Useful Tips From Senior Blogger

For a new blogger like me, the tips sent by my senior blogger friend Brian Gardner as I quoted below, is very useful.

If you’re anything like me, you periodically find yourself in front of your computer, with your WordPress dashboard open, staring at your monitor like a deer in headlights.
You’re having content brainfarts.
There you sit, experiencing content emaciation, with little direction on which way to go. You had all of these great ideas, and now that you’re on the main stage of starting a blog post… you freeze.

You Are Not Alone – No, Really I Mean It

Trust me, this is normal. Absolutely normal. At least I’m hoping it is, because this is the kind of thing I deal with every time I sit down to write a blog post. So if it’s not normal, and you struggle with the same thing, at least we can cope together.
I’m here to tell you that there’s hope. There’s a way for us to come together and produce quality content – you know, the kind of content that draws linkbacks, retweets, and comments from your users. I’ve cobbled together a list of places to find what you’re looking for – the holy grail.

Places to Find Inspiration for Blog Content

Similar Blogs in Your Niche

Yes, this one is pretty obvious. If you write about underwater basket weaving, why not visit other blogs that cover the topic. Reading content that is written by others, and is drawing attention and conversation is proof in itself, that you can have an audience. Now, please hear me when I say this – I’m NOT saying that you should copy their content. I’m saying that you should be inspired by it. Huge difference.

Do a Twitter Search

There are literally millions of people who babble online (in 140 characters or less) about everything from the Grammy’s to yes, underwater basket weaving. ( here’s proof ) What better way to write content about a subject that you know people are already talking about. Scan through the results of a Twitter search, and see if there’s commonality in what they are saying. See if people are asking questions, and if so – write about it.

Subscribe to Google Alerts

This is something that I’ve been doing more and more lately. It’s pretty genius, as a matter of fact, that though Google Alerts we have the capability of having targeted inspiration delivered to our inbox literally minutes after it’s posted. If you want to cover that latest breaking news in underwater basket weaving, setup an alert to have Google send you links to blog posts and news articles as they happen. This is also a great chance to link to the source that you reference in your post, which might probe the source author to check out your own site.

“For Dummies” Books

Yesterday I went to Barnes and Noble for this very reason – I want to write more about my experiences with blogging and the internet, but I freeze every time I’m in front of the blog writing camera. So I did exactly what I’m telling you now. I purchased 4 “For Dummies” books, with the intent on reading them to provide inspiration for new content. All you really need to do is rip out the table of contents of each one, as that should give you all the inspiration you require to kickstart your content producing endeavors

Thank you so much, Brian !
(DS. Utomo)