In getting this nascent blog off the ground, I’ve run into to the challenge of what should I — or any blogger — really blog about?
And what to do if I can’t write about anything?
Elise Blauer over at Blogher has a meaty post about how one should think about the content of one’s posts.
To summarize:
- Be Useful, Entertaining or Timely
- Focus
- Use Images and Photographs
- Write Well
- Consider Headlines
- Make us Care.
Its an interesting post that seems to focus less on the content and more on the process of constructing a blog post. Less of a what, and more of how, I suppose.
Nick Wilson of Performancing has a nice article which focuses more on the content of your post — the What, so to speak. However, the twist on his post is how to to be excellent “Linkbait”, which, I suppose is crafting your post so that people find it so interesting, intriguing, and compelling that other people will comment … and ultimately link to it.
(Linking, certainly from Google’s point of view, seems to be the lingua franca of the web at the moment)
He says its critical to try and create posts which are either:
- newsworthy (new news as it were)
- contrarian (and controversial)
- aggressive (deliberately so)
- resourceful (useful)
- or funny (self explanatory, ‘natch).
In the New York Times, under Pogue’s Posts, Anna Marie Cox, formerly of the Wonkette also describes her recipe for blog success — and with regards to content, reinforces “process”issues:
… A strong, defined personality with a sense of humor about themselves. An ability to filter news quickly and to recognize, you know, what is interesting to other people as well as interesting to themselves, and finding the balance between those things…
(of course, she also goes on to talk about how the desire for immediacy and the addiction to the news update will likely diminish these drivers of success, but go on … read the article, then!)
And when it really comes down to good ol’ genuine Writer’s Block(age), David W. Boles, over at the Semiotic Web, discusses how to just sit your ass in a chair and start writing.
Perhaps not the most complex bit of advice … but simple, and perhaps a little profound.
Don’t over think it — just do it. Start writing until you get something new out that was different than before. Slowly, all that stuff builds up, and lo and behold. Content!
Lastly, About.com has has a nice list about content creation as well.
Noteworthy tips:
- Create a list (Top 10s, Things to do, Best of, Worst of),
- Try participating in Memes or Collaborations, or
- Start Blogging at Random.
