Blogging Motivation
| April 27, 2010 | Posted by admin under Business |
I’ve written about Twitter, Facebook and social media in general, but I don’t think I’ve ever written about blogging. Well that’s going to change today because this blog has been basically my little project since it started so I love to talk about it. 
One of the biggest obstacles to overcome with blogging is figuring out what to write about. I know that is a struggle of mine and many of our authors too. Florida Agriculture is such a broad subject that you wouldn’t think it would be hard to find something to write about but, unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Here are a few things I tell our authors and people when they seem to be getting stuck in a rut.
Stick with what you know.
The first thing I always tell our authors is to write about what they know. There is nothing more challenging than writing about a subject that you either don’t care about or know nothing about. If there is already a base of knowledge there, the words should flow. No one wants to feel like they are writing a term paper.
Brainstorm.
This is just as important as writing about what you know. Once you’ve got a few topics that you’re interested in or know a lot about, brainstorm. Remember those days back in school when they’d teach you to make a brainstorming web to help organize all your ideas? Well it works as an adult too and you’d be surprised what kind of ideas you get.
Inspiration from others.
I read a lot of blogs. I do this to not only feed my thirst for information, I do it to help me be able to write on this blog. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and while that’s true – don’t word for word copy people. Use their posts to help you draw inspiration. See what they write about. How did they take an article and turn it into a blog post? What topics do they write about? Do they interview people? It’s a matter of just looking to others for how they do things and making it your own.
Personalization.
We’re lucky on this blog that ours is a little more consumer-oriented. Therefore we can be a little more casual than some other blogs. But even if you are a business, people enjoy reading things they can relate to. Give your readers information that they find interesting and helpful, but spice it up with a little of your own personality. Give your opinion too – but don’t go there. I always tell our authors that, you know when that line is drawn. But try to make it your own.
Those are just a few tips I’ve learned and shared with our authors. I hope you can find some use out of them too! Are there any other ways you find motivation or inspiration to write? Let me know!
Image from Flickr
great post! These are all tips that I discovered on my own too, and the “best practices” of blogging seems to really weed out the good ones from the poor ones. My major inspiration for blogging is to begin to prove myself as a informed professional in my field (libraries and museums.) I hope that through blogging potential employers will realize that I am not only engaged with trends in the field, but that I have thoughtful and well-articulated responses to current events.
Other than that, I think writing in general is a good practice, and it makes us better citizens of the connected world.