In the years of interacting with myriad bloggers, I’ve often heard the sad lament of a blogger who can’t figure out what to write about. This is a baffling condition to me. Why would you want to be a blogger unless you were just bursting with thoughts, ideas, and snippets of info that you are dying to share with the entire universe?
To me, it’s like someone who says, “I am an inventor!” and then wracks their brain about what they can invent. Or someone who claims to be a musician and then tries to figure out what instrument they will learn.
If you can’t think of anything to blog about, maybe you’re not really a blogger! Or, at very least, maybe you’re trying to write in an area where you have too little interest and/or too little expertise.
Still, I’ll admit that even great writers do get writer’s block on occasion. So if you’re a real blogger, but have found yourself in a temporary rut, I’ve compiled a few ideas to help you remember all the great posts that are waiting to come out.
Within your blog niche, consider:
Innovations in Technology or Methods
What are new ideas? What are people trying? What is working? What isn’t? If you’re an MMO blogger, you might discuss your perception of the newest social media venture. Maybe you’ll note the pitfalls of a once-popular method.
Humorous Anecdotes
There’s nothing like an inside joke to foster a feeling of community. If you’ve seen something funny that only those in your niche will understand, share the laughter with your readers. My husband is an electrical engineer, so one of our favorite jokes compares the various kinds of engineers (electrical, mechanical, civil, etc.) in a way that addresses the inherent rivalry. I’m a singer (and an alto) and a favorite pieces is called “Alto’s Lament.” It’s full of all sorts of references that only a singer (and only a fellow non-melody singer) will understand.
Problems — Resolved or Not
Discussing common frustrations or difficulties within your topic is an easy way to get started. If you don’t have a solution, point out the ways you’ve tried to address the issue and why they haven’t worked. Ask for collaboration. If you have solved the problem, share your solution clearly and explicitly.
Admired or Important People
Who are the movers and the shakers in your niche? What have they done and what are they doing now? What can you learn from them? Analyzing the successes of others can be an valuable source of inspiration. Perhaps their examples can be applied to your own life or work.
Emotional Experiences
What issues and circumstances in your niche make you happy? angry? worried? optimistic? Share your feelings about the things that are coming up with your site visitors. Chances are, they are shared.
Once you’ve identified one of these things in your niche, all you have to do is share it. If it’s interesting to you, it will probably be interesting to someone else.
Another great week thanks again to those that took the time to write an article for the Word Challenge. I going to move this wrap up post to Saturday just so everyone has till end of day Friday to get your post in.
Next weeks word is ?
Favorite Blog(s)
Now is your chance to help some others and say something great about your favorite Blog or list of Blogs.
This weeks Entries
Please take time to read, tweet (#blogengage) and comment I know I plan to go back thought these this weekend. Looking very forward to it.
I Can’t Internet – Helping others is what Blogging is all about
Ms. Ileane’s Blog – Thanks for all your Help
Integral Web Solutions - You have a friend in me
Win With 1 – Business Ethics: Helping Others is Good All the Way Around
SEO MKT – How Blog Engage can help you as a Blogger
The Money Cult – Helping Others Important Part to your Success
Blazing Minds – Tweetdeck Discover Twitter Followers
– Need to make sure to have word at least once next time or no credit but I liked the article and it was very helpful so thank you for the link!
Next weeks Poll
Why participate
Because all articles submitted to the challenge will be promoted on by me here on our social linking directly to your word challenge post. This also includes retweets from myself and Brian with over 5000 followers. Also other member will be joining us in conversations on your blog. This is a great way to find new readers and get comments.
The challenge
I challenge all the members here in our community to write an article about or regarding the weekly word “Helping Others”. The article doesn’t have to be of any special length simply write about the topics and submit your article to the Blog Engage. Please remember to comment below with your blog post and link if it not in the comment luv link.
Also do me a favor and post about the word challenge as I would like for more to enter. You have till Friday to comment here with a link to your post to get credit in the weekly wrap up.
Look forward to your articles. Talk to you Friday.
Jared P Little
The Money Cult
When you search for blogging tips these days, one thing that always seems to stand out is the word “niche” and when you read about it on these blogs they always say that you should set a niche for your blog to blog about and stick to it.
