Discovering the Right Content Format for Consistent Blogging

Darren: Hey and welcome to episode 101 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse, and I am the blogger behind problogger.com, a resource to help bloggers and other content creators to monetize their blogs, to monetize their podcast, to monetize the content that they create. Today, I want to talk to you about being more consistent with your content creation, particularly talking about blogging. But a lot of what I’m talking about today can be applied to other types of content as well.

You can find today’s show notes and listen to this particular episode if you so choose at problogger.com/podcast/101. You’ll also find there some details of our brand new resource that we’ve just released for bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, content creators. It’s completely free. It comes when you sign up for the ProBlogger Plus newsletter.

It’s a blogging prompt resource. It will give you 180 ideas for blog posts, podcasts, or YouTubers. One hundred eighty content ideas. That’s enough if you daily post for six months of content on your blog, or if you spread them out a bit further, it might last you a whole year. This resource comes as a series of six monthly emails. Every month, we’ll send you a PDF with 30 new content prompts for your blog. You can check out that at problogger.com/podcast/101 where I will include all today’s show notes and details of this new blogging prompt resource. Enough of that now, let’s get into today’s show.

Today, I want to talk about being consistent with your blogging. This podcast was stimulated by a question we received from Jason Stevens from Digital Tools Of The Trade.

Jason: Hi, Darren. Jason from Digital Tools Of The Trade here. My question for you is how does one maintain consistency with blogging? I know one, for a period of time, can be consistent and then that consistency can become inconsistent where I work on a blog and fall by the wayside for the period of time. I’m just curious to your thoughts on how one, when maintaining a blog, producing articles, videos, and so forth on a blog can maintain consistency?

Darren: Thanks so much for your question, Jason. It is a really important one because consistency is very important when it comes to blogging or creating content on any platform. Almost every week, I meet someone who tells me that they have a blog and then quickly tells me that they have a blog that they don’t write on anymore. There must be millions and tens of millions of blogs out there that were started with enthusiasm, passion, and energy for their topic and which naturally lead to a lot of ideas in those first few weeks and months but then several months later on, it’s dead. It’s really difficult to keep that blog going. There must be tens of millions of those kinds of blogs out there.

Today’s podcast is all about trying to stop you from joining that number of dead blogs in the blogging graveyard. I want to give you 11 or so tips that hopefully will help you to keep more consistent with your blogging. Some of these are pretty obvious, but I think they’re worth saying because you can build some things in your workflow that will help you to keep moving on. Let’s get straight into them.

Firstly, I think it’s really important not to bite off more than you can chew. Don’t set yourself up to fail by committing to a rate of publishing that’s beyond what you can do. I’ve seen many bloggers do this. They say, “I’m going to be publishing daily posts on this particular topic.” And then they realize that the posts that they’re writing are 1000–2000 words long and it really takes longer than they’ve got to be able to produce that type of content at that frequency.

I think it’s better to publish less often but consistently than to promise the world and not deliver. You don’t want to set up the expectations with your readers and with yourself, probably more importantly, that you’re going to publish more often than you are able to. It’s so easy when you fall short of the deadlines that you set yourself to become disillusioned.

Your readers may not actually notice that you’re not publishing as much as you say you were going to but you will and that can be really disheartening to you. It can hurt your motivation. I’d rather set yourself two or three posts a week and then over-perform, publish four than promise four or five and then only publish two or three. Number one, don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Number two is to generate as many ideas for content ahead of time. Now, we’ve talked about this in episode 84 and I gave you a whole heap of tips in episode 84 on how to generate ideas for content. But I think it is really important, as I think I mentioned in that episode, to separate out the two tasks of generating ideas for content and creating that content. Separate those two activities out. I’m not a scientist, a neuroscientist, or whoever decides these things. My belief is that you probably use different parts of your brain to come up with ideas and to plan and to create. You probably want to separate those two tasks out.

Don’t just sit down and say, “Today, I need to write about something and what am I going to write about?” You want to have thought about that ahead of time. This is where this blogging prompts tool that we’ve just released comes into handy. Check out that in today’s show notes as well because it gives you 30 different ideas for content that you can set out ahead of time and then when it comes to sit down to write, you’ve got them sitting there for you.

Tip number one, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Tip number two, generate ideas ahead of time. Tip number three is to block out times to create content. Again, this is something we’ve talked about in episode 86. Setting yourself time to create. It doesn’t just happen. Great content won’t just appear. You need to dedicate time for it and make appointments with yourself to create that content. Make it a part of your daily rhythm—content creation—or at least a regular thing for you. I find that I’m much better at creating content when I’m doing it on a daily basis.

