blog posts

Jun 17, 2012

Infographic for creating great content

Infographic – a picture is worth a thousand words

The infographic below is a great tool to inspire you to write more. It’s the one thing that counts when you’re a blogger. Creating great content for your readers to get them coming back for more is a constant challenge. In my experience people can be lazy when browsing blogs. Unless you capture their imagination and get to the answer they are looking for quickly they can easily shoot off somewhere else.

Videos and images do help the ‘stickiness’ of your blog. People stay around for longer. With many clients I’m finding that an infographic is a useful tool to deliver great content in a visual way. So it was a stroke of luck (well, actually I found it on Twitter!) to find this excellent infographic from copyblogger.com looking at creating great, compelling content.

Take some ideas from the infographic below and let me know how you intend to create great content for you blog.

22 Ways to Create Compelling Content - Infographic
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

By Andy Britnell Blog content, Writing a blog 50 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Jan 6, 2012

Blog posting desert

Blog posting desert - writing a blogIt happens to the best of us!

Sometimes you are too busy with other projects or get out of the habit of blogging regularly. Obviously if you are making money looking after clients then that isn’t a bad thing but there is always that nagging thought that you are not giving your loyal followers the attention they deserve.

So please forgive me for my lack of content recently. My plan is to remedy that this year – unless I get invited back to Switzerland to deliver more training! One thing that always works for me is committing to do something for 10 minutes every day. After 21 days this becomes a habit. I know there are lots of blogging ‘challenges’ out there but the logistics of doing a blog post everyday just doesn’t fit into my schedule. I think it can become negative as you feel you must keep up with the schedule. That kind of pressure can become counter-productive.

I also think that you tend to write better when things bubble up unconsciously. Better to spend 10 minutes every day doing one of the following:

  • Brainstorm ideas for blog posts
  • Write in a different space – go to the library or a cafe and see if the muse meets you there
  • Read relevant blogs about your niche to get ideas
  • Comment on other blogs – sometimes a blog post arises whilst I am responding to a post or even to an email
  • Clutter clear your newsletter subscriptions – sometimes you get information overload. Be strict about what makes it into your inbox

To get you in the mood you might like to buy yourself a nice notebook and pen. New stationery cries out to be used. Another tip is to do it at the same time everyday – you then start to positively programme yourself to do the right thing in the right way.

So good luck with writing your blog, look out for more blog posts from me and I hope that 2012 is going to be a great year for you.

By Andy Britnell Writing a blog 22 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Jan 2, 2011

Where’s my mojo gone? Blogging motivation

Blogging motivation - where's my mojo gone?Perhaps the hardest part of writing a blog is getting going and keeping going. Sometimes the motivation or ‘mojo’ just isn’t there.

The other issue is that your blog can be pretty bare when you start. It is best to have around 5 posts and a couple of pages before you start publicising your blog. Some suggest having a couple of months worth of posts ready to go before you start – that might be challenging for you or even so daunting  that you won’t even start.

One way is to have someone who will act as a ‘nag’. Someone you trust who will hold you accountable if you fail on your promises and celebrate with you when you succeed.

Or you could do what I have just done and signed up with WordPress for their new support idea to help you do a post a day! Well, I have gone for a post a week as I think that is more manageable. I do have a life! But you may relish the challenge of posting every day so go for it if you want to. Getting over 300 posts done in a year will do wonders for your rankings all over the web.

You just need to follow the link above to find out what to do.

You will also be doing the same as many other bloggers on WordPress so I am sure you will make some new friends and find others who you can do joint ventures with, support each other and do some guest posting.

So expect a post a week from me – Google loves activity on sites so you will see a marked improvement on your traffic once you get going.

Good blogging!

Andy

By Andy Britnell WordPress, Writing a blog 3 Comments Tags: , , , ,