The flashing curser.
The sheer emptiness of the page.
It’s waiting for you and your words.
But you have none.
All your wonderful plans for starting a blog, or refreshing the content on your existing one have vanished upon opening to a new page.
But fear not, use this checklist to help you overcome nasty writer’s block and maintain a continual stream of ideas to keep your blog fresh and your site visitors returning.
Read
And read a lot.
Yes, it’s not an easy task when there are a thousand other things to be doing for your business. But seriously, spending some of that time reading about your industry has an excellent return on investment.
Perhaps read an industry journal or magazine, keep up to date on relevant current affairs, or follow others in your industry on social media and read their posts and links.
Then think about how you can reinterpret the content to make it compelling for your own audience.
Write stuff down
Keep a notepad handy.
Use your device.
Or even a voice recorder.
Whatever you prefer.
They key is to capture the fleeting ideas and thoughts which occur to you at random moments before they are gone.
Jot a few words down, enough to be able to decipher a recreate the thought later on and (hopefully) develop it into a blog post.
Stay connected
Connect with others in your industry.
There are many platforms online for this which are great.
But don’t underestimate in-person connections too.
Attend conferences and business lunches, take opportunities to network and ask questions of others in the same line of business as you.
It will give you more ideas than you know what to do with.
I.E.H.
That is, you want to write content which is either Interesting, Entertaining or Helpful (or, preferably, all three) for your readers.
Not sure how to check?
Think of your target audience – it can actually help putting a face to the name. So, create a person who embodies your target readers, describe them, name them, even write a profile of them if it helps, a bit like an author might create a character.
Then, ask yourself, would Bob (or Belinda or whatever your target reader’s name is) find this helpful? Would she find it interesting? Would this be entertaining for him?
FAQs and SAQs
Converting site visitors into paying customers can be fast tracked if they don’t have to spend their time contacting you with general questions first.
Write down the ten or twenty questions you get asked by customers most often.
Then write the answers. And, voila, you have an FAQ post.
For something a little bit different, write an SAQ (Should-Ask-Questions) blog post. For example, ’10 Questions You Should Ask A Copywriter Before You Hire Them’).
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