Blogging Struggles… And The Advice To Overcome Them

Last week I posted the Poll “What Is Your Biggest Struggle In Blogging?” and with your participation, this week we’re doing a come back with quick advice for each one of those points.

I like doing polls as a way of starting discussions on topics that are important to you, that way it’s not just my point of view. So first, thank you all for being part of it and second, feel free to use the comments section to express your thoughts. Maybe you have something to add or you simply disagree, it’s all good baby!

Also, please let me know if you have any ideas for future polls.

Poll Results

Here are the results from last week. I can actually relate to that. My biggest issue is not so much establishing the frequency, which was pretty hard before, but taking it to the next level. I have been publishing 2 posts per week and wish I could jump to 3. I have published 3 posts in one week before and the results are very good.

So let’s dive right into it, here are the options on the poll and the advice to overcome them [in order of importance]:

Establishing frequency on content publishing

• Create an editorial calendar. Decide what you want to do on a weekly basis, how many posts, what kinds, what days and even times.
• Create content in advance. If you’re too busy during the week, try to prepare all your content on the weekend before.
• Look into other ways of publishing content, guest posts or even aggregation can help you increase your frequency or cover up when you didn’t have time to create something original.

Engaging Readers to comment

• Call-to-Action. If you don’t tell people what you want them to do, they don’t do anything.
• Finish your posts with an open question. Ask readers to provide their opinions on the subject.
• Leave room for discussion, if you have already covered everything there is nothing else for your reader to add.

Getting ideas for new content topics

• Get out of your circle. Make sure you have moments to step out of your niche and consume other type of content. Great ideas for original content are often triggered when you hang out outside your usual fields.
• Read your competitors, not to copy them but to see how the industry is moving and what kind of content is being published out there.
• Subscribe to feeds to get content from different sources on a regular basis.

Converting readers into prospects

• Again, Call-To-Action in the right places. Make sure your offer is strategically positioned as part of the blog layout.
• Clean-up. Eliminate all the noise. If you are a published author trying to increase book sales, avoid filling up your site with AdSense ads.
• Have a strategy for free and premium content. Determine what is part of your content marketing efforts and what is for sale as a service.

Finding my own writing style

• Read blogs with different styles. There are people out there with amazing writing skills and styles that sometimes you end up reading them even if the topic has nothing to do with what you do. Find these people.
• Usually your writing style gets buried by trying to craft longer posts or trying to sound sophisticated. Just be yourself, be clear and keep it short.
• Make sure that style goes hand-to-hand with your objectives and your readership.

Making the content shareable

• Have all the necessary tools available in each post. Retweet and Facebook Likes buttons, sharing systems such as ShareThis or plugins like Sexy Bookmarks. Make it easy for people.
• Pay attention to what kind of content gets shared a lot on different social platforms.
• Write a killer headline and a killer first paragraph, sometimes that’s all people read in order to give you a retweet.

Your Turn…

There are many other aspects to blogging, add some of them to the comments sections so we can discuss them. It could be maybe the technical side of it, not getting any traffic, whatever is a struggle to you.

Happy Blogging!