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This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:
See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project
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BLOGTASTIC!: When you stare at a blank screen..
Bloggers are writers and hence writer’s block affects bloggers too. There are days when you’ll sit at the computer and say to yourself, “I really don’t have anything to say today.” In that desperate moment, you’re staring at a blank screen. You feel tempted to write anything, just to say that you posted today.
When you blog, you must accept that it’s better to post nothing than post something of questionable value. Weak posts bring down the average value of your blog’s posts. Why take that risk? You want to attract and retain quality readers, and weak blog posts will drive these people away.
Some bloggers make a huge mistake. They write posts because they have a blog. That approach leads to a lot of empty content. As a smart blogger, you should only write when you have something valuable to contribute. Here are a few good reasons when you should write:
• You start a conversation with a thoughtful piece;
• You contribute to a conversation with something of value; or
• You point out an insight elsewhere.
You don’t want quality readers to consider your blog an “also ran” in the blogosphere. When you make a below-average post, you will only increase one statistic—your total number of blog posts. If you ask people to choose between quantity and quality, quality almost always wins.
In the long-run, you need a strategy for blog-posting during “blog breaks.” Here are some ideas:
• Ask up-and-coming bloggers to guest post;
• Interview authors about the topics of their books;
• Post relevant quotes and your interpretation of them;
• Create a series of posts on topic that is relates to your audience; and
• Go with the “flow”—when you’re in a writing mood draft a few extra posts and save them for future blog breaks.
Blogging Tip: If you’re not contributing to the signal, then you are contributing to the noise.
We already have a problem with the signal-to-noise ratio on the web. Blogs make it even easier to drive the signal-to-noise ratio to lower levels.
Your blog post will either increase the signal or increase the noise. Before hitting that “post” button, please consider the effect of your post.
Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow