If we’re trying to produce engaging and relevant content for our blogs, we need to stay ahead of our calendars. Stick with what’s current and predict the trends! Let’s keep evolving our ideas, keep growing and making our blogs the best as they can be.
There should be no need to keep recycling your old blog posts, or even try and write a little similar to someone else’s. How are you meant to evolve your blog, your writing style and blog portfolio if you stick with the old or the boring?
So many questions?
Whether you’re writing for personal or business use, there are always a few things to consider. How are you going to address your audience, and what will you talk about? Which angle are you going to write from, how are you going to set it out? What will the layout look like, will you include images? The questions and possibilities and adapting your new blog post are endless.
In the words of RuPaul ‘Don’t F*** it up’.
Me
I’m pretty casual. I’m open and honest, but I write about things that I either feel passionate about or have a great general interest in. I like to write about a variety of topics because it brings more content to my blog, but I’m not going for the quantity over quality factor here. I take careful time and consideration writing each of my blogs. There’s nothing worse than being told to write something you know nothing about and probably don’t care about, so make sure it’s never forced. I have definite experience of that and it’s not fun, I get it – sometimes you have to write about ‘boring’ things for a job, but make the best of it if you can.
Pet Peeves: recycling the rubbish
Seeing bloggers or companies use the same photographs over and over again gets rather boring to see, and if you keep recycling old images the people viewing your content are going to question how current you are. We’ve all heard of reduce, reuse, recycle, and when it comes to the environment, cost of living and convenience by all means do your bit – but nobody wants to see recycled, outdated material.
Do you really look like that photograph anymore? Switch up your profile image or the photos on your website if you keep going back to them over and over to use them for everything. Technically you’re not being very honest with your audience or potential clients. One company I used to work for do this a lot. They still use the same few images of the company owner on blog posts, across the website and social media. It’s boring, repetitive, and the images aren’t exactly that recent or that accurate anymore.
If your reader keeps seeing the same images over and over how are they going to feel inspired to read new material by you? Afterall, you may be recycling and reusing that too?
Tips for staying on top
Think about what’s coming up in your calendar that you could write about? You don’t always need to be incredibly organised when it comes to blogging, we all experience writers block every now and then. If a great idea comes to me, I’ll open up the WordPress app on my phone, write a few words and save the draft to go back to later on. The other week I wrote a blog post about festival beauty, ready for Glastonbury! If there were another royal wedding coming up; why not write a blog post about some wedding hairstyles to wear to a royal wedding (even if you’re not attending one).
It’s all about a bit of prep, not a massive plan draw up on sheets of A4 paper. If you can’t seem to bring any new ideas to light, just google some ideas, read the news, check your diary or make your blog a more focused project. Examples would be travel, food, make-up, fashion, sport, parenting etc etc etc !
I hope you find some handy hints and tips in here, have a great day …
-Amy
A blog by Amy 