Sure-Fire Strategies for Better Blog Content

I first began blogging a little less than two years ago and I have certainly come a long way in this field since that first post. At first, it was a passive hobby, something to satisfy my knack at web and graphic design while at the same time being able to express or rather preach what God has been teaching me. Yet now, I love the passion of writing and the excitement of encouraging and challenging other believers.

A very large portion of my audience here at The Baptist Muse, is composed of other like-minded bloggers. Many of you find yourself somewhere along that same journey that I have been taking. Many of you want to improve your abilities to influence others for the cause of Christ through your blog.

"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." ~ I Cor. 10:31

I have, in fact, recently been receiving several requests for advice about creating a more successful blog. In this post, I am going to begin an introduction to developing just that, a successful blog. Throughout this post and a few follow-ups, I will discuss ideas for developing your content, tools to hone your writing skills, some basic design rules and guidelines, strategies for increasing readership and much more.

It is important to begin with content. Many other attributes of a blog, including design or marketing, are useless if you cannot provide your readers with quality entertaining, challenging, and informative articles. In fact, you may have the neatest design in the world, yet without great posts your readership will only be mediocre. Follow these guidelines to begin transforming the quality of your blog.

If you write it...they will come!

• Quality Grammar - When I write articles for The Baptist Muse, I often make reference to my High School grammar textbook. I keep it right near my computer so that I have easy access to it. You see, the easier your blog is to read grammatically, the more likely your readers will return. In this age of electronic spelling and grammar checkers, there is no reason to produce poorly written content. Yet many solid Christian blogs are filled with distracting errors. Don't get lazy. Take the time to take your writing to the next level!
  
  
• Fresh Content - Most professional bloggers recommend that you update your blog at least three or four times per week. If you produce less articles than this, readers feel like your site is not worth stopping at because each time they come there they only see information that they have already read. The more you update, the professionals say, the more readers you will attract.
  
  Note: However, don't sacrifice quality for quantity. It is better to produce two excellent articles than four that are poorly written.
  
  
• Targeted Content - Choose your niche. Although I invite anyone to read this site, here at the Baptist Muse, I cater most exclusively to Independent Fundamental Baptists and I try very much to create content that will be the most helpful to people in that category. If your blog topic is too broad, then often times you will not really attract anyone.
  
  
• Creative Content - As they say in the corporate world, 'Think Outside The Box!' Or as they used to say at Taco Bell, 'Think Outside The Bun!' When you create headlines and articles that are unique and eye catching you grab the readers attention. Don't follow the same mold that everyone around you seems to follow. Be bold. Challenge people to think differently. Use personal and creative stories to illustrate your articles. Be different. The more creative you can be, the more effective your writing will be.
  
  
• Original Content - Although it is certainly alright to publish entire articles that are 'copied and pasted' from a chain email or from another website, many readers become bored with these posts. Try to limit these 'copy and paste' articles to less than 20% of your content. Most people read your blog because they want to read your original content.
  

All The Best,

Nick

The Professional Christian Blogger #2: Blog Content Ideas

Here are a list of the top ten sources that I use for gathering and creating blog ideas. If you put these ideas into practice you will probably not lack for creative blog topics and ideas. Good luck and happy blogging!

• Personal Bible Reading – As a Christian, this should be a daily source of insight and wisdom. Those insights can become excellent sources of encouragement and challenge to those who may read your blog.
  
  
• Books, Newspapers, and Magazines - I’m increasingly finding inspiration in offline sources of information.
  
  
• Church – It’s amazing how many ideas come from the sermons that I have heard. Be sure to use a notebook and jot ideas that you can share with other Christians via your blog.
  
  
• Hymns and Songs – Songs and Hymns are filled with awesome Christian truths that can be excellent topics for blog articles.
  
  
• The Blogosphere - I find the writing of others often stimulates posts that build on, extend or bounce off their ideas. Don’t forget to dig around in other people’s archives also as it isn’t only current posts that are places where you’ll get ideas. Of course always give credit to the source of your ideas.
  
  
• Conversations - It’s amazing how many ideas come from the chats I have with other bloggers, readers, friends and family both in real life and via IM or email.
  