But the question arises, Do you have to stick to a niche or can you stray from it?
I myself blog about a lot of stuff, so I suppose you could say that Blazing Minds is set in the niche of “Mixed Bag”, but if you do have a lot of interests, then why should you only blog about one thing and one thing only, OK I know there are a lot of blogs out there that do only blog about one thing and they do very well, but do you get a wider audience by blogging about anything you want and do you get a set target audience doing it this way or just people strolling around the net looking for everything and anything.
Over the time I have been blogging, when I do do several posts about one subject, I personally get bored with them, I think that is why I enjoy blogging about anything I can, after all, I’m not in it to get rich, only to have a bit of fun and meet fellow bloggers and have even more fun.
Maybe that is one of the reasons that I now have guest bloggers, not only do they help in bringing some freash blood to my blog, but they can also bring in some knowledge to subjects that I may not know much about or nothing about and not only teach me but my readers, but then again does this mean that the blog is falling in to a niche for these subjects, there’s that word again, niche!
Do you blog in a set niche or do you blog about what you want, are you following a route of only blogging in subjects that seem to be big on the search engines top keywords that could possibly make you money or are you blogging from the heart just to have fun.
So there we have it a small question with a big post 
Are You Blogging in The Right Niche? Do You Care?
Happy New Year everyone! Hard to believe that it is 2010. I want to take a minute and thank everyone that took the time to enter the weekly word challenge for this last week. I know holidays can be a very busy time so thank you. Let’s see if we can get some more members involved to kick off the New Year right.
In case I missed your entry please let me know and I will add it but here are the ones that I captured from the comments. This past weeks word was “Contest” to help warp up the Blog Engage year end contest.
Will
Brainwave Alexa Ranking Contest
Robert Bravery
Use a Blog Contest to Drive Traffic and Boost Your Blog
Brian
Blog Engage Year End Contest Final 2009
Jared
Best Blogging Sites Contest – The Money Cult
I thank everyone who participated and if you’re not included it’s because you didn’t leave your url in the latest word challenge article.
Looking towards next weeks challenge here the deal I will list five words then based on the comments a word will be selected for the next week. If you have any words that you would like for me to consider let me know.
- Alexa Ranking
- DoFollow/NoFollow
- Blog Policies
- Blogging Goals
- Helping Others
Why participate
Because all articles submitted to the challenge will be promoted on by me here on our social linking directly to your word challenge post. This also includes retweets from myself and Brian with over 5000 followers. Also other member will be joining us in conversations on your blog. This is a great way to find new readers and get comments.
The challenge
I challenge all the members here in our community to write an article about or regarding the weekly word which will be announced Monday. The article doesn’t have to be of any special length simply write about the topics and submit your article to the blogengage
Hello everyone I offered to help Brian out and become more active in the Blog Engage Community by taking over the weekly word challenge posts. I was pretty excited about this challenge once I came across them and didn’t want it to go away so after I didn’t see if for a week I made Brian an offer to pick it up post for these for awhile which he accepted.
I think is a win-win for situation for Brian and myself. Now I get in a regular routine of guest posting on a high traffic blog and Brian gets some more time to help and promote and do other things.
So for those that are new to this here is how it works.
Friday - a post goes out that will list potential words along with links to anyone that entered the challenge for the previous week. A link will go out to a vote for the word in the forum.
Monday – A post will go out with the official word of the week. – Please make sure to comment to this post once your post is ready with link.
Some Prior Weekly Word Challenge Posts
The challenge
I challenge all the members here in our community to write an article about or regarding the weekly word. The article doesn’t have to be of any special length simply write about the topics and submit your article to the blogengage site. I also ask that you post a comment including the website url to where your article has been published.
Why participate
Because all articles submitted to the challenge will be promoted on by me here on our social linking directly to your word challenge post. Back links from PR 4 blog also includes retweets from myself and Brian with over 3000 and 1700 followers. Also other member will be joining us in conversations on your blog. This is a great way to find new readers and get comments and to give yourself a topic to write about.
To kick things off again and since it’s a Holiday week I am actually going to pick the word “Contest” I going with this cause this is the last week of the Blog Engage contest and figure we could get some last minute promotion post going to help the community.
