10 Ideas for Brainstorming Blog Content

It can be a tough trying to come up with dynamic blog posts that readers will find interesting and useful. Here are a few brainstorming ideas that may help you develop dynamic content that will add variety and personality to your blog while also inviting visitors to be interactive.

1. Post Other People’s Articles

You can find many interesting articles written by other authors and they are a great resource for generating blog content. I will say that posting your own articles is ideal but in a pinch posting articles from other writers can add variety, particularly if it’s an article from an author with a creative writing style. Of course posting other people’s articles requires including their resource box with a link to the author’s website. If this concerns you here’s a suggestion.

Post articles that are useful to your readers but not in direct competition. For example, a website about dating might post an article from a ‘money tips’ website that lists ways to save money on a date. The article is useful to your dating readers but may not necessarily draw them to the money tips website as your reader is focused more on dating.

If you are posting articles from other authors be sure to preface the article with an introduction paragraph on why you like the article and why your viewers should read it.

Then follow the article with a personal comment and invite your viewers to offer their opinions and ideas as well.

2. Attend Webinars, Workshops or Live Seminars

Not everyone has the time or the cash to attend live Seminars or workshops, but if you do, they are well worth it when it comes to learning strategies and getting ideas for content. In fact I’ll guarantee your head will be swimming with ideas and useful information when it’s over.

Of course live seminars are more an occasional event, unlike online webinars that you can attend every day if you like and they are typically free, simply sign up and listen.

Even if the webinars you attend lean more towards a marketing pitch, it’s still an easy way to get unique ideas on what people are looking, this in turn will spark ideas on what you can write or comment about on your blog.

3. Read Industry Publications

What’s going on in your specific industry? Is there anything interesting happening? Bookmark 2 or 3 industry related websites and visit them often. Note what’s going on and the highlights. There won’t be exciting news every day but there may be enough interesting things to post a few times a month.

Follow your posts with your own personal comments or opinion and invite your readers to do the same.

4. Offer Personal tips and ideas

What are your favorite personal tips, strategies or ideas that your readers may be interested in? Personal tips are often unique and interesting; they’re not the usual things people read about everywhere.

Tips could include things that have helped you get something done easier or faster.They could be simple tricks you’ve discovered or they could be about products you use and the unique ways you use them. The key here is to offer unique ideas by suggesting only ideas and tips that you have personally developed.

5. Frequent Popular Topic Related Forums

Forums contain content from members who are typically candid with their comments and questions. This is a genuine place for you to find out what information people are looking for. Look for a common interest that people often ask about or need information on. This will most likely be a hot topic for you to discuss or write about on your blog.

6. Post Fun & Interesting Videos

People are reading less and watching videos more. Adding a video to your post can add personality to your blog. If you’re not camera shy try making your own videos that demonstrate your personal tips and strategies or simply talk about a topic of interest.

If you’re not ready for the big screen YouTube is an excellent resource for finding fun and interesting videos from others. Videos can be informative, funny or unusual. I like to break up the monotony with an occasional funny video. I’ve noticed that readers will comment more when I post a video that is entertaining and fun.

7. Create an Audio Pod Cast

Just like video, audio is a popular way to deliver information. So why not record a conversation that your readers can benefit and learn from? For example, you could interview an expert in your field or record an informative conversation you’ve have with another business colleague. Just as with video, audio gives your viewers a glimpse into your personality and adds creativity and fun to your blog.

8. Check your Site Stats

Your hosting service should provide statistics about the visitors to your site or blog. Use this information to determine what keywords your visitors used to find your blog. These keywords make excellent blog content ideas for generating articles, videos, podcasts or commentary posts.

9. Use Google Alerts

Create ‘Google Alerts’ for your best industry related key phrases. This is an automated alert notification whereby Google will send you an email daily, weekly or monthly, with the web pages, articles, press releases, blog posts, etc. related to your key phrases. It’s an ideal source of current information to spark interesting and useful ideas on a consistent basis.

10. Read Blog Comments

Reading other blogs is always a great suggestion for blog content ideas but don’t forget to read the comments too. This is where good stuff gets posted. People bring up interesting ideas and unusual tips in the comments section. I often find that the comments can be more interesting that the actual post and is a great resource for unique tips.

There are lots of ways to brainstorm blog content and hopefully this will get you started. However, avoid overwhelming yourself and take breaks once in awhile. This clears your mind and opens it to fresh ideas. It also helps eliminate the stress of information overload.

About the Author Elizabeth McGee

Elizabeth McGee, internet home business owner, mentor and marketing enthusiast, brings you practical internet business ideas, useful marketing strategies and genuine personal support. Pick up her free no-hype newsletter Today!

10 Ways To Increase The Comments On Your Blog

by Lynette Chandler

Does your blog look lonely because you rarely (if ever) get people commenting on it? Want more comments? Try out a few or all of these ten easy ways to get more comments.

1. Just ask. If you don’t ask, you don’t get it. It’s really that easy. The worst that could happen is people don’t leave comments so you’re aren’t worse off just by asking. When you do ask, chances are people will respond.

2. Get help. Tell your readers you need help deciding for example, help picking out a new hairstyle, color for your home office, new computer, help with a new logo design. You get the idea.

3. Give them a chance to self promote. You can get people to comment by adding any relevant sites that they know of for a resource list you tell them you’re building.

4. Ask them to complete an action. For example, you say you’re writing a report about seven most common gardening problems but you’ve found only four. Tell them to come up with the other three and the ones chosen to be included in your report will get credit on your report.

5. If you blog about your experience on products or services you have used, then encourage your reader to do the same (even if it’s an affiliate product). Allow both positive and negative reviews though so that you become an unbiased blog to visit when someone is looking for reviews.

6. Offer comments subscription. People are used to forums. Whether they contribute to a discussion or not, they like to get notified when someone else has something to say about a post. Make it easy for them to follow the conversation by offering a way to subscribe to comments both by email and RSS.

7. Tap into your network, customers or your list. Tell people about your posts and encourage them to visit and let you know what they think about the it or if they have further thoughts to add. You could also ask customers to blog about you and trackback to your blog.

8. Ask your readers to let you know what they think about the freebie by posting to your blog.

9. Slow down. Maybe you’re posting too often that your readers just can’t keep up with your posts let alone stop to comment.

10. Extend a discussion. Blog about something you read on another blog, news, magazine or other media then invite readers to share their thoughts. This usually works very well for hot topics of the day, week or month.

Now that you know ten easy ways to get comments, try a few today. Don’t forget, sometimes you may not see results in the first few days or weeks but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Keep asking questions and provoking responses and you’ll have a busy blog after all.

Affectionately nicknamed Tech Diva by her peers, Lynette Chandler regularly dispenses blogging and RSS help to countless business owners. Visit www.BloggingStarterPack.com to learn more about blogging and get a copy of her video free.

Blogging Bootcamp to Maximize the
Profitability of Your Business Blog

5 Ways To Save Work Blogging

by Lynette Chandler

1.Create a Team Blog. Gather up people who’s business or blog topic matches your own and set it up so that everyone has accessto post. You can have anywhere from 2-5 people (or more!) on your team blog. By blogging as a team you will gain more visitor and traffic because: You are combining the traffic of multiple contributors and you will have more content for the search engines to pick up

2.Hire a team of bloggers. Newspapers have contributors, blogs can too. If you’ve ever used writers to do articles and content for you , they can do the same type of thing with a blog. Many of the most successful blogs are already doing this. The combination of group promotion effort, regular updates and pinging can help bring
in traffic quickly. One thing to note here is blogs are a somewhat social tool. Some very popular niche blogs are not all that visible in the search engines, yet they get a lot of traffic because people recommend them and they become a sort of buzz hub. Search engines do not always pick up on this but they do eventually. This is why group blogging can be very powerful because you’re leveraging the power of not one (your) influence group but several people’s influence group. If you do pay your bloggers, you can always offset this cost by displaying Adsense ads. Many popular
blogs earn a good amount in Adsense, that they make a nice profit even after paying their bloggers team. After a while it becomes a passive income stream.

3.Recycle Content. By taking previously published articles, interviews or even audio and breaking it up into blog sized pieces you can recycle old content and make it new again! You can break up long pieces into a bunch of segments and have a series going for, say, a week or so. Then you won’t have to worry about coming up with new content for a week!