  
• Mad Ideas - Ever been laying in bed at night and get a crazy idea! I don’t just chuckle to myself when they come - I get up and write them down. It’s amazing how many of them end up being key posts for me later.
  
  
• Experience - A fairly large proportion of my post ideas come directly out of an experience that I’m having on the topic. Problems, achievements, challenges and mistakes are often the best source of useful posts as you’ll find readers relate well to them.
  
  
• Archives - Dig around in your own blog’s archives and you’ll be amazed at the opportunities that you’ll find. Look for half finished ideas, opportunities to update your ideas or even topics that your newer readers wouldn’t have seen before.
  
  
• Brainstorming - I take time out each week to specifically come up with ideas to post about. While most of my posts ‘just come to me’ through my day to day rhythm - I’m a big believer in working hard on story ideas also and have a folder permanently on my desktop filled with text documents that have little else in them except for a topic idea and perhaps a few jotted down notes - all to work on later.

The Professional Christian Blogger #1: Content

On Saturday's Watchman Awards, I mentioned the fact that I was considering starting a series on blogging tips and ideas. I recieved some positive feedback in that direction and have therefore decided to pursue this direction with a few of my blog posts. I hope that some of these ideas will be a help and a blessing to you!

After some time in the blogging universe, I sat down and began to look back at the uphill struggle to create, market, and maintain a successful blogging venture. I began to realize how many different tips and ideas have influenced the very small level of success that I have been able to enjoy.

It seems that almost everyday my blog traffic moves just a little bit higher and I am thankful for that. In fact, that is my goal. As a Christian blogger, it is my prayer and goal to influence, challenge, and be a blessing to as many people as possible. Although I blog because I simply enjoy putting my thoughts into words that is not the only reason that I blog. I blog to influence people for the cause of Christ.

If I hope to influence 50 people with a particular post, then I probably need to find a way to get 100 people to read that article. If I want 100 people to read a particular article, then I need to employ some principles and ideas that actually work to get people to read it. Standing on the street corner and shouting the web address of my blog, though quite passionate, is not always the most effective means of attracting and growing a successful blog.

The first principle to successful blogging, and perhaps the most important is content. The actual content of a blog is perhaps more important than any other single element of a person’s blog. Here are a few things to think about when considering your blog’s content.

• Quality Content – People want quality content. Whenever you post something to your blog you need to ask yourself the following question, “Did I do my best on this article or could I have done better?” If you find yourself answering that you could have done better, your readers already know and they have probably already thought it themselves. There are many blogs that I have visited that simply look spectacular but the content is dreadful. The design may be miles above par but if the quality of your content lacks in any way, people don’t want to read it.
  
  
• Consistent Content – People want consistent content. People like things that are changing. In a very real sense, people want to be entertained. They want to find something new at your site or blog every time that they swing by it. Now we obviously can’t having something new posted every five minutes, but there is something that we can do in this area. We can be consistent. Set up a schedule that you are going to follow with your blog and then stick to it. Maybe you will decide to post something every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Even though you are only posting three posts per week, people will begin to expect it on the same days and they will stop by on a regular basis. Posting sporadically with some long and some short intervals between posts reduces visitors drastically. Be consistent.
  
  
• Targeted Content – People want targeted content. At the header of most blogspot blogs there is a link called “Next Blog.” This link takes you to any one of the millions of blogs hosted at blogspot. This link is not very popular among most people because people don’t usually want to randomly browse through blogs enjoying any topic that happens to show up on the screen. People like to browse through a series of blogs on a specific subject. They may want to browse through just sports blogs, or just news blogs, or just Christian blogs, but not often do people want to browse a bunch of random blogs. Keep this in mind when you post articles on your blog. If you are trying to cover fifty-five and a half different topics with your blog, you are probably going to lose a lot of readers. Focus in on a particular genre of blogging and become an expert in that area. Readers will begin to flock to your blog to see what you have to say on a specifically targeted topic.

Start your blog resolutions this year by keeping these three things in mind about the subject of blog content. Take these three things to heart and put them into practice before we stop to look at the next principles of blogging. You need to get your house in order before you can reasonably expect others to look at it with any level of respect.

Good luck and happy blogging!