If you’re serious about blogging not only as a personal creative outlet, but as a career opportunity or a way to make money online, you must make a commitment to producing and adding content. This means not just blogging on days when you feel like it, but creating and sticking to a daily routine or quota.
Still, it’s not always easy. Sometimes your imagination just comes up empty. Here are a few tips to help you solve, or at least mitigate, that problem so that your blog always has fresh new content.
1. Don’t wait for inspiration
Just start writing! You can always save something as a draft, or even trash it, if it isn’t working out. Don’t assume you have to have the perfect idea for a post before you set in on it. Just take the first thing that’s “just barely good enough” and start running with it. As any writer will tell you, the real work gets done in the rewriting or editing stage anyway.
2. Keep a notebook of ideas
Sometimes a blog idea will come to you at the least convenient times, far from your computer. Or a whole bunch of them will come at once, when you only need one…and then the next time you try to think of one, you don’t have any. So you should always keep a journal of things to blog handy. Then, the next time you’re sitting at a stoplight, or getting out of the shower, you can reach for your notebook and keep that idea from drifting away forever.
3. Talk it out
Sometimes idea generation is hard in a vacuum, but easy in conversation. Keep friends around who stimulate you creatively. Whether it’s a chat with a coworker in person over morning coffee, an IM conversation with a buddy, or a “phone a friend” call to that guy who always has great ideas, lighten your creative burden by having others share it. You’ll be surprised how often they’ll be thrilled to help!
Learn to stay inspired, sustain momentum & manage competing priorities in order to be a productive writer from The Productive Writer: Tips & Tools to Help You Write More, Stress Less & Create Success by Sage Cohen.
