In my ongoing series of posts debunking reasons not to post (it has been ongoing for about 17 words now), I’m taking out the biggest and lamest one right off the bat. This is the excuse, often implied more than stated, that one simply does not think they have anything to post.
Fortunately, this one has never been the issue for me, but it has stifled many a beginning blogger. People start out with the best of intentions, but they never seem to break through that first threshold of realizing that there is literally no end to the possibilities when it comes to things to blog about. And so they don’t post. And other people go on to reap the magical rewards of the Internet instead.
In support of their “post daily” challenge to bloggers, the folks at WordPress.com have created The Daily Post, a blog about coming up with ideas for what to post about. They are posting a new suggestion every day, all year. So if you are frozen up, you can always lean on that. They’re just a few days in, and already there is enough food for thought to keep anyone going for quite a while.
I also posted a couple of resources for brewing up post ideas a while back in my For My Clients section: 50 Content Ideas that Create Buzz and How to Turn Staff Into Prolific Bloggers. (My For My Clients section is where I file things that could help my clients do more with their blogs , social media, etc. You can use it too. :-))
Between those three resources, the “nothing to post about” issue is nullified. Say it from here on out and points will be deducted from your score.
If you’re a new or shy blogger, it may be that you don’t think anyone wants to hear what you have to say. But that’s probably not true. Certainly, if you have any sort of expertise, specialty knowledge, or any sort of unique perspective on life, work, or anything else, then there is an audience that wants to hear from you.
And even if you don’t know what your purpose or voice is yet, your search for those things is a worthwhile topic for examination, and unless you are a robotic drone, your journey will be unique. It’s up to you to make it interesting to your reader, but that might not be as hard as you think.
People are pretty damn interested in just about everything these days; we’re undergoing a renaissance of information awareness, global interconnection, and other vague slogans that mean we are gettin’ it on, brain-wise. So people want to know what you want to know, if you know anything they don’t know. That’s an overstatement, but not by a whole lot.
If you started a blog, you had an inkling that you might want to get in on the big sharing party that the Internet has become. At some level, you have things you want to say. Creating a new blog post is as simple as typing down a thought you have, and then going from there. If it doesn’t come out awesome, then your next one will come out better. By which I mean, even if you suck, you won’t suck for long if you care about it. It’s not that hard, and you will get better fast.
But only if you do it.