Blogging has given me a great network of friends and colleagues. I’m thankful for these relationships. They are full of ideas and value. And perhaps even more importantly they remind us to share more openly our little tricks. Things that help us, and might help others, become more successful.
It was one of those relationships and discussions that I want to share with you. The topic was blogging and more specifically ideas for blogging. This challenge is probably the number one cause of thousands of abandoned ghost blogs littering the Internet.
5 blogging tricks and resources I use:
- Google Reader (of course) – This is the cornerstone of most bloggers’ creative stream. I am constantly adding and subtracting to the flow of blogs I’m watching. I like to use the sharing feature and relatively new “people you follow.” I’m a big fan of using my social network to filter content.
- Twitter – Another biggie, but it’s a little hard for me to harvest it effectively. I don’t have the time to watch it consistently. So, I tend to dip into the stream more than drink from it. As a result, I tend to use it more for news and discussions than blogging inspiration.
- Delicious.com – In my experience, consistently capturing the ideas is the Achilles heel of most writers. We have little ideas and epiphanies all the time. However, if they’re not captured they float away—absent when you need them to write. This is where delicious.com comes in handy for me. One simple button on my browser taskbar and I am continually creating a clip file. I simple bookmark and tag “towrite.” Check out what my idea river looks like right now.
- Google Analytics – This is a big one that bloggers miss all the time. Your web logs are full of keywords and phrases that people came you your blog looking for. Often times I find that I really haven’t answered their questions (even though Google apparently thinks I was a pretty good source). So, take advantage of those little hints in you web analytics. I wrote more about this strategy in a guest post on WriteToDone.com. Bonus tip: This is a great SEO move. It helps strengthen your control of that keyword, likely to get linked to, increases visitor time on site, and makes those visitors more loyal.
- Hints from Friends – I recently found this list of 100 blog topics from Chris Brogan. He is encouraging you to blog about these topics. Take advantage of these great seeds. You’ll be helping us all out. These are things people want to know. I put them in my Delicious.com towrite file and I have a printed copy by my computer.
Can You Help Me with Ideas?
I know there are a lot of people that read this blog that I don’t even know. People that visit that are full of great ideas or even write their own blog. Help me discover you. Leave a comment with your blog URL and maybe even a short description.
I want to come by and visit. I want to put you in my Google Reader and Delicious.com idea river. I want to point to your great works so the whole Better Closer community gets a better filter for great stuff.
Will you help me? Please leave a comment and show-off your stuff.
About Bill Rice
