Part I looked at laziness; we focused on discipline in Part II. Part III was on time and we concentrated our energy on waning passion in Part IV. Those who are just coming into our fold in Part V can click on the links (open in another tab) to go through them. You can also contact me (see my G+), place comments and generally feel free to contribute to this interesting topic (if I may say so myself).
The question in the first section was on having trouble generating fresh content on a personal blog. Here is the question we will be addressing in this section:
Do you have a given boundary?
There are people who have specialized content on their blogs. This narrows the area of coverage hence the type of content that they can publish on that blog. The challenge to keep producing fresh content is greater because of the limitation or boundary they have placed on themselves.
The Good about the People Running such Blogs
They are almost always dedicated to the blog. They may not necessarily have issues with the things most personal bloggers have issues with (laziness, discipline, time and waning passion). The category of blogs such people concentrate on include personal blogs as well as business and religious blogs.
They have a real problem with generating fresh content. They do a lot of research and put a lot of energy into creating new content but there are times when they look around and realize that generating fresh content at a high level and based on a given type of content is a big challenge. So how can you keep on generating fresh content if you have a given boundary? This is the question we are going to answer but you should be prepared to hear some out there answers aside from the expected answers.
Expected Answer 1
Get More People Involved
This is an expected answer. Getting more people involved is something that comes naturally (like shouting help). You can be creative in how you get this done but we are going to look to at the two basic ways of getting people involved and one somewhat unusual way of getting them to contribute in generating content for your blog.
Hiring Writers
There are freelancers that are looking for work. Do not be selfish. Contribute to the GDP. Hiring writers is a tricky business because what you are looking for in a freelancer may be hard to find. One way of doing this is by going with someone you are already comfortable with because you know their ability. If the person is a stranger, you might want to look up their resume. Afterwards test them by asking them to do a sample. If you are okay with what they deliver, you pay for it and hire them. Think of sustainability if you want to go the way of hiring writers.
Hiring can be an expensive endeavor. You can decide to go abroad (which by some unwritten rule goes with the working presumption that hiring an overseas writer would be cheaper). The same rule applies in making sure they deliver on quality and any inkishness on your part (i.e. eccentric demand you might place). Your overall budget and long term goals should guide you in your hiring decisions.
[caption id="attachment_2323" align="alignnone" width="700"]
Boundary[/caption]Word of Warning
Realize you are building bridges when hiring a writer. Make sure the terms of the contract you have the writer is clear. Fulfill your side of the deal. You do not want to do what Iron Man did in Iron Man III. You do not want to create enemies that will haunt you on the web.
Invite Guest Contribution
I am of the school of thought that holds that guest writers are guests and not people you pay. You should not pay a person for being a guest writer on your blog. If you do then they should be called something else and not guest bloggers. If you both have an “arrangement”, it is not guest blogging. A guest writer is a guest that contributes content to your blog as a guest. He or she may do it once or regularly.
Now that I have made my politics known, I can freely speak on inviting guest contribution. Get people who are interested to write as guests to contribute. I take that back; get people you are interested in to write as guests on your blog. Let your readers know that they are writing as guests and you should follow the rules of acknowledgement including freely providing links to their site if they have any and permit you to do just that.
A Trick to Getting Great Guest Bloggers/Contribution
- Do not go for traditional/professional bloggers
- Go for people who do not naturally blog but you know they have something to say
- Prepare them before hand
- You should have at least one person that fits this profile
They may be professionals in the field they are writing on or a previous discussion with them was so interesting that you asked them to write a piece on what you both discussed and their views so that you could post it on your blog and continue the conversation with your readers. This to me is classic guest blogging; inviting people to your platform to say their mind on a matter even when it contradicts with yours in order to create a forum for greater participation, sharing and understanding.
You can get a lot of interesting guest bloggers in this manner. And you will be surprised the places you will find such “bloggers”; the saloon, dentist’s waiting room, stadium stand while rooting for your girl to break the legs of a kid belonging to another parent etc. Think of yourself as a television talk show host bringing interesting people to your show.
Go Official
You can also go official by inviting someone from the local government council, Police Force, neighborhood watch, or local factory. They will be contributing to a topical issue on an official capacity (this should give you some content creation ideas). This approach depends on what you blog is about and the topic at hand. You may bring them in to lend an official voice to a matter or use their contribution to kick-start another line of topical content. I have just said that it depends on what you blog is about, not really. Your blog could be about anything from writing about yoga to aliens in space. Get someone from the Police Force to write about the importance of being calm in tense situations and tips on how to practice being calm (see the connection to yoga?) or you can get someone from the local college to talk about that massive cave in the moon.
Create Your own Writing Festival
This has a greater chance of working when you have an audience that is passionately engaged with your blog. A writing festival (Contributors Week, Readers Day, One Post Event etc) is you creating an event (of sorts) on your blog. Your blog is your platform. Your platform can be used to create and instigate offline and online events. A writing festival is an example of an online event. Get people to contribute. It may be in form of a competition or a for and against debate where you do the pairings (matching one “for” article against an “against” article) and have readers vote or pick sides.
Your writing festivals should have a theme that would serve as the rallying point. Plan it thoroughly before mentioning it. Doing a spur of the moment thing has a way of bringing up things you may not have a prepared response.
There are just so many ways you keep generating fresh content for your blog even when it is limited to a specific type of content. This is where we will stop with Expected Answer 1. We will continue this section in Part VI.
Attend The EPIC BLOGGING Seminar (Jan 29th - 30th, 2016)
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Please, no email address or phone number in your comment. Tick "Notify me" to follow the conversation and get notified whenever there is new comment!