4.Include audio. For some of us, it’s much easier to speak than to write. So, mix up your blog. Carry a small portable MP3 recorder or blog by phone. What a way for moms who are running around all day , busing the kids where they need to go , doing errands , and whatever else needs to be done. Maybe you’re stuck in traffic, or waiting for the kids to get out piano class or school. An idea or thought strikes and you think “Oh I need to share that on my blog” so, pick up your phone (assuming you have a cell phone – and many of us do), dial a number, say what’s on your mind, save it and you’re done. Your blog is published. If you’re using Blogger, you can do this for free through AudioBlog. It involves calling a long distance number, but most cell phone plans don’t charge extra for long distance anyway so you’re not incurring any extra cost.

If you’re using another blog publishing tool like WordPress, Movable Type or TypePad, then you’ll need a service like AudioBlogger.com. This one is a paid service but it’s only $4.95 a month and it gives you more options like a nice flash player, statistics and even video that make it worth while.

5.Automate Your Blog. Want to save time? A great thing about using WordPress as a publishing tool is having the ability to forward blog entries to a later date. When you’ve got more than one post that you’d like to make this makes it much easier. You just set a time and date for your entry to be posted and that’s it, your post will appear on schedule.

Let’s face it. There will be times we have a ton to say and times we have little or nothing to share. Instead of having multiple entries one day and nothing over the next few days, by using forward entry you can blog everyday of the week. Or rather you blog once and the blog publishing tool does the job automatically the rest of
the week. You can even forward blog for weeks and months ahead of time.

Note: Blogger users unfortunately cannot do this because Blogger publishes all entries regardless what you date it immediately.

Affectionately nicknamed Tech Diva by her peers, Lynette Chandler regularly dispenses blogging and RSS help to countless business owners. Visit www.BloggingStarterPack.com to learn more about blogging and get a copy of her video free.

Blogging Bootcamp to Maximize the
Profitability of Your Business Blog

Easy, Auto-Pilot Ways to Promote Your Blog

by Michelle Shaeffer

Put your blog promotion on auto-pilot with these “set it once then forget it” promotional strategies.

Submit Your Blog to Blog Directories
Once you’ve requested a listing, you’re done!

blogcatalog.com
bloghub.com
blogarama.com
blogexplosion.com
blogflux.com
blog-search.com
blogbunch.com
iblogbusiness.com
quickblogdirectory.com
bloglisting.net
blogrankings.com
weblogalot.com

Ping When You Post
If you’re using WordPress, it’s probably already set to ping rpc.pingomatic.com Add that to your ping list if it’s not there already. Ping-O-Matic will receive your ping then let lots of other sites know you’ve updated your blog.

If you can’t ping directly from your blog, try Feedburner’s Pingshot service.

Offer Your Readers an RSS Subscribe
Techno-savvy readers love RSS feeds they can subscribe to.

Your blog may have this built it just waiting for you to link to. You can also sign up with Feedburner or Feedblitz.

Be sure to add the code to your blog once you’re setup so readers can subscribe.

Add Social Bookmarking and “Tell a Friend” to Your Posts
Sociable and Share This are two great plugins you can use to easily add social bookmarking and “tell a friend” capability to your blog.

Just download, install, setup, and then the plugin of your choice will add the social networking icons to every post on your blog.

Connect to Social Networking
Using social media you can syndicate your blog content to reach your social networks.

If you Twitter, you can tweet your blog posts with TwitterFeed.

If you’re on Facebook, try the WordPress Facebook App.

These five strategies take a few minutes to setup but once you’ve got them up and running they’ll promote your blog for you. Strategies 2 – 5 will promote your blog every time you post!

Work at home mom extraordinaire Michelle Shaeffer publishes The Muses Brainstorm, a weekly ezine with tips to help you balance, manage, and market your home based business. If you’re ready for inspirational guidance and bright ideas sign up free at www.thesmallbusinessmuse.com

Blogging Bootcamp to Maximize the
Profitability of Your Business Blog

How Blogging Can Help You Market Your Business

by Mercedes Aspland

If you have an online business you will be looking at ever increasing ways to market it online. The aim of this article is to give you some advice on how to use blogs to your advantage.

There are two ways in which you can use blogs, the first is to set up your own blog and build a community that way. The other way is to get involved with other people’s blogs. We would recommend doing both to have the maximum effect. Below are a list of our top tips for each of these ways.

