photo by anselm http://www.flickr.com/photos/anselm23/2964430510/If you’ve been reading Lifehack for a while, you would have learned that blogging is the cheapest and most effective way to reach out to your clients, market your products and/or services and establish your expertise.
But setting up a blog is just the first step. You can’t just write one or two posts and leave them at your self-hosted blog site. You need to blog regularly to achieve whatever your objective is in setting up a blog – whether it is to get ads, be Internet-famous or sell your services.
The problem is how to come up with good ideas to sustain your blog in the next few months.
The solution is to find a way to regularly get ideas for blogging. Here are some easy techniques that you can employ to generate ideas that will keep you blogging.
Get a piece of paper or open a blank document in your computer and put down any topics that is related to your business. Don’t censor yourself, just keep the ideas flowing. You can do this every day (my tip for morning larks: do this first thing in the morning) or every week. Remember that no one is watching you while making this list – so no idea is bad or ridiculous. You can always edit this list later.
No matter how satisfied your readers are with your products and services or the information that you provide in your blog, they will have some questions about it. So compile all these concerns and write one blog post detailing for each of the problem that you want to solve.
For example, if you are a dentist who blogs, one of your readers problems may focus on taking care of their children’s teeth. You can then write a blog post offering a step-by step guide to new mothers on how to teach their toddlers to brush their teeth or perhaps tips to encourage their children to go to the dentist for regular cleaning.
Visit large online forums and monitor the most popular topics and what are the most common questions that the forum participants ask. You can then write a post based from what you learned from this form.
To find an online forum, type this a this Google: “keyword related your business + forum.” . For instance if you’re a dentist looking for an on online forum, you can type this in Google : “oral care + forum”. Google will then give you a list of for a where oral care is being discussed.
An alternative to the online forum is for you to hang around in the comment section of a popular blog related to the theme of your blog. Take note of the questions and opinions posted by commenters.
Take one idea from the book and write how you applied that idea. Another option is to review the book – give a synopsis, your opinion about the book and how your readers can benefit from reading this book. If you are not a bibliophile, you can apply the same technique in culling ideas from the latest movies that you’ve seen.
For instance, when the last installment of Harry Potter film was shown, I’ve read a lot of blog posts that harped on the Harry Potter theme – from the usual movie reviews to posts about the life lessons learned from Harry Potter or their favorite Harry Potter characters.
Grab some ideas by looking on a Twitter trending topic and putting your spin on it. Another technique is to read the recent Tweets by the people you follow and/or people who follow you.
Coming up with ideas is one of the first things that you need to learn even before you buy your own domain name for your blog. Blogging, after all, is a long-term commitment and once you applied the above techniques, it will be easy for you to keep your blog interesting and rewarding for your readers.
About the author: Prime Sarmiento is a long time journalist and content marketing strategist for online tutorial company Ahead Interactive - provider of live, real-time, video-powered tutorials. You can follow her writing tips in twitter.
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