Are you a business owner and/or marketer who needs to write blog posts (amongst all of your other duties), but experiences bouts of bloggers’ block?
I’ve heard some new online marketers (business owners) call it a “fork in the road”, or tell me that they were, “at an impasse” and after having every intention of writing for their blogs, they walk away.
They return in a few weeks to notice each of the blog posts they managed to write when they were indeed out of the writing trenches have little or no views.
Does this sound like a familiar experience? If you’re having a bit of an inspiration gulf, worry not!…
In this article, I’m going to share 7 steps that you can put into action to beat the blogger blues so your audience will value and follow your posts, comment and share your conversations. These action-steps will help prevent your blog postings from being in vain and better yet position your blog posts to help generate sales.
#1 Action-Step: Identify Your Keywords
Using Wordtracker’s Keyword Question Tool you can get content ideas by uncovering the questions your buyers are askingabout, and then you can write your blog posts accordingly. You can watch this video to see the Keyword Question tools’ features.
Let’s say you are the owner of a local driving school who needs inspiration for relevant topics to post. Simply type in a short keyword and you’ll get back the most popular questions and number of times the question was asked on search engines in the US related to that keyword.
Use that keyword or convert the question into a title and offer your solution to your buyers’ problems.
Craft your content properly, and your blog posts will start to get ranked at the top of the search engines for your keyword. This will result in more targeted traffic to your blog post content!
#2 Action-Step: Engage During Your Productive Periods
Let’s face it. The images associated with writer’s block are imbedded in our culture and at one time or another we have all stared atthe blank screen or at the blank page frozen in a state of inertia.
While it’s certainly worthwhile to try to understand the reasons behind your own blocks through self-examination, if you find it difficult to engage (i.e. type the first few words on the page) when tasked with writing blog posts, forgiving yourself for poorly written sentences is important in allowing the creative process to happen.
You can revisit later. The delete and backspace buttons on your computer are your editorial friends. The first part of the effort is getting a meaningful sentence onto the page. Constantly editing and revising before you’ve filled the page will prevent your ideas from flowing.
And don’t struggle for the right words or the right tone. You don’t want to go into editorial mode now. Your blog writing process should include a rough draft process. You can flesh out later and perhaps you can recruit someone else for the ever-important editorial part of the blog posting process.
#3 Action-Step: Convert with a Call-to-Action
If your blog posts don’t tell people where to go or what to do once they read, then after they read, they will simply leave and do nothing with the valuable information you just shared. So you’ve told them something interesting or helpful…Now what? Your mission as an author and marketer is to tell people exactly what you want them to do next. Your purpose for blogging is to convert your content into sales…Correct?
Here are 60 Call-to-Action examples that are all good ways to motivate your customers and prospects to take action and convert them into highly targeted traffic.
Considering ways to allow your readers to connect with you, follow your lead and be a part of your organization’s culture through your blog will then lead you to creative ways to post your readers’ solutions.
#4 Action-Step: Uphold Your End of the Blogging Bargain
Blogging is a social activity and a low-cost way to market and boost your brand. It requires your brand’s commitment. Personal expression andauthoritative commentary now define blogging and gone are the days of one line commentary. As blogs continue to evolve, advertising, is staking its position within opportunities for blogs. Blog posting and blogging as a whole, however, is a social activity.
Delivering valuable, helpful information to an audience who you want to build a relationship with means staying on a routine and staying in conversation with them. Infrequent posts will only kill the interest of your content hungry audience.
Imagine for a moment, starting a series of blog posts that walks readers through how you landed a new retail client and sharing just how profitable, fun and excited the experience is, while even building in a cliffhangar asking them to come back each week to see pictures from the series of fashion shows that your new client has included your spring coat collection in. What happens if you become hit or miss on those weekly posts? Your blog followers may become disenchanted without fresh content and your credibility ratings will likely diminish in their minds.
Since blogger’s block often comes from a place of procrastination, that is diverting your energy to other tasks rather than moving forward with blogging, don’t get caught in the visciousness of putting your blog writing off or otherwise being inconsistent. You’ll put yourself in a time crunch and your anxiety will mount.
Blogging is social by nature and the conversation must go on. Once you’ve developed a relationship with your readers, they will trust you enough to buy from you and share those experiences with their friends.
#5 Action-Step: Routinely Upload Your Photos and Video
You know the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words” of course and adding images to your blog brings it to life.Uploading your photos and video to a library that you organize and can tap into when you need to will provide a great source of inspiration for writing blog posts as well as give you some creative freedom (photo journaling) from actual blog writing.
Photos and videos are great ways to engage readers and appeal to the visual learner. Camera/video phones make it a cinch to shoot and snap-on-the-go and you should dedicate some time to fine-tuning your blog posts’ balance between it’s focus on photographs versus video versus text to engage your audience.
You can easily share your stories through photos and video and amongst a few greats sites that offer a free services, there is Flickr. With photo sharing sites, you can direct your readers to join groups and see your businesses photo collections and streams of photos. Best of all, most sites offer a platform that you can manage from your mobile device.
Creating captions for your photos in advance of blog posting may prove beneficial to tapping into those emotions evoked by the photo that will appeal to your readers and you can simply insert captioned pictures into your copy when you’re ready. Developing your descriptive copy in the context of your theme and story line should make the posting process both enjoyable and the words, rooted in your rich experiences, should flow easily.
#6 Action-Step: Be Authentic
You are chock-full of content that provides solutions for others, your company’s credibility rests on your authenticity andyour blog is your platform for a two-way conversation. The nature of reading blogs is about learning from people in a position to help the reader in some way (entertain, advise, etc.) and talking to people while gaining their first-hand experience with a particular product/service.
People trust people over advertisements and if you can approach your blog writing as the sharing of your unique ideas, experiences, and new products similar to how you would discuss them in person with passion and from the heart, the bloggers’ block brick wall will begin to crumble. You’re growing a business, innovating products or offering services to help address your niche’s problems, nurturing a customer base and sharing your experiences can demonstrate your unique value proposition.
As you indulge your readers they will come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert in your own right; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs.
As relevant companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may contact you for advertising on your blog page, or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site.
#7 Action-Step: Stay Motivated with Ways to Market Your Blog and Your Skills
Staying motivated is key to avoiding bloggers’ block. When you regard blogging as a commitment to youraudience, see your blog posts come to life through publishing and when your customers and prospects follow your lead through their actions you are then rewarded fro your efforts and get the reinforcement to help you to overcome the things, like procrastination, that can hold you back.
Here are a few of my favorite marketing secrets to help you stay motivated with blogging:
1. Use a subscription: Give your readers the opportunity to explore your brand’s blog posts by using a short e-mail message as teaser to your blog. Making your blog subscription-based (this is also a call-to-action) can be done via RSS feed, email and/or social media networks.
Having RSS feeds to your blog is another means of generating awareness for your readership base and adding just a few social share buttons will give your reader’s the chance to share your content which will help promote your blog.
You want to add at least a simple sign-up form to your blog posts and pages.
Here’s a tip on how to add a subscribe section to your blog. You can entice reader’s to sign-up by keeping some of your blog information exclusive to subscribers.
2. Speak to your personnas’ interests
Another tactic to help you avoid the blogging dilemma of knowing what to blog about is to research what interest your target market has by asking them personally. You can connect immediately and bring your brand to life for your subscribers by including a personal note in your subscription confirmation email.
You can conduct a simple survey in your message to understand their profile and preferences or ask for feedback on a post. This way, you are informally interviewing your readers without the commitment and they are telling what topics, problems and interests they have.
3. Consider joining a blog network
In contrast to creating a network, you can join a blogger network and become a paid blogger.
This of course is dependent on the long term goals for your blog. Since you have read this far into this article, chances are it means that you are searching for (and finding ways here) to overcome your challenges with commitment of blog writing. Professional blog writing is VERY time consuming.
Your larger community can offer you inspiration and plenty of insight on what trends and topics to share, what opportunities and innovations exist to blog about and by joining a blog network that shares your industry, interests, readership base, payment mode, etc. you can quickly gain consumer credibility.
Final Thoughts…
The 2011 Blog World & New Media Expo was held in Los Angeles, November 3-5 and this past May 24-26 in New York. Check out the industry-wide events’ attendees and exhibitors and speakers, take pride in knowing that you are now equipped with 7 Action-Steps to Beat Bloggers’ Block (and many of the professional bloggers are implementing these strategies). Now you can forth to put those that make sense for you into action today!
“Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. … Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.”—Professor, Mark Kingwell, on procrastination.
What do you think? What tips do you have to share? Leave us your tips and comments and let’s keep the conversation going.