If I say I’m going to create all my content on Mondays or all my content on the first two days of the month and then I don’t do any content creation for the rest of the week or the rest of the month, I find it really hard when I do sit down to write. If I’m in the regular rhythm of creating content, it just seems to flow more for me. Block out regular time. I personally would much prefer to set aside an hour every morning to create content than a whole day once a week to do it because you just find yourself slipping into that creation mode a little faster.

The fourth tip builds on these two last ones. We’ve set aside time for idea generation. We’ve set aside time for the creation of content. Then you want to set aside time for completion, polishing, and publishing of your content. Again, I would argue that it’s a different part of your brain that is good at looking critically at your content, polishing that content, and making it the best that it can be. I think I would argue that you would set aside separate time to finish your content, to polish it, to complete it, to be critical about it, to edit it. Again, we’ve talked about that in episode 87. I gave you some really practical tips in that episode on how to complete content.

Tip number five is to consider some easy posts in your mix. If you’re struggling to pump out regular content, there are ways to create posts that don’t take as much time to produce. I don’t want you to hear me saying here is to just publish filler content, really easy content that doesn’t actually help your readers in any way. But there are certain types of content that can be useful to your readers that don’t take a whole heap of time to create. Let me give you a few examples of some of these easier types of posts that you might want to throw into your mix from time to time.

Firstly, reader discussions. This is something that we do semi-regularly on both of my blogs. The post itself is really not a whole heap more than a question. Your content doesn’t have to contain a whole heap of answers. It doesn’t have to be 5000 words long. It could be as simple as you asking a question and then opening up a discussion. For this one to work, you probably do need to have some readers already. It may not be one that you want to start out with if you’re a new blogger but if you already have some readers, why don’t you just ask a question?

Number two type of post that you might want to do that’s a bit easier to do is to ask a poll. If you use WordPress, there are so many poll plugins that you can install. This is a different version of that reader discussion. Come up with a question that’s got five options and then put the poll up. Polls are actually easier than discussion posts to get a response from, and they, sometimes, can continue a discussion as well. You might combine those first two together. Put a poll in and then say, “Discuss your answer. Why did you choose what you chose?”

The third type of post that you might want to throw in, it’s a little bit easier, is a post where you challenge your readers to do something or you give them some homework. Then you ask them to come back and report on what they did. We do this on Digital Photography School every Saturday. We name a theme, and we say, “Go take a photo on this theme and then come back and share your photo with us.”

You could do the same sort of thing on different types of niche blogs as well. Getting your readers to go do something and then share what they did. Again, this doesn’t take a whole heap of time to create that post. It actually is a good type of post to do because it gets people doing things, taking information that you may have already published. You can link back to an old post that you wrote. Say, “Go read that and then go and do what it says.” Third type of post is homework or challenge.

Number four type of post is a link post. This is where you don’t have to write a whole heap of content. You just find what other people have written over the last week or a whole heap of links on a particular thing. On ProBlogger, from time to time, we’ve done these. We might have SEO—search engine optimization—and we would write a post that is basically 10 posts you need to read from around the web that all have something to do with SEO. You could quite easily do these theme link-ups, once a week for example.

The other way to do it is like what we do on ProBlogger. We do a reading round-up and Stacy puts together a post over on problogger.net once a week, and she summarizes all the great articles that we’ve been reading as a team over the last week.

We actually send her all the posts that we find most helpful on other people’s blogs, and then she writes up a link post. That’s once a week and it’s useful to our readers. Our readers really love that particular post. They give us a lot of good feedback on it because we don’t have to come up with all the helpful stuff, we just have to find it and curate it for our readers.

Another type of post that you might want to throw in from time to time is a best of archive post. This is where you do a link post but you base it up content you have already written. This is something we do, particularly at the end of the year, both on ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. Basically, it’s a recap of what we’ve done over the year.

On Digital Photography School, usually, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, we do a series of posts that are our best of portrait articles, then a best of landscape articles, and a best of Adobe Lightroom articles. Basically, it’s looking back over the main categories of the blog and pulling together a list of suggested reading on those particular posts.

This is a great way to get people back into your archives. It works really well on a blog that has been going for a year, two years, or three years. A lot of your new readers haven’t seen that old content. It’s quite easy to put together, really. It’s just about surfing through your own archives to find the best stuff.

Another type of post that you might want to consider doing is an embedded content post. Again, I talked about this in episode 97. This is where you go to YouTube and you find a great video that’s relevant to your audience. It may not even be a video that you created, it might be just something someone else created. You embed it into a post, you might add some of your own thoughts, maybe some further reading and then you publish that.

You could do the same thing with all kinds of different embeddable content. It’s not too hard to do. This is actually something I did in the early days of Digital Photography School once a week. I’ll do a video post every Wednesday. It was just an easy post. I had to go and find that content, do some further reading, add a few thoughts to make it a little bit more original but my readers loved that because they loved videos. It’s not a filler piece of content. It actually can be a killer piece of content. It can be a really good one as well.

Another easier type of post is where you might consider having a guest or feature another voice. It may be by doing a guest post. Allowing someone to write on your blog, if you can find someone to do that or where you interview someone. Sometimes, when you interview someone, it’s an easier post because you just have to come up with the three or four questions to ask them and then put their responses into a post. It’s not like you are coming up with the content, the answers yourself.

The key with all of these types of posts, the seven types of posts that I’ve just gone through—reader discussions, polls, homework, link posts, best of archive posts, embedded content, and guests—is to keep those posts relevant. You really need to be careful that you don’t just do filler content. You want it to be on-brand, you want it to be useful, and you want it to be relevant, not just posting for the sake of posting.

Just lastly, on these different types of easier types of content, you may actually want to build them into a weekly rhythm. I’ve hinted at this already. Wednesday used to be a video post on Digital Photography School. Saturday at Digital Photography School is when we give our readers  a challenge.

You might be able to build in some regular types of posts. A week might look like this: Monday might be a guest post, Tuesday might be a reader discussion post, Wednesday may be a longer, more thoughtful post that you’ve written, Thursday might be the video of the week, Friday might be a longer, thoughtful post again, one of your main posts of the week, Saturday might be a link roundup post, and Sunday might be a challenge or a homework post. You can see there that you could take those different types of post that I’ve done and then sprinkle in some longer, more thoughtful content that you spend your time writing, and you come out with an interesting week of content for your blog that maybe hasn’t taken as much work as you might have thought.

That was tip number five. It was a bit of a longer one but I think it’s an important one. It’s one that I think a lot of bloggers could use. Tip number six is to use tools like CoSchedule or other tools that you can get to come up with an editorial calendar. I think this has really helped me and my team with our blogging. It’s actually starting to plan ahead with our content. Part of this is coming up with deadlines for the content that we create. Part of it’s by visualizing ahead where we’re headed and it helps you to create content that builds from one post to the next as well.

I really like to be able to visually visualize the content that’s coming up. That’s why I love a tool like CoSchedule, in particular, that puts everything into a calendar, enables us to drag and drop things around. And of course, it’s got a whole heap of other types of features on it as well. The other thing I love about being able to visualize ahead of time the content that’s coming up is that it actually helps me to be on the lookout for ideas, illustrations, or examples that I can use in those posts. If I know that next week, I have to write a post on a particular topic, in the back of my mind, I’m looking out for things that I could say in that post. Using those types of tools can be really helpful.

Seventh tip is to write out of relationship. This is something that’s come up a number of times in previous podcasts, but it’s something that I’ve really become aware of. I find myself being much more motivated to write content and I find myself writing better content and being more energized in my writing when I do so knowing that what I’m creating is for real people and it’s on real issues that they face.

I think I mentioned this recently in a podcast. Some of my best posts are written on a plane on the way home from a conference. I find that it’s just the time when I’m writing my best stuff and fresh in my mind is a conversation that I might have had with one of my readers or someone who just has a real need. It’s out of those discussions, out of those relationships with my readers that I find my best content comes.

This podcast could actually be a good example of this. Jason asked that question. He asked it over on Anchor. By hearing his voice and by having met Jason in the past at one of our events, I feel more motivated to create this podcast. I hope that it comes through in the way that I’m presenting as well, that I actually put effort into answering his question because I know he’s a real person.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is to get to know your readers. Put yourself in a position where you’ll meet them either in person or online. Do Twitter chats. Do live streaming. Experiment with a tool like Blab which puts you into a real live conversation with them. I love what Pat Flynn does. He occasionally rings his readers. He gets on the phone with them and spends 20 minutes just hearing about their life and how he can help them better.

The more you understand who your readers are, the more real-life interactions with them or at least as close to real-life as possible, the better position you’ll be in to write content that actually has an impact upon them. I find that really motivating. It helps me to be more consistent. It gives me energy to create content because I’m not just creating content for machines. It’s not just an abstract thing. It’s actually a real thing.

Tip number eight is to batch write. This is something that I’ve talked about before in previous podcasts, so I’m not going to get into it in great depth. But I find that it can be useful to get a little bit ahead in your writing and to write and create more than one piece of content in a sitting. I did say earlier in this podcast that you should be writing regularly. So, it’s probably better to do one post every day than to sit at the start of the week and then not create anything for the rest of the week but there is an argument also for creating multiple pieces of content in a sitting and to focus upon that task ahead of time.

That’s what I do, particularly with my podcasts. I find that I’m much better if I plan out two or three episodes at a time, then I record them all at once, then I upload them, and that task is done. You’ve got to find what works for you. Sometimes it is a daily thing and sometimes batch writing or batch creating can be a really powerful thing as well.

