Despite having over 50 rough drafts ready to turn into a post I had a bit of a problem publishing daily posts this week. With the new college semester in full swing I’m really going to have to take an honest look at my posting schedule. Do not worry I will address this manner soon. For today I wanted to write about what I learned about writing for a blog and what other new bloggers can do to keep their writing consistent:
Write every single day. Yes you must write every single day. This doesn’t mean you have to publish an article everyday. Believe me if you publish something for the sake of publishing your readers will let you know it sucks (happened to me a few times).
You dread writing every single day? Then maybe writing isn’t your thing. Maybe you could still run a blog by outsource your writing to others.
Write for readers. Write in a way that another human being would actually read your article and make sense of it. Don’t throw a bunch of keywords together hoping that the search engines will pick up your articles and you will lots of money.
Make rough notes. I almost never begin writing a post without at least having a general idea of what will be included in the article. Kind of like writing an essay, I’m sure you at least attempt to write a rough copy before working on your final draft (unless of course it’s a last minute all nighter).
Keep track of everything. Whenever an idea pops into your head, write it down immediately. I don’t care if you use lipstick on a napkin. Write it down. For me my iPhone (Evernote) helps but nothing wrong with the classic pen and paper in your pocket.
Write about stuff other people care about. You can write the best article about Brooke Hogan’s new cd but just like the album nobody will ever check it out.
Learn to accept other voices. Sometimes either when I need a break or when I simply want to have another voice here at Studenomics I accept guest posts. In my opinion I find it beneficial to allow your readers to read another opinion. Another benefit of guest posts is that there are likely many topics in your niche that you need to learn more about and as do your readers. This is where a guest writer fills the void.
Embraces batch writing. I’m still working on improving my batch writing. I can make notes for a bunch of articles but the difficult part is putting together a batch of articles that are ready to publish.
What is batch writing? Whenever I think of a general idea I will then brain storm all of the different possible article topics that can come from it. The goal is to end up with at least 3 solid article concepts from the one idea. There is no hard fast rule and I’m sure that every “internet millionaire extraordinaire” has their own theory on this.
Alright guys that’s what I have learned about writing for a blog. What have you learned?
photo: voxeros
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Two pieces of advice that always stuck out to me were from Trent Hamm… one of which you touched on.
1. Write every day, even if you don’t publish. Just write something, but preferably publish one post/day to keep your traffic consistently growing.
2. Keep a posting calendar (a hard copy, not on your phone.) This allows you to jot down ideas when they strike, organize your ideas, and gives you a topic to write on each day. Sometimes I find the structure confining, but it is helpful more times than not.
Congrats on your lessons learned, keep up the good work.
The idea of writing every day is valuable since it will make this an habit, and every time you write it becomes easier to do.
I find useful also to set quotas to reach, for instance ‘a total of 75 posts on the blog before Oct 15′; also a quota on words since very short posts are only noise for feed subscribers.
Great advice here. I’ve enjoyed watching your blog improve over the past year. I could learn a thing or two from this list.
@Matt Jabs I agree that writing stuff down always helps. I love grabbing a blank piece of paper and filling it up with different ideas until there is no space left.
@Giorgio I try to avoid the short posts but sometimes I can’t help it. I would rather get to the point with some topics instead of filling it up with bs.
@PT Thanks for following along and helping out at the very beginning!