Friday 28 September 2012

How to Find Motivation and the Creative Spark When Writing for a Blog



Blogging, and in particular writing and producing content on a fairly consistent and regular basis is not an easy gig.

In fact it can be mentally straining, and downright exhausting.

Therefore, bloggers and writers need to find new sources of inspiration, keep themselves motivated and focused in order to produce quality content regularly.

Here’s a list of things you can do to find blogging motivation to produce great content:

1. Keep abreast of news and the happenings in your industry. If you do, you’ll always have something to write on and write about. Use social media, your RSS feed and Google Alerts to instantly know what’s happening in your niche, and choose any story, news item or a blog post as the source for your next post.

2. Read other blogs in your niche/industry. It’s a great way of not only knowing about the things happening in your industry, such blogs can also be a great way of getting inspiration from. Read up a few posts on such blogs and you’ll certainly find something you might want to write on yourself!

3. Try something totally new and completely different from what you’ve been doing till now. Is there something that you would like to try out with your blog? Perhaps something that you’ve been thinking about doing for some time? Or doing a completely different type of a post than the ones you usually write. Right now would be the perfect time to do just that!

4. Revamp your blog. Give it a visual-overhaul. Change the interface completely and give it a new look. Try changing the colors (or the color scheme), or change the theme of the blog completely. Invest in a good theme, such as the theme pack from Elegant Themes. A new theme and/or a visual overhaul might just be the thing that reignites your creative spark.

5. Come up with a list of different kinds of posts that you can do on your blog (I’m certain there will be many different sorts of posts you can do, no matter which niche you might be in), and develop a schedule so that you can do one type of post every day. For instance if you come up with 4 or 5 different types of posts, you can do each one of them starting Monday.

6. Guest posts. Take guest posters on, and allow them to do posts on your blog periodically. Guest posting is a great way of link-building, and it also allows you, the blog owner, to get fresh, quality and at times, thought-provoking content on your blog. Guest posts might even get a great amount of traffic and comments, and might provide you with inspiration for a new post by building upon a guest post on your blog.

7. Take a break. Seriously, take some days off from blogging – take a blogging vacation. Travel, go ona road trip, visit people such as your friends and family, do something that you might’ve been planning to do for a while, or simply relax at home with your guitar. Do a post when you really want to do one. You’ll come back more motivated than ever!

8. Write as many posts as you can over the weekend, when you have free time or when you really feel like writing, and put them on schedule. This gives you a list of ‘buffer’ or reserve posts that you can use when you don’t feel like writing. You can then put these posts on schedule so that your blog remains updated with fresh content.

9. Set up blogging goals, and stick to them. Yes, it’s probably easier said than done. But give it a try. Write down your goals – they could be anything, such as writing at least 2 or 3 posts in the weekdays, and then doing one detailed, in-depth and thorough post on the weekend. Keep your goals to yourself, in order to avoid people talking you out of them.

10. Learn from some of the big bloggers out there. Follow some of the big bloggers in your industry/niche and observe how the blog owners keep their blogs fresh and updated. Try learning from them, and emulating and incorporating those best-practices yourself. A great way to connect and speak with these people is over Facebook and Twitter!

As a blogger or an online publisher, what do you do to keep yourself motivated, inspired, focused and driven? Let us know in the comments!

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