Developing Blog Content

No Time To Blog? Blogger's Block? 5 Strategies To Developing Quick and Beneficial Blog Content
By Jim Cronin

After over 100 days straight of posting to the Tomato, you may (read: should) be wondering to yourself if there's a life outside of this blog? We're often asked, "How do you come up with all of that information?" "How do you find the time?" "How can you still manage to have a family, a job, a life?" I can't speak for Greg at BloodhoundBlog (Mr. 101 posts in 24hrs) but the short answer is that we have a strategies for consistently generating quality content. Being consistent with your expected posting schedule is crucial when it comes to maintaining an audience. Below are 5 strategies for populating your blog when you find yourself short on time and creativity. We use the top 4 to ensure the Tomato is fed its daily article.

1. Store Content For A Rainy Day

If you were to log into our Writely account, you would see on average about 10-12 partially written articles. As soon as a compelling thought pops into our head, it becomes a title and an outline or paragraph. As we revisit the idea it beings to resemble a blog entry. Having a pipeline of good potential blog posts alleviates the pressure of having to be creative when you have limited time to publish for your hungry audience. Simply hop into you Writely account, throw some lipstick on an almost completed article and presto, you have earned your readers attention until your next article.

2. The 101 Blog Post Challenge (a.k.a. The Greg Swann/Ardell DellaLoggia) Method

Earlier this week, these two decided to do the unthinkable and write 101 articles on their blog in just 24 hours! They couldn't produce a thesis for every article, so they had to cut some corners, yet still give the impression that each post had some clout. The strategy was this: find an intriguing article online, copy an excerpt from it, generate your own opinion of its value. Take this article for instance from Swann over at the Bloodhound Realty: