Content Creation Secrets

Do you have great content in your blog? Do you receive the occasional comment commending your two cents?

Do you feel your blog deserves better compared to some popular blogs that don’t have that great content to boast about?

It may pain your heart to note that other blogs with trivial content are deemed more popular or the most discussed.

You may also question the need to go on blogging when you’re not getting the response you desire.

The thing is you should not respond emotionally to the response your blog is receiving.

If you look at it on a rational level, you’ll discover that there’s really no cause for concern. For one, you have no control over how folks respond to your blog. No matter how much you worry about it, you have no power to change their attitude.

Instead, ask if your blog has timeless content. If it does, then it would be here to stay. New readers would keep finding your blog and your audience will grow. Really, you need to give your blog time to mature and grow into something formidable.

If you’re producing timeless content and regularly updating your blog, you’ve no reason to be concerned about your blog’s popularity in the here and now.

Tell yourself you’re blogging for the future. As your content grows and more folks discover your blog, it will get the popularity it deserves.

Only be concerned if you’ve been blogging say for around five years and have not received much of a response.

So, blog on no matter what response you receive. Blog with the future in mind.

Early this morning, I visited a blog that was born in 2007 and drowned the same year.

It only had a life of about five months.

A blog is as good as its last post. You make a post today and as the hours stretch by, it starts sinking. So to keep its head above water, you would have to make a fresh post the next day or the next.

Some bloggers don’t make fresh posts daily because they don’t have fresh ideas.

Some have ideas but think that those ideas are not good enough for blog posts.

No idea is ever good enough if you start putting it under the microscope.

Also, some bloggers are under the impression that they would have to write thousands of words for their blog posts to be any good.

If they don’t have a subject on which they can write thousands of words, they banish the idea of writing at all.

You should eliminate such defeatist habits from your system.

All you need is a simple subject on which you can write about a hundred words.

When you feel you don’t have anything to write, just go out and write about fifty words, to keep your blog above water.

Don’t ever pause and think whether your post is good or will impress readers.

Remember, your chief mission as a blogger is to keep your blog from drowning, not writing the perfect post.

For the first time I found some sensible advice which contradicts the lies sold for good money by Internet Marketing gurus.

Reading through the short but candid blog post and the endless comments certainly proves one thing.

You shouldn’t waste a single cent buying ebooks that teach how to get rich blogging. If you do, you become poorer instead of richer. You buy the ebook to make the bloke who sells it richer.

Think of it as throwing money down the drain for information which will not work – the money making part.

Let’s now get down to what the blog post is about. It is actually answering the one question that the 500k-a-year blogger often receives from his readers.

You guessed what the question is.

How do I make money from my blog?

The successful blogger provides a short answer.

You don’t make money from your blog. Yes, you don’t make money from your blog. Don’t ever try.

This is a rather strange reply from a blogger who makes thousands a month with his blog.

The blogger has a confession to make. It took him two years to start making money from his blog. I like the part where he says he was blogging even when nobody was reading it and when he was earning nothing out of it.

He then goes on to say he’ll keep on blogging even if nobody reads his blog in the future.

He also reveals the two ingredients he has thrown into his blog to make it what it is today.

Firstly, he started blogging out of passion as has been explained earlier. He blogged even when he was earning nothing and had no readers.

Secondly, he was generous. He gave away valuable information without expecting anything in return from his readers.

When traffic started building up, he started offering tools, seminars and other products to his readers. That’s how he started generating income from his blog.

It took him five years of passionate blogging to be where he’s today.

None of the comments disagreed with him. Most stressed the importance of passion and the spirit of giving.

One commenter is a blogger who has been blogging for two years before receiving a $100 check from Google. Another commenter has blogged for years before deciding to experiment with Adsense. The results are promising.

They just go to reinforce the principle that to be successful as a blogger, you’d have to blog out of passion and maintain the spirit of giving without expecting anything in return.

If you have written something worth reading or done something worth writing, you are ready to take your writing to the next level with the second part of Benjamin Franklin’s content creation secrets.

He put to use these strategies after he was ticked off by his father for not `writing eloquently’.

Be a Content Surgeon
Ben began reading like a writer. Instead of just reading only to consume the content, he went a step further. He started `cutting open’ the content to see how it’s all arranged, connected and built to form a whole.

He began to understand content construction and the knowledge of it came handy during his own content creation process.

The next time you find content that impresses you, read to consume the content first. Then play surgeon. Cut open the content and see how its parts are fitted together.

Make notes on your discovery. Through my experience, I’ve found that this is a far more effective method than reading how-to books on content creation.

Of course it entails much work and slows you down if you’re a voracious reader. But then this is the price you have to pay if you want to be successful at content creation.

If you really want to be better writer, you would be ready to pay the price.

If you’re a little uneasy about implementing this method, just limit it to content that makes you say, “I wish I could write like that.”

Be a Walking Photocopy Machine
The other technique Benjamin Franklin used was copying wholesale content that he admired. He did this not plagiarize the works of others but to get the feel of writing down the exact passages himself. This allowed him to absorb fully the rhythms and nuances of the passages, the appreciation of which he hoped would flow into his own writing.

Some years back I read a writer interview in a magazine. When he was asked how he got into writing, his reply was he did not intend to be a writer in the beginning.
He was only typing up articles and stories for another writer. As he kept doing it, he developed a love for words and sentence construction and this led him to try his hand at writing.

Benjamin Franklin even took a step further. After copying his favourite content, he would put it away and then write it up in his own words.

Again this is not going to be easy, but if you’re desperate to become a skillful writer, you would surely want to give this technique a try.

So, be a content surgeon or a walking photocopy machine when you’re not creating content. The work you put into these areas would surely contribute to the quality of your writing.

Imagine living in a kingdom where anyone is allowed to start a blog. The moment a blog is not updated for more than three days, the blog police come after you and issue a warrant of arrest.

You’re detained without trial at the blog police’s pleasure.
If you live in such a kingdom, would you take up an offer to blog?

If you do, you would certainly ask yourself an important question.

This is the question you should ask yourself when you start a blog in the here and now.

The question is: How long will I allow my blog to survive?
Many bloggers don’t answer this question honestly when they start their blogs.

The usual answer is they don’t know.

When you say you don’t know, rest assured that you’ll give up at the slightest obstacle you face – lack of time, energy or loss of interest after a period of time.
Yes, you’ll give up easily unless you’re living in the kingdom where the blog police monitor your blogging activity.

Imagine being interviewed by the blog police when you make an application to start a blog.

The Chief Inspector asks you, “How long will you let your blog survive? Here neglecting a blog is as serious an offence as neglecting a child. You will be detained without trial at our pleasure if you are found guilty of neglecting your blog. Do you wish to continue?”

What will your answer be?

I’m sure you’ll be determined not to neglect your blog the moment you start it because you don’t want the blog police coming after you.

If you can bring the same amount of determination when you start a blog, you’ll reap success as a blogger. You can imagine being monitored by the blog police if you like to keep going.

If you can’t answer the question honestly, and still want to blog, your solution is community blogging.

Blogging communities are perfect training grounds for aspiring bloggers. Here the whole burden of keeping a blog going is not on you. It is shared among the members of the community.

The advantage of being a member of a blogging community is that you can draw inspiration from other community members. You’re a team player.

If you can’t blog regularly in such an environment, chances are you’re not cut out to be a blogger. At least in a blogging community you’ll not disappoint your readers who wait for regular, fresh content.

So, how long will you allow your blog to survive if you decide to start one? Can you answer this question honestly?

Yes, it happens.

When you start putting down words on paper, they seem to be going nowhere. Suddenly the magic you experience when you create content seems to have deserted you.
You have trouble getting into flow and don’t wish to continue.

The anxiety attack is about to begin.

If you’re new to content creation, this can be unsettling. You don’t understand what’s happening. Only the day before you were so eloquent, the words were flowing so freely and effortlessly.

But now, you doubt every word, sentence or paragraph you write. You fear you’ve lost the plot.

And most probably you will stop writing so that you would not have to cope with the anxiety attack.

That’s not the way to go.

Anxiety attacks are no big deal. It happens to even experienced writers. You have to treat it like a cold, which you’re bound to catch at some time or other.

The one mistake that you should not make in an anxiety attack situation is to keep focusing on the insecurity that’s trying to envelope you. I know it’s hard to do that. Yes, after all things have been going well for you, haven’t they and then this happens.

If you need to focus on anything at all, focus on the thought that this feeling will come and go at any time. You will tell yourself that you’ll not pay any attention to it. Within the next hour or at the latest a day, the anxiety attack will vanish into thin air. That’s for sure unless you’re going to worry about it.

Well, it could be that it’s not really an anxiety attack, but a feeling that things are not going right. It may be a mistaken feeling, which usually is.

When such a feeling visits me (I won’t consider it as an attack, because I regard myself as too strong a writer to be attacked), I use a time-tested technique.

I start writing away. I look anxiety in the face and say, “You aren’t going to terrify me. You can’t stop me from creating content. Are you telling me that my content is not good enough, that I should not go on with it? You have no business doing that. You’ve visited me to make me feel anxious, unsettle me, intimidate me. It’s not going to work. I’m going to write and I’ll keep on writing until you get tired waiting around.

The solution is to keep on writing and never for a moment doubt your writing. I keep reminding myself I’ve written good stuff before. So, there’s no reason why I can’t do it again. You, too, can do the same.

Treat it as a false feeling. The moment you start taking the feeling seriously, it devours and paralyzes you.
If you start writing away without really worrying about your content, the demon will not be able to catch up with you. You sprint and it runs out of breath trying to chase you.

You immediately get a `high’ feeling after defeating the demon.

But then one thing you should know is the demon will be revisiting you any time it feels like it, especially in a period when your content creation is going well.

You tell yourself when it returns, you’ll know how to deal with the demon. You’ll show that you’re a tough nut to crack.

Yes, you’ll write away so fast that the demon will run out of breath trying to catch you.

PS - I guess I’ve just survived an anxiety attack.