Blogstagnation. Ok, I just made that word up. My recent medical tribulations have exposed the weakest link in my own blog. I am a one man show. Usually, that’s not a problem, but when I don’t post, my blog gets stagnate. There’s many reasons why this can happen; vacation, health, even writers block. Unfortunately, a blog that never changes does little to encourage readers to come back. Here are some ways to fight blogstagnation.
Beyond the blog - Blogs are good, but it never hurts to have some additional tools that keep attract reliable readership. I made a page of links that I knew other LO’s would see value in. Later, I even made it into a search engine. I also arranged to publish a daily, updated market report from Myers Internet. On the retail side, starting a local directory of business and entertainment resources might work. Traditional tools like calculators, FAQ’s and daily rates are all good content and can be provided by many mortgage web solution companies like Myers. I also think a local calendar of events application would have value, or even an Internet forum. Most of this is going to take a bit of computer skills, but you could also farm out the work, or just learn how to do it yourself. I’m a salesman that built lenderama without any technical education. It just takes patience.
Team blogs - I’m going to take my own advice here. The best way to keep your blog current is to have more than one contributor. Obviously, this helps you overcome vacation and health related issues, but I think it would also be a great why to fight writers block. By having another blogger to add content, you can feed off of their ideas and vice versa.
I’ve always been a control freak when it comes to this blog, but here and now, I announcing that I’m interested in adding as many as three additional bloggers to lenderama. Email me at todd@mariah.com if you are interested.
RSS Harvesting - I bring this idea up, only to shoot it down. One way some blogger’s keep there blog fresh is to harvest RSS feeds from other bloggers. I’m not going to explain the details on how this works other than to say, don’t do this. You’re not fooling your readership, and in many cases, you are committing copyright infringement.
A final note, it’s always a good idea to let your readership know if you are not going to be blogging for a while. It let’s them know not to purge you from their RSS reader, thinking you just lost interest and gave up.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
On top of not fooling your readers, and possibly infringing the copyrights of the blog, you create no value online by simply copying already existing content.
Find a topic you are very interested in, and simply publish your thoughts on this.
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