Forget “Content Production”, Think “Idea Exploration”

Since I wrote about creativity, I’ve been considering the issue of getting inspiration for blog posts.

Some who commented on that article said they never have trouble finding post ideas. But others revealed that they really struggle with getting inspiration. Sometimes, they’re struck by it; other times, they have to go out and track it down bodily.

I’ve found that my approach has a lot to do with how many post ideas I have. I wanted to share my approach here, and see if you felt the same way, or take a different approach.

The burden of having to “produce” content can be overwhelming to the point where it stops production altogether. Feeling that you need to “produce” to a schedule, or on a regular basis, can make you feel a bit like a machine, and make your content seem like an “output”.

If I take this approach, my writing can become mechanical, my posts formulaic, and my points vague and unfocussed. The last thing I want to be is a content sausage-factory, but if I take a “production” philosophy, that’s how I wind up feeling—and it shows in my content.

The “production” approach doesn’t work for me, but the “exploration” approach does.

I find writing posts is a great way to explore the ideas that are on my mind. You probably started your blog because you have an interest in your blog’s topic. What aspects of that topic are on your mind? What elements are you curious about? What areas within that field annoy you, and why?

These kinds of considerations are precisely what inspire me to write. I look at what others are doing and saying and creating, and I reflect on that—maybe not immediately, with a pen in my hand and notebook open, but over time. I let these ideas, motivations, and questions filter, settle, and develop in my mind. They’re always there—we’re always thinking, right? Then, when something really starts to stick in my conscious, I write about it.

Your blog is the ideal place to explore those ideas that are rattling around your mind. Rather than “producing posts”, you might find it helpful to think of your blogging as an opportunity to:

formulate disparate thoughts into coherent conceptsadvance your own theoriessuggest alternative viewpoints or approaches that have occurred to yousee if your readers agree with a hunch you’ve gotinvite readers to help shape your perception, idea, or viewpoint

This post is an example of exactly that. As I mentioned at the outset, this idea—of post writing being a way to explore and develop thinking on a topic—has been sifting through my mind ever since I wrote that post on creativity. There are many half-formed, embryonic ideas in my mind, as I’m sure there are in yours, and this one has finally surfaced as something that I wanted to get a second opinion on.

So here I am, posting about it, in the hopes that you’ll share your thoughts on using your blog to explore and develop ideas in the comments. I’d love to hear them!

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Don’t Be Paralyzed By Media Consumption in 2011

“I will be a producer, not a consumer.”

Late last year a friend shared this resolution on Facebook. It caught my attention as being a great resolution that I think every entrepreneurial blogger could do well to have.

As I write this post, it’s 11.49 a.m. on Monday morning.

This morning, I returned to my computer after a weekend off with the intention of jumping into some solid blogging. My plan was to start early (8.00 a.m.) and whip out at least five posts this morning and to start work on a report that I’ve been planning to write in the afternoon.

That was the plan, anyway…

The reality is that I’ve been quite distracted. It started on Twitter (I should never switch on Tweet Deck that early in the day!) with a link that a friend sent me to read. That link led me to another, and another.

This morning I must have read 20 articles and blog posts, scanned 100 or so feeds in my feed reader, watched ten videos, spent a good hour scanning my Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook feeds, spent another 30 or so minutes in forums, tested out a new plugin, and … well, you get the picture.

Everything I did was related to blogging and my business. It was all interesting. Some of it was even helpful, and gave me ideas I may not have otherwise had.

However, until right now, I’ve not actually produced anything at all today. This morning has been about consumption rather than production.

Don’t get me wrong—there are times when you need to consume.

We all know that our bodies don’t function properly if we don’t eat well. Cars don’t run well without consuming petrol. Consumption is necessary.

We all need to consume to survive in a physical sense. In the same way, as bloggers we need times when we take in the ideas of others, and are informed by what others are saying—time when we soak in the latest trends and information in our industry.

There are also times where we just need to switch off from work, and consuming something fun and mindless can be good for us, too (anyone for Angry Birds?).

However, many people live in consumption mode to the point where they don’t produce anything.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve chatted with bloggers who have the following problems:

not enough time to post, but plenty of time to aimlessly surf the web for funtoo many distractions, whether they be Angry Birds, Farmville, Twitter, Youtube, or something elsefeeling the need to read every other blog in their niche for fear of missing an important development.

I suspect a “consumption” mentality is one of the reasons that many of us get to the end of a year and wonder why we didn’t achieve any of the grand plans that we had.

Let’s return to the example of our bodies. The main reason we consume food is to gain energy—to take action. We eat so that we’re fueled to do.