Tip number nine is on the flip side of this one, a little bit, and that is to be spontaneous. I’ve talked here about visualizing ahead of time, having a plan for the content that you create, batch writing, and working ahead on creating content. But I think, also sometimes the best posts that you write are spontaneous posts, the post that you get an idea for and you just bang them out really quickly. You publish them really quickly as well because they’re timely posts. It might be a reaction to something that’s happening in the news, something that you just read, or something that’s just happened on Twitter.

Sometimes that spontaneity is important as well. While I’m a big believer in planning ahead, being thoughtful about the journey you take your readers on, and having editorial calendars, I think it’s really important to also be aware and be ready to create content on the fly. This is where I love live streaming particularly.

I jumped on Facebook this morning and did something based on something that I just thought about. It was fresh and hopefully, it came across as a little bit more energized. I think readers really respond well to that as well. If there’s something that you’ve just experienced, something you’ve just witnessed, something you feel strongly about at the moment, put time aside to create content based on that as well.

Remember, here we’re talking about being consistent with your creation. You want to be paying attention to what’s energizing you at the moment and not just being planned which when you put time aside ahead of time to write content, sometimes that removes you a little bit from your reader and from what you feel. Be spontaneous as well.

Number 10 is to create content that is meaningful and content that creates change. If you’ve been reading ProBlogger for a while, you know this is one of my passions is that you really want to be doing something that’s meaningful. This is connected to what I was talking about before, writing out of relationships, but for me, the times I’ve most struggled to create content on a consistent basis are the times when I feel like I’ve lost sight of what my blog is about. When you lose sight of that meaning behind your blog, it can be really hard to motivate yourself to create content.

I’ll be really transparent here. There have been times, a few years ago, where I, for ProBlogger, lost sight of the goal of the site. I lost touch with the meaning of that site, lost sight of my reader. To be honest with you, I guess I have to apologize to my readers. There have been times when I know ProBlogger hasn’t hit the mark and I think they’ve been really tired to those times when I’ve lost touch with the meaning of that site.

I know ProBlogger, on the flip side, has been most effective and the content has been best when I’ve been very in touch with the meaning of the site and very in touch with my readers as well. For me, it’s about getting in touch with the meaning. Understand the “Why” of your site. If you want to learn, think more about that, check out some of Simon Sinek’s work on “Why” and why “Why” is so important.

The 11th tip that I want to give you in terms of being more consistent with your content is to understand what kind of content drives you. Here I’m talking not just about the topic, but I’m talking about the format and the medium. Sometimes the struggle that we have as bloggers and content creators is that we’re trying to produce a type of content that we’re not as passionate about.

Maybe your problem isn’t that you’ve got the wrong topic, maybe your topic is you’ve got the wrong format. While I’m a big believer in blogging and I literally, a couple of episodes ago talked about why you need to have a blog, maybe the better format for you is podcasting. Maybe you’re better to speak than you are to write. Or maybe you’re better in front of a camera than writing.

I think it’s really important to get in touch not only with your topic, what’s meaningful to you, and how you’re helping your readers but also get in touch with how you present best, how you communicate best. Have a play with some of these different mediums to see whether you respond well to them. This has been one of the things I’ve discovered in the last eight or so months. For me, podcasting has been a game-changer. Not only has it helped me to reach a new audience who likes audio better, it’s actually something that’s bought a lot of energy to me which has impacted the rest of what I do.

I’m not going to give up on blogging. I still am passionate about blogging but by experimenting with a new medium and changing up the format, that’s brought a lot of energy to me. Partly, that’s about the format, partly, that’s about the fact that it’s audio, and partly, it’s because I’m doing something new. If you’ve been at this for a while and you’re finding it hard to be consistent with your blogging, have a play in a new space and see what that brings to you. See whether that energizes you again in a fresh way.

I hope in those 11 tips are some things that are resonating with you. I’m going to summarize that in today’s show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/101. I would love to hear what you would add to this because this is a problem that many bloggers and content creators have. They started out passionately with lots of energy, lots of ideas, and then things drop off. I think it’s something most of us could relate to and I would love to hear your tips on how you combat that inconsistency in your content creation.

Again, check out the summary of today’s show notes and further reading over at problogger.com/podcast/101 where you can also get those content creation prompts as well. You’ll get 180 ideas for fresh content for your blog, podcast, or YouTube channel. I hope you find that helpful. I’d love to hear how you find those prompts as well and any others that you would come up with. Maybe we could come up with another 30 or so and add to the 6 months of ideas that we send out.

Thanks for listening and I will chat with you in a couple of day’s time in episode 102.

You’ve been listening to ProBlogger. If you’d like to comment on any of today’s topics or subscribe to the series, find us at problogger.com/podcast, tweet us @ProBlogger, find us at facebook.com/ProBlogger or search ProBlogger on iTunes.