Content for Blog – How to Find and Create Content Fast
Content is the lifeblood of any blog. It is the substance that builds your blog or web site. One of the biggest challenges for bloggers is to find content for blog or create it fast enough and on a regular basis.
The problem doesn’t end there though. Not all content is created the same. With so much content to consume, the challenge for the social web no longer is to find content, but to find the right content.
Both issues revolve around time, i.e. with content production and consumption. Production and consumption of content, as you may realize, are tightly related. Without consumption of content, you would never be able to produce timely blog posts. Without much research, you couldn’t create a comprehensive list of resources and other type of evergreen content.
For this reason, optimizing both processes can help shorten content discovery and creation. Here are several tested tips and strategies to help you with blog content:
1. Develop Your News Radars and Filters
Whether you realize it or not, more and more content consumption takes place within news reader. No longer that people want to visit hundreds of web sites, and then some, just to see what’s news.
Or let’s put it another way. People are no longer limited to a few popular web sites. They can scour hundreds of web sites and blogs for new items.
Email is not an ideal solution as the content delivery model doesn’t allow you to control when you would like to get the content. While email has its place, for news and other type of content, RSS reader is a better option.
In a nutshell, a newsradar is a stream of news items aggregated from one or more feeds covering a specific topic. The aggregation may occur from multitude of different sources.
An important part of the process when creating a news radar is filtering. For newsradars to work effectively, they must include sophisticated filtering algorithms to eliminate duplicates and undesirable items.
For effective content consumption and to find content ideas, your content sources should at least comprise of the following:
- News stories. Subscribe to news related sites which publish recent news via RSS feeds. This is necessary even if you don’t try to break news. It allows you to perform an educated analysis of your industry. Such type of content is a proven linkbait when you are getting better at it.
- Blogs. Without a doubt, blogs provide fresh angles on news, ideas and thoughts. They are often stimulating and may lead to more content ideas. Although I still subscribe to RSS feeds from many other sources, more and more I also add blogs written by thought leaders in the industry.
- Recent research data. Research figures, facts and statistics often lead to trends and outlook. Predictions and analysis regarding the future always make great blog content. Carefully examined, these data may help you shape your business strategy and direction.
- Keyword-based search result. You often want to track brands, trends and other keywords. Now you can subscribe to the search result via RSS feed too. When someone blogs about you or one of your posts, you can respond and see what s/he has to say or watch interesting comments on a certain topic based on keywords.
The list is by no means comprehensive, but it should get you going and open new doors to endless ideas for your blog.
2. Become an Expert on Your Subject
Staying up-to-date on a topic is one thing, becoming an expert around the subject is another entirely different subject though.
While most sources in the first point above also feature informative content besides news, it takes extra effort to become an expert and authority on the specific area.
You don’t have to be the master of something to become an expert in the topic. After reading a book, perhaps you are more knowledgeable about that topic than 90 percent of people.
However, you should not stop there. Teach what you have learned to someone else. Immerse in the topic and build your experience around it.
Best of all, you can start blogging even if you’re not yet a true expert. Blogging is then a matter of transferring your knowledge to the right people. As long as you don’t claim to know everything, the readers are most likely to understand it, especially if you can engage them with interesting posts.
Remember that curiosity and sincerity to help are more important in the blogosphere than people who claim to know it all. In the social web, no one can afford to master everything.
3. Manage Your Ideas
As you progress with the first step above, you will soon find out that lack of ideas is no longer a challenge. In fact, soon you will be overwhelmed with information that you don’t know what to do about it.
Before I discovered a way to manage my ideas, it appeared that overabundance of ideas always brought negative impact to productivity. Quite often I struggled for an hour just to pick the right topic to write about.
The solution to this is surprisingly easy. Write down those ideas and spend more time writing instead of wondering which idea to write about.
On the topic of note taking, you are more likely to do it if you have a notepad and pen nearby. If you spend most of your time in front of your computer, pick your software. I use Microsoft OneNote because it allows me to manage my notes easily. Coloring and highlighting various lines were features I sought after when choosing the software, among other factors.
When it’s time to write, you want to be able to pick one idea and immediately run with it. If you struggle to come up with just one idea, you’ll soon stumble upon the “block” because you’re not in the mood of writing anymore.
Flow is so key in writing. If possible, you want to eliminate every barrier so the process is as smooth as possible.
And yes, you can put yourself into the mood of writing as you learn how to control the flow.
4. Create an Outline
No matter if you only want to argue about a blog post by other blogger or create a comprehensive resource, producing an outline can speed up the process tremendously.
Create subheads and run them on your head. Think about the logical flow of the post. Arrange stuff around. At this stage, you should start seeing your next blog post morphs into existence.
With an outline, the blog post is almost like writing itself. Each subhead is a mini article that you can write independently. If article flow is of a challenge to you, breaking down long posts into multiple mini articles certainly assist you in finishing the post.
For instance, this article by itself consists of 5 subheads. Each point is a potential article. If I put some time to elaborate more, it may as well be its own article. However, in their context, I also am able to turn them as part of a longer article.
The reason why I didn’t just post them separately is because as a whole this article serves an entirely different purpose. Discussing content for blog without any of these points is less powerful.
But you get the idea about the role of outline during content creation.
5. Write First, Edit Later
Most experienced bloggers agree with this. There is no such thing as writer’s block. If you have some kind of block, chances are you are in the wrong mindset to start with.
I mentioned about flow above. You may want to identify things that slow you down and eliminate them.
It helps if you divide blogging into two different steps, i.e. writing and editing. Trying to perfect your writing the first time is one of the common reasons why you get stuck.
Instead of looking for a perfect way to start your blog post, write away. Editing may come later when you have poured everything you want into the blog editor.
Another suggestion that I often got was to write like you talk. That certainly works. As I concentrate on the content and start writing more informally, the quality of my blog posts improves. I’m not yet a professional writer but I’m on my way there.
Of course, you want to eliminate the uhmm… and errr… but sticking with the informal tone makes your writing more natural and easier to read.
Conclusions
Bloggers are writers and content producers. If you have to engage with such activities for quite some time, it pays if you find ways to optimize and make the whole process easier and faster.
By no means this article is the ultimate way to produce content for blogs. There is more than one way to do it.
However, if you take just one advice seriously, I guarantee that you will see a significant improvement in your approach to blogging.
Stay tune for more tips like this.
Return to Blog Content — How to Write Great Content and Where to Get Them.
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