10 Ideas for Blogging When You Don’t Have Time
One of the myths about being a blogger is that you have to write long posts to capture the attention of your audience. Research has shown that Internet users skim content rather than read it, and they really read only 20% of the content on a page (www.useit.com). Long blog posts are not necessarily better.
On the flip side, life has gotten busier for most, and less time is available for writing a blog, which makes the whole effort seem much more overwhelming. Taking the pressure off of length means procrastination is less likely to happen.
Blogs don’t have to be long to be useful
You can actually design the content on your blog so it suits short posts, which means that you don’t have to spend as much time writing, but your readers will still get exactly what they want. Consider the needs of your readers, and use that as a way to come up with a blog that fulfills a need for them which saves them time, and generates an easy-to-maintain blog for you. The following 10 ideas are great ways to have a short-post blog, but still give some great content to your readers.
1) Spread it Out
Have a great idea for a top-10 list? Or perhaps you have step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish something? Spread the list or the steps over a series of days. There is no rule that says everything has to be in one post, and spreading it over a few days allows you to write a little bit each day. Perhaps each week you have a top 5 list that you share Monday through Friday, then the next week it’s a different subject.
2) Article Review
If you are traveling the web reading articles, let your readers know about the ones that you like best. An article review could be a quick paragraph with your likes and dislikes, with a link to the full article. It doesn’t have to take more than 10 minutes to write, and now you’ve saved your readers time by finding some useful industry information.
3) Industry Trends
Are you reading online trade publications or industry blogs? Do you spot industry trends? Similar to article reviews, capturing links to the information you think your readers will find useful is a great way to save your readers time. And all you have to do is write one short paragraph and insert the link. Do this enough, and your blog will be the first place they stop when looking for what is going on in your industry.
4) Guest Blogging
This doesn’t have to be a short-post blog, but it surely saves you time! You can ask a colleague to guest post on your blog. This means you don’t have to write, they get more exposure, and your readers get some great new ideas. You could actually create an entire blog that is all guest posts in a specific industry. That way you only have to coordinate the blog, never have to write it.
5) Ask a Question
Blogs are about starting a conversation with your customers. So use your blog as a place to get their input. Write a simple, quick question that you would like them to give input on. It could be a question about your company, your customer service, the industry, a new product… whatever you think they would respond to.
6) Link Lists
If you are an avid blog reader, you probably have a lot of great links you can gather together. Pick a topic that you love, and as you do your regular reading, gather links that are pertinent. That’s what we did in our Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile blog. These kinds of blogs are easy to compile, and save so much research time for your readers.
7) Personal Stories
It is always quicker to write a personal story than to write a factual blog that you have to back up with some research. A personal story could share information that is useful to the reader, and it can be short and to-the-point.
Answer a Customer’s Question
There are times when you find yourself writing an email explaining things to a customer. Capture these emails as they make excellent blog posts. This is actually how Simple Web Toolbox got started. We found ourselves answering the same questions over and over, so we decided to put the information in one place so we could point the customers here rather than re-writing the answer again. When you find yourself writing that email explanation, copy, paste and edit it so it’s suitable for a blog post.
9) Update an Old Post
Often a year will have gone by and your industry information has changed, and now some of your old blog posts are outdated. This is an excellent opportunity to repurpose old content. Pull out those old posts and write an update to the information, and link back to the old post. Remember to also edit the old post and link to the new update.
10) Best Of Posts
If you have extensive archives, use a blog post as an opportunity to highlight some of your most popular blogs. Use your comment numbers as a way to judge the most popular, and simply pull the most commented 7-10 posts and put them in a list. This is also an excellent type of post to feature on your home page for the blog, since it represents the most read content, and probably the most interesting content to a new reader.
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