8 Tips – How To Vary Your Blog Content, Format and Structure

Do you sometimes become stuck for ideas for your blog? Not just bloggers block in terms of content but also in terms of structure, layout and approach?  Blogs can become a little boring if the format is always the same – for the readers and for the writer.  Changing your format occasionally can breathe new life into your blog and renew interest in it.

During last week’s KLCK bloggers network meeting, Frank Bradley was presenting and gave us some ideas to which I’ve added a few:

1. Summarise some of the best posts from other blogs on a particular topic – a round-up blog post. Amanda at Spiderworking does a great  Social Media Seven post every Thursday and Marie does a round-up blog post on her Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer blog each Friday. They can be time-consuming but people will look forward to them as a valuable source of summarised information.

2. Link of the Week – You could find a blog post that you have found to be particularly good and add your own thoughts to it. The same could apply to a youtube video.

3. Link to your own posts by concentrating on your ‘5 Best’ old posts on a particular topic or revisit a post from exactly a year ago to see how things have  altered/remained constant. This will also build on your cross-links within your site.

4. Polls – ask for your readers’ feedback on a topic that would be of interest to them.

5. Interviews – Interview someone interesting in your field, for example, the editor or a leading journalist in a related publication to your blog’s subject matter.

6. Regular Slots – have a slot on a particular topic for one day of the week – e.g. Thursday’s Twitter Tips and you will find that ideas for that blog post will pop into your mind on any day of the week. You can always write these posts and schedule them.

7. Involve the readers by asking them questions, sometimes the more jokey and humourous the better. Mark of A Year of Festivals recently asked readers to come up for some ideas for festivals in Irish towns and he received some great ideas such as the ‘Donkey Derby in Bray’ or a ‘Battle re-enactment in Swords’.

8. Guest Bloggers – Last year I ran a series of guest blogger posts on Thursdays for about six months on my Garrendenny Lane blog. It worked really well in that it gave my blog a varied content as while the content was all interior-design related, the subject matter and writing styles were varied.  It also helped to increase my back links to this blog as the guest bloggers linked theirs to mine too.

I hope these tips will help you to breathe new life into your blog if you feel it has become a little tired. Sometimes we need to rejig things to revitalize ourselves and our writing.

Do you have any other ideas for breathing a new approach into a business or personal blog? Do share below if you do.

I will be teaching a course about using Social Media effectively for your business with the Carlow Enterprise Board next Wednesday evening. Do contact Carlow CEB if you would like to come along.

National Women’s Enterprise Day conference

I’m giving a short presentation at the National Women’s Enterprise Day Conference in Portlaoise on 16th November.  The conference is ideal for offering support to those either already in business or thinking of starting out, with lots of useful workshops and presentations as well as the chance to network with other women nationally.

My talk is entitled ‘Using Blogs to Promote your Business’.  Most of the afternoon on 16th is devoted to the various social media platforms. Damien Mulley kicks it off with a talk entitled ‘Using the Force of the Web to Develop your Business’, followed by Emer McCormack  of Just Eat ‘the story of us …. bringing offline online’.  I’m in the hot seat next, followed by Karen O’Sullivan of the Talbot Hotel in Carlow on ‘Using Facebook to interact with your customer’ and last but not least is Tara Wilson-Black of Irish Women in Business with a talk entitled ‘Networking Online’.

There is a panel discussion then for the final half hour so if you have any burning questions, you can ask them there.  If you haven’t booked your ticket as yet, you can do so here.  Are you going? Do leave a comment if you are and if I haven’t met you before, I look forward to putting a face to the name.

Lorna 🙂