Setting Up Your Own Blog

1. Categorise Your Content. Make sure you properly categorise the information that you put into your blog. If you make sure you use your keywords in the categories it will help with the SEO of your blog.

2. Submit to Blog Directories. You want to get your blog seen by other people and a good way to do this is to submit it to blog and feed directories.

3. Write Regularly. Set yourself a schedule for writing content for your blog and stick to it. If your visitors get used to seeing regular content then they will keep coming back to read what you have posted.

4. Respond to Comments. If you have contributors that write interesting comments and ask questions you should respond to them. This will give you a reputation as a useful resource and will give your blog more colour. It also helps to build a proper community on your blog and keeps people coming back.

5. Research Your Industry. Make sure what you are giving to your readers is up to date and is something they will find interesting.

This is great for your site in a number of ways. Firstly you will be adding pages to your site which will help your SEO efforts. In addition as you get more people using your blog they will likely link to you and thus increasing your page rank and your position in the search engines. Finally it will make you appear an expert to your potential customers and so will increase the chance of converting them to sales.

Contributing to Others Blogs

1. Write Valuable Comments. Make sure your comments add to the content of the blog. This will make you a valuable member of the blog and of the community as a whole.

2. Come Back Regularly. If you leave a comment come back to see if anyone has answered. If they have then you may wish to come back and continue the conversation. Again this will make you seem valuable to the other users.

3. Research Blogs. Have a look around and find the popular blogs, ones that most people are getting involved with. This is where you will probably find the content that is best to get involved with.

This will help in a number of ways. Firstly each post will give you a link to your website which will help you with improving your search engine rankings. You may also find that you get traffic to your site directly from the posts that you make. Finally you will build yourself a reputation within the industry and so may find you get referrals from people that like what you have to say.

Blogging is not the only way to get your website publicity but it is something that every website owner should consider in order to get themselves some free advertising.

If you have found this article useful then you can get more information from Dazines – search optimization, London UK. Dazines – website design and web development company London UK

How to Profit in Tough Times Business Women Networking Event

Join us for an evening of networking and learning how to increase sales in our businesses!

Che Brown will be sharing with us “How to Profit in Tough Times”.

Che Brown is President of Partners in Learning, a global sales training company, which teaches sales professionals how to make sales with less effort. Che shares winning sales strategies on how to close deals and put cash in your pocket by mastering the basics of selling, using sales scripts, and advanced sales techniques to increase sales and long-term profitability.

Don’t let the current state of the economy deter you from building your business.

Admission is FREE but you must RSVP to attend.

For more information and to RSVP visit http://www.howtoprofitintoughtimes.eventbrite.com

How to Use Microblogging to Grow Your Business Online

posted by Home Business Success

A Blogging Solution For those Who Have Little Time to Blog
by Marie Ynami

Microblogging has been the “hottest” thing these days in cyberworld. What is it exactly? Well, the shortest and simplest definition I can think of is that microblogging is like text messaging except – instead of sending your text to just one person, you are sending it for cyber-world to see. Note though that you have an option of having your microblog posts available to everyone on the web or a selected private group.

So … how do you microblog?

While a traditional blog requires you to log-in and post your entries online, you can “microblog” using both your cell phone or your computer – thus microblogging presents that benefit of portability. One thing to remember though – microblogging only allows you to blog brief posts (usually limited to 140 to 200 characters) at a time. So before you start typing your post, you need to really think about how you can make the most out of your words. You can microblog as often as you want as long as you do not post spam. You can even build a following or your own microblogging community. You can connect with other microbloggers and get quick replies to your microblog posts. The fun thing about microblogging is that you can send your messages in text, audio or even video.

Below are some advantages of microblogging:

• It is very easy to post your thoughts in cyberspace using microblogging. Microblog to share your events, promote your business or just to share links worth checking out.
• You can build your own community by microblogging and have others subscribe to your feed – a great way to promote yourself. You can then make a connection with others.
• Microblogging is portable. You can use your cell phone and still be connected to your community even if you are on the go.
• You can microblog using text, audio or even video so there are a lot of possibilities here – you can let your creativity come out!
• The fact that there is a 140-200 character limit in microblogging, you do not have to worry about providing lots of content in your microblog post.

There are some disadvantages too and they are listed below:

• It can be really addicting and if you do not use it properly, it could be a great time waster.
• If you are not careful about what your post on your microblog – for example posting about your “ideas”, your subscribers can easily “adopt one of your ideas and pass it as their own”.
• If you work online and are microblogging for the most part of the day, it can be really disctracting and it can take away your focus on projects that you need to complete.

About the Author

Ready to start microblogging? Let Marie Ynami show you how. Here is a free video on how you can get started – www.ynami.com/ad/microblogging.php .

Click here to visit A Woman in Business’s Microblog

Top 5 Mistakes Business Bloggers Make

It’s understandable. After all, blogging is still relatively new to the majority of bloggers and many businesses are still trying to make sense of the whole blogging scene. Also things evolve as blogging starts to mature, so a good strategy yesterday may turn into a mistake today. These are some of the most common mistakes a blogger makes.

Not Asking For Comments
Bloggers always agonize over the lack of comments. But the problem is not that people don’t read the blog or don’t want to comment but the blogger hasn’t given the opportunity for readers to comment. Just like asking for people to order a product, you’ve got to coax people to spend their 3 or 4 precious minutes to comment on your blog. Ask for opinions. People love giving it. Ask for reader’s experiences, input or help to accomplish something. Ask people to suggest something to you e.g. You’re getting incorporated, ask people for suggestions, tips and recommendations. Asking is a way of telling people it’s ok to speak their mind and that you’re open to alternatives..

Not Hosting On Their Own Domain
Give thought into your blog. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. You need to figure out where it’s taking you before you hop on for the ride. Like any web site you may build, think of your blog as a long term marketing communication channel. A Blogspot or Typepad URL is not only unprofessional, you don’t own it. Nothing against these blogging services; they’re excellent tools but for long term marketing purposes, go for your own domain..

This way you control where you want to publish the blog to. Tomorrow, if you outgrow these services, you can easily export your blog to another tool, another host without losing too much established traffic. A domain is also easier for people to remember and easier for you to publicize..

Not Maximizing Their Blog Content
Many businesses quit blogging because they feel it’s too much work. True, like everything else, you gotta work on a blog but you don’t have to break your back over it. Sometimes you may have a paragraph here and there about a topic that just isn’t big enough for an article. You know what? You’re going to have many more of these impromptu thoughts and ideas – publish it to your blog. Later, you can come back and gather these paragraphs, compile them into a complete article or even a book..

That’s only one way of maximizing your work. Have you written articles in the past? How about e-courses, audio transcripts or books that aren’t in publication anymore? Recycle. Break them up and post them on your blog. In fact, if you have lot’s of this type of content, you can even get your assistant to post them for you..

Publishing Too Often
I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like complete the opposite of everything you’ve ever learnt about blogging. Truth is, the blogging world changes. What works yesterday may not today. This is one of them. There are countless blogs already jostling with you for your reader’s time. More are being started by the day. .

Who has the time to read so many blogs? It’s come to a point people are forced to cherry pick the blogs they read. Even when they do read yours, you’re not safe yet. If they can’t keep up with your blogging pace, they’ll drop you no matter how good your information is. Keep a balance. Feed information to your readers not dump a truckload on them. Every market is different. Some can tolerate higher number of posts a week, some can’t. You should know your market and test accordingly..

Falling For Short Term Methods
Ah, this is my favorite. If you can have a favorite pet peeve that is. Every week, you hear about people dishing out the newest, coolest blogging tactic, best blogging tool that’s sure to sky rocket your business to success or bull doze your way to the top search engine listings. Consider how any offer will help you advance your business two, five or tens years from now. Is it really in line with your marketing direction? If it isn’t drop it. It also helps a lot if you can have a reliable source whom you can consult and help put things into perspective for you. One of the most powerful qualities of a blog has nothing to do with search engines, tagging or pinging. These things do have a place, but they aren’t as powerful as the relationship opportunities between you and your customers..

Although these mistakes are common, they are also very easily rectified and don’t cost much money. All of these suggestions are born out of my own trial and error and they’ve worked out nicely. Try it yourself..

About the author:

Passionate about blogging, Lynette Chandler enjoys helping business owners get their blogs started. She also holds their hand through the process, assisting them to cut through all the noise so business owners can stay focused enough to harness the quality of their blogs.