This is a guest post from Nick Cardot. Nick uses his blog Site Sketch 101 to express his passion for helping people learn how to blog with awesome content, brilliant designs and commanding influence.
One of the many complex challenges that we as bloggers face is the daunting task of providing our readers with a consistent flow of outstanding articles. It can be difficult to come up with new articles day after day while striving at the same time to keep their quality at the highest possible level. After all, most people are looking for quality rather than quantity but being able to provide both is like having a goose that lays golden eggs.
So how can we do it? How can we produce articles that are entertaining, informative, engaging and easy for our readers to digest day-after-day? The answer is simple. Putting the answer into practice is somewhat less simple.
Plan your work and work your plan.
The real key to consistently posting top quality articles is to develop a smart system of planning your future posts. Here’s some ideas to help you do it in a way that will help you to follow through on your ideas.
- Constantly Brainstorm: It’s incredibly important to be continually thinking of ideas for your blog or website. If you’re at the mall and you see a store is attracting a lot of people toward it then try to figure out what they’re doing to attract that success. Then you can write about it. You can literally develop ideas during every one of life’s events.
- Use Mind Mapping / Idea Sketching: Get out a blank piece of paper. In the center of it write the topic of your blog. Then draw a line out from the center for each category on your site. You should only have 4 or 5. Then write down some article ideas for each category. Develop 5 article ideas for each category and you’ll have 25 article topics to draw from. Use this as a guide to develop lots of ideas for your blog.
- Write things down: It’s great to develop ideas. It’s terrific to be able to map out your ideas and come up with great topics to write about on your blog, but if you don’t write them down then I guarantee that you’ll forget more than you remember. Carry note cards with you or maybe a small notebook. Perhaps you have a phone that you can jot notes in. However you do it isn’t as important as the simple fact that you need to do it.
- Organize Your Plans: If you have notes on separate pieces of paper then compile all of your ideas onto one. Then assign dates to your ideas so that you have a concrete deadline.
- Schedule Your Writing: I’m a busy man. I work more than 60 hours per week in the United States Army. Sometimes it’s hard to find the time to get things written. The number one thing that helps me get my articles written each week is to schedule time to write. Every Saturday morning I take the topics that I’ve been developing throughout the week and I put five or six articles together. Find a time that works for your busy schedule and stick to it.
I’ve given you five ideas to help you manage and produce future posts for your website. As you reflect on the tips that I’ve given you on want you to take this advice from Hollywood’s most famous martial artist, Bruce Lee, “Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.”