS or comment on your blog.

Have you ever found yourself posting just to post?

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I’m starting a series titled “Quick Blogging Tips” that will run every Sunday for all of 2008 and hopefully beyond. I’ve also decided to lump this series in with my Goals of 2008 post as well to provide added incentive to stay on track. This series of posts consist of Quick Blogging Tips that will help improve your blog. So without further ado or explanation of an already obvious title here’s the first Quick Blogging Tip:

Get into the habit of spending some time to proofread your posts before you publish them. When I took some time to think about the goals I was going to set out for myself in 2008 I looked through my old posts and noticed that the message I meant to get to the reader wasn’t as clear as I thought it was when I first wrote the post. The way I wrote my posts before was to simply do a very quick 15 second scan to see if there were any glaring problems before I published the post. What I’ve started doing in the past few weeks was to take the time to read through the entire posts and look for ways to improve it.

Here are some examples of the questions I ask myself in the time I spend proofreading:

“Does the opening sentence do a good job of pulling in the reader? Does it explain exactly what the next few paragraphs will be about? Or does it turn the reader off?”

“Does this sentence in the paragraph work best here or should it be moved to the end of the paragraph where it will possibly provide a better transition into the next paragraph of the post?”

Overall I believe that the time I’ve spent in the past few weeks proofreading my posts has greatly improved the overall message I send to the reader. It’s also helped me come up with more ideas for my blog too. I thought of this series for Quick Blogging Tips when I was writing a post about proofreading your posts and found that there wasn’t a lot I could write about the topic, yet I still believe it was something that has improved the posts on my blog and could improve some of my reader’s blogs as well.

How much time do you spend proofreading your posts or do you even proofread them?

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