Over the next few posts I’m going to be posting a few thoughts on how to defeat apathy in your blogging – here’s a few to kick us off.
• Start a Series – it gets hard to constantly come up with new topics to blog about each day so why not pick a larger topic to break down over a week or so. I find that once I’ve got a topic to work on I often get the creative juices flowing – a series can fast track the process. The past few days have definitely lifted my own interest in ProBlogger (not that it was too low) – simply because I’ve been in ‘series mode’.
• Invite questions from your readers – get your readers involved in your blog by setting the agenda for you to write about over the next few weeks of your blogging. Once again this is about stimulating ideas for topics.
• Revisit old Posts – if your archives are anything like mine they are full of posts and articles that you’ve put hours of work into. Keep in mind that many of your newer readers would not have read your old posts and so from time to time it might be worth either reposting old posts, updating old posts or simply bouncing off old posts and continuing old streams of thought.
More posts to come on how to defeat blog apathy over the next day or so. Feel free to add your own tips in comments below.
We are 3 to 5 writer’s who run a french blog with a focus on tech and Internet for south of France and mediterranean area. It’s great to run this blog with other person, than stimulate our work and avoid the blogger apathy !
Looking forward for more & more of those tips :)
Heat
Hah, start a series? I call that “How to put pressure on yourself”! I’ve done three “long short stories” in series form now and they don’t half bring me out in a sweat. But it’s true that there’s no room for apathy once you’ve started something like that. The blog must go out!
I think ProBlogger is being realistic here, when he talks about revisiting old blogs.
I think you will find he has got an excellent stock of blogging articles all lined up, but partly the problem is comments (in the way of excellent advice) from people here will be reducing the value of his stock. Others bloggers will quite happily re-publish ProBloggers advice under their own blog and then get comments from other bloggers to add value to it.
There will be no option but to somehow remix what has already been said and done. Ofcourse what makes a blog special to me, is the creativity and imagination of how to pull something out of thin air.
You know what there is therapy in commenting on someone else blog to get you going again. As soon as I commented here I felt like working again. The apathy is not all together gone, but its waning. My fiance is going to kill me if I don’t clean up this house though. Blog, eat, and then clean.
[…] log and let me know about it so I can link up. Read the rest of this series of post at: Part II Part III
Filed under Misce […]
Getting input from readers is one of the best ways to beat blog apathy. Different viewpoints can spark of a train of thought and kick start a blog
[…] echnology point of view, and there is a great and might chasm between them! Inspired by Darren at Problogger, one of my favourite blogs at the moment, I’ll do a […]
Yeah. The series idea is a good one. So is the archive idea.
It’s similar to an idea a professor off mine once told me. If you’re asked to write a paper on something you’ve already written about you should use your existing work. It’s much faster and its not cheating since you wrote it in the first place.
Revisiting an older article allows new readers to benefit from older wisdom..
Pretty slick! :)
How funny! I just started two ongoing series this month on my Genetics and Public Health Blog – a weekly genetics quiz on Saturdays and a weekly featured blog (tying it in with genetics and disease, of course) on Sundays. It makes it easier for me to have new posts on the weekend, which I can prepare ahead of time during the week.
Shane: Or eat, clean, and then blog about cleaning :-P
You just gave me something to post about.. This blog!
I’m happy I signed up for your newsletter.
Some great tips especially the first one which I can definitely back. I started doing series posts probably about 4 months ago and they help so much when your lacking the creative energy and thinking cap to come up with new articles daily.
The second also seems like a great idea however when your lacking a community vibe on your blog its hard to see any feedback from this although I ll keep trying.
Thanks.