Blog Post Challenge
Yes I’m still keeping up with the Be a Better Blogger series over at Lynn’s blog. Although Monday’s post about brainstorming 20 blog posts has tripped me up a bit.
For this particular challenge I’ve been focusing on Idea Queen’s blog. I left 2WAHMs up to Anita because I knew she wanted to join in on the challenge too. Plus my other blog needed some attention and improvements.
I thought 20 posts was going to be a snap, because I have several different ways to brainstorm posts. Also the idea about using an editorial calender helped as well (Actually I came up with a similar idea to make this work for me). I do have several posts for two specific days sitting in drafts. It’s the other days that has me stumped.
The problem here is not really lack of ideas for posts, but rather lack of GOOD ideas. Right now I’m thinking of all kinds of money making posts I could do, but nothing free and valuable. I don’t want to spam my visitors on a daily basis. The goal here is to build a relationship, get them coming on a regular basis, THEN spam them (HA! NO, I am SO kidding!). Seriously though, there is nothing wrong with a post designed to make some money - once in awhile. Lately I feel like I’ve been doing way too many spam posts.
I suppose if you look right now you’ll probably think the posts you see are pretty good free information. But my ideas for posts like that are dwindling. About all I have left in drafts of this 20 blog post challenge are for the “special days” (which I have two now - Frugal Friday and Monday Organizing) and posts designed to make money (AND give a little information of course).
What I think I need to do is come up with a few more ways to brainstorm useful posts. Sure I cook almost every day and that’s helped the recipe section, but even those ideas are dwindling. I think I’ve posted just about every meal I’ve ever made at this point. Here I thought I could ramble on forever, but 200 posts later I’m stuck.  :shock:
So the plan for today is to dig a little further into Lynn’s awesome post about brainstorming posts, and come up with 20 (or more) posts I can use on any given day. Once that’s out of the way, I can feel better about slipping in posts with affiliate links attached.  :wink:
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Comments
Hi Kara,
The “money-making posts” tend to be the easier ones for me, and often they are done on the fly as I run across things or new opportunities present themselves. Its the ‘rich content’ posts that can be a little more difficult, requiring more time and creativity. Those are probably the posts we’d be best served to concentrate on when creating a stockpile of future content to have on hand…
Posted by: Lynn Terry | March 26th, 2008 14:47
I totally agree Lynn. Although when I try to sit down and write a whole bunch of good content posts, I tend to get very stuck.
Although here’s something I’ve found to pull in more posts - I have “submit content” boxes on every single page of the site. Just today I had my blog post handed to me by a visitor’s recipe. Those are super quick and easy, although sometimes I’ll “double up” on the submissions if they are related.
Posted by: Kara | March 27th, 2008 10:30
Great idea - that has to be super helpful!
What helps me when it comes to writing the content posts is to just sit down and outline a series, or just write down topic ideas and then flesh them out with thoughts or bullet points then go from there.
Posted by: Lynn Terry | March 27th, 2008 19:37
I love the series idea and might have to give that a try. With the “related post” plug in, it makes it super easy for visitors to see previous posts in the series and start from the beginning, so that might work out pretty well.
Posted by: Kara | March 28th, 2008 09:49