The danger with food arises when all we do is eat and eat, and we don’t actually burn off the energy the food gives us. Consumption without some kind of action to burn off what we consume leads to obesity. And my experience is that the same advice applies to running an online business.

There’s nothing wrong with consuming what the Web has to offer, but take the approach of consuming to energize your own action and production and you’ll be in a much healthier space than if you’re simply consuming for the sake of it.

As we enter into a new year, I wonder if perhaps we need to do something concrete together to get us on a path to production in 2011.

I don’t want to get to the end of this year and look back on the year as being one where I read a lot of articles, played a lot of games, and read and made a lot of Tweets…

I want to get to the end of 2011 and be proud of the fact that I’ve:

created things that mattered to myself and othersinspired others to better themselvesadded to conversations instead of watching others talkmade the world a better place in one way or another.

I resolve to be a producer, not a consumer, in 2011. How about you?

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Boost Your Blog Traffic: A Guide For Bloggers Who Want More Traffic in 2011

If you answer yes – you’re not alone. In fact you’re in the vast majority of bloggers. I ran a survey of a segment of ProBlogger readers recently and a ‘lack of traffic’ was identified as the #1 challenge that bloggers face.

Kicking off on Monday 24 January Chris Garrett and I are running a short course to tackle this problem. Over 5 modules we’ll walk you through our philosophies for building traffic to blogs.

The course is just $29.95 USD – or $99 if you do it with our other 4 courses in the Pillars of ProBlogging series. It is the 2nd of these courses that we’ve created (the first had some great reviews) and we’d love for you to join us!

In the course we’ll cover 5 Modules:

Starting with the visitors you haveBuild LoyaltyEngagementSubscriptionsFacebookTwitterForumsLinkedInBlogsKeywords and key phrasesKeyword researchLanding pagesLinksOther ranking influencesAdwordsFacebookRSS, Aggregators and SyndicationRepurposingGuest-PostingLive chat with Chris and Myself (in fact we do two live webinars to accomodate different time zones). These will be recorded for those who can’t make the live webinars.

Each of the modules is made up of multiple videos (a total of over 20 videos) which you’ll have access to for a year – so you don’t have to complete it all in the five days that we release them.

So if you’re looking to boost traffic to your blog in 2011 and you need a little inspiration and instruction to get you going – sign up today for this course.

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5 Ways Facebook’s Discussions App Will Make You a Better Blogger

This guest post is by Tommy Walker, Online Marketing Strategist and owner of Tommy.ismy.name.

“Build a community.” You hear it all the time. “Comment on other people’s articles, guest post, and join the conversation.”

One of the problems with the way most online communications systems are set up is that they’re top-down in nature. A blog requires posts before people can comment, Facebook’s Pages require updates if they’re to stand out in the News Feed … the list goes on and on.

And while these methods are essential to community building, getting more comments or tweets or Facebook shares on an article is not an act of community building. You’re building a successful broadcasting platform—sure—but broadcasting to a bunch of people is not community.

Community isn’t defined by a high number of comments, either. Community is defined by the conversation that’s happening between the people leaving comments.

If you want to be an authority, creating killer content is only the first step. A true leader has the ability to embed ideas, spark conversation, and inspire others to rise to the occasion. The next step is to give those you inspire the resources to communicate with each other about the ideas you’ve implanted.

This is where the Facebook Discussions Application comes in.

The Discussions App

Think of Facebook’s Discussions Application as a poor man’s forum. While it lacks the ability to share photos, link with anchor text, or even give users a signature, it does one thing that’s vital to community building: it allows members to communicate with each other.

Find a healthy balance of topics that you can discuss, and invite readers with whom you have a relationship to start topics on their subject of expertise to help out. Topics can be started by any person who “likes” a Page—they don’t have to be started by the Page administrator.

At first, it’s likely you’ll have to get people into the habit of checking the Discussions tab through status updates, because conversations in the Discussions Application are not published to the News Feed. However, once you’ve got people communicating with each other, your Discussions application will take on a life of its own.

Have a favorite book, tool, or other secret weapon that you’d like to talk about, but it doesn’t quite fit into your content calendar?

Instill a sense of comfort among your community members that encourages them to start conversations that apply to their specific situations. Use the Discussions App to share resources with your community and keep the information exclusive. In other words don’t tweet it, post it on youtube, or blog about it: keep it exclusive to the Discussions tab.

Of course anyone can “like” your Page and gain access to it, but the idea here is to keep little gems tucked away so your loyal and most active readers gain a feeling of exclusivity.

If all of your content surrounds a specific theme, but a member of your community has a question about something else you’ve established your authority on, the Discussions Application is a great place for them to have a side conversation with you.

One of my clients runs a regional restaurant chain. Fans of their Page frequently use the Discussions App to ask questions about a new stores opening in their area, vegan/vegetarian friendly food, and upcoming events.

Hubspot, an online marketing agency and technology firm, sees frequent queries on their Discussions tab ranging from questions about their products and reports to blog-and-website-101 type questions.

By encouraging your community to ask questions in this setting, you do two things:

If they’re asking a Frequently Asked Question, you can address it in a public setting so others may be able to see it.You make it possible for other members of your community to show their expertise on a particular subject.

Of course, sometimes not everyone will agree on a particular answer, which brings us to our next use for the Discussions App.

Can’t we all just get along? Well, quite honestly sometimes the answer is just plain “No!”

Discussions can be a great tool to either spark or facilitate debates on incendiary topics. Sometimes when a conversation has the heat turned up on it, people come out with their best stuff, so every now and again bring up a topic on which you know people will have opposing and strong viewpoints.

Just a word of warning, though: a good debate can bring a community together—or tear it apart. Your job as the authority is to keep debates respectful and to prevent people from crossing the line.

Don’t let the conversation die simply because it gets buried in the News Feed. Start a topic in Discussions to extend the conversation further.

One of the perks of being a Page administrator is that all participants of a comment thread are notified when you respond to that thread.

So let’s say for example you publish a status update that, for one reason or another gets a ton of feedback. Chances are that the conversation won’t die simply because it’s no longer interesting. More likely, they’ll die because it’s no longer visible.

Why not start a Topic on the Discussions tab to allow members to continue the conversation? Though the conversation won’t be published to the News Feed, it does bring people a little deeper into the overall experience, giving more meaning to your relationship. Also, depending on the topic, the thread could become a resource that you can link to from time to time.

These are my preferred ways to use the Discussions App to build community around a blog. Have you tried the Discussions App yet? What tips or advice can you add?

Tommy is an Online Marketing Strategist and owner of Tommy.ismy.name. He is about to release Hack The Social Network, the ultimate guide to Facebook Marketing, and is currently developing a “mind hacking” course.

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5 Fast Tips to Improve Internal Links

This guest post was written by James Hay, Social Media Coordinator for Fasthosts Internet Ltd.

Playing to your strengths is an important part of SEO, and before going out and spending all day endlessly pursuing external links, it is important to look at your own site.

You control what is displayed on your site and the SEO tips below provide a number of ways to increase your rank strength and improve your blog’s internal link architecture.

Just in case you’ve not come across the phrase “Internal Linking” before, here’s a quick definition from SearchPath:

The process whereby words or phrases within a web page are linked to other pages in the site. Internal links are considered important in SEO terms, as they are often spidered and displayed by Google.

So here are my top five tips to help you improve your internal link architecture.

Ensure that the keyword(s) you’re trying to get ranked for is used as your anchor text (the text within the link). For example, if the phrase you are trying to get ranked for is “Internal Links”, and the page you want people to find for that phrase is your article “Guide to Internal Linking”, then use that phrase as the anchor text for your link. The search engine spiders will then understand what your target page is about, and it will increase the content’s ranking strength for that phrase.

Although there is no empirical evidence to say that search engines spiders prefer absolute URLs (i.e. http://yourdomain.com/pagetitle.html) over relative URLs (i.e. /pagetitle.html), it is good practice to use absolute URLs. It help spiders determine exactly where the page is located on your site, and if your content gets copied, then at least the links will point back to your website.

The speed at which your pages load certainly affects your page rank. I recommend using Google Webmaster Tools and adding a sitemap to your blog. You can then look at your site performance and how quickly your pages load. Google seems to regard 1.5 seconds or less as a good load time. Compress any large images and refine unnecessary code to help speed up your site.

Although search engines are improving all the time, the search engine spiders still have difficulty crawling non-text navigation menus. It is advisable to use text menus rather than those that require Flash or JavaScript.

It’s important to keep in mind that search engine spiders love to move freely and quickly through your site, which is why I’ve provided the tips above. But one thing that spiders really dislike is hitting a dead-end, and broken links are the cause of this. The Google Webmaster Tools can also identify broken links on your blog. Go through those links and either remove them, or change the anchor text and redirect the link to a valid page.

These are my top tips for improving internal links on your blog. What others can you add?

This article was written by James Hay, Social Media Coordinator at Fasthosts Internet Ltd and the main contributor to the Fasthosts Blog which provides advice on everything from B2B Marketing to Social Networking.

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