Blog Struggles: Ideas and Drafts

For years, I’ve had a bunch of drafts sitting in my blog’s “draft box”, a list of posts at the top of my Write Post and Manage Posts panel that remind me of unfinished work. I’ve written reminders to you to clean out your post draft list once in a while, but I’m still as […]

What to write about: How to get ideas when you run out of E-steam

By J.T Dabbagian of JTDabbagian.com As your blogging journey continues, you’ll find yourself stuck on that path of writing. You’ll realize one day that you have absolutely nothing to blog about. Now, before you jump up in your underwear and run around your block screaming bloody murder, just know that harvesting new content really isn’t […]

What Are Your Favorite Resources for Blogging Ideas?

Liz Strauss on Successful and Outstanding Bloggers has done it again and got me really thinking with a recent post called “Ideas When I Get My Hair Cut”: Yesterday, I got a haircut. While I was waiting I looked through a magazine and took notes. I took notes on articles and on advertisements. When I […]

Using Your Feeds for Story Ideas

After a couple months of incredible productivity, I hit a dry spell. There was plenty I should be writing about, but shoulds don’t motivate very well. So I went hunting. I’ve written about the many resources available for story ideas, but here’s a trick I do to get me back on course. I call it […]

A Gallery of Website Layout Designs and Ideas

Website Layout Cookbook – An Illustrated Reference for Designing Website Layouts showcases various website layouts in a catalog format for you or your client to browse looking for possible layout styles. As a reference for the web designer, this website provides over 500 layouts to use in planning and designing websites. Various elements such as […]

Looking for Blogging Ideas?

While it seems like installing and setting up your blog is the hardest part of the challenges associated with blogging, the reality is that coming up with new ideas is actually the hardest part of blogging. For a while, the ideas and words flow. You can barely keep up with them. But over time, energy […]

Blog Exercises: How to Write about Something Someone Else Wrote

In the early development of the web, blogs were classified as echo chambers, vessels of redundant content as every original idea was shared, reshared, quoted, and spread across the web at rapid speed. Some estimates state that less than 2% of all the content on the web is original. It’s mostly regurgitation of the same […]

Blog Exercises: How Long Are Your Paragraphs?

How long are your paragraphs? Have you measured them lately? One of the telling differences between traditional writing and writing for the web is the length of the paragraph. Look at the example below. Which is easier to read? On the left, the paragraphs are huge, long blocks of text. On the right, the paragraphs […]

Blog Exercises: Dissecting Post Categories

In a recent article, Noah Weiss shared his struggle to figure out categories and tags on his personal site. I know many of you following these Blog Exercises have also struggled to figure out your categories, so I thought Noah’s site would be a perfect example, He has gratefully given me permission to rip his […]

Blog Exercises: Current Events for May

Been watching the news lately? It’s time to blog the news and current events for May in our Blog Exercises. Have you enjoyed blogging the news? I’ve only asked for one newsworthy blog post a month. Some of you have gone a bit overboard, while others still struggle to find something from the news to […]

Blog Exercises: The IKEA Effect for Bloggers

The Ikea Effect was coined by researchers who found out what we all know but rarely admit, we put too much ownership into our own brainchild ideas and concepts. In other words, we tend to fall in love with our own ideas and creations. If you have ever been around kids, you’ve probably had that […]

Blog Exercises: Add Industry Events to Your Editorial Calendar

In the blog exercise to create an editorial calendar, I gave you many ideas for setting self-assignments and deadlines for content throughout the year on your blog. Don’t forget to investigate your industry to discover events, conferences, and news to add to the calendar. Whether you go or not, take time to research calendars and […]

The Secret Recipe of Comment Spam Comments

Mr. Louis Vuitton just sent me a message in my blog comments I’d like to share with you. I share this touching message because it is highly educational when it comes to the art of spam comments, and serves to remind us of why we love having Akismet, the best comment spam fighter, on our […]

Blog Exercises: Honor the Moment

In “Okay, Everybody, Group Hug!” the author of True Stitches, Heather, honored the moment of a publishing triumph. This is my 300th post. An accomplishment of sorts, I guess, although it took me years and years to get here. But along the way I have connected with so many wonderful people, which is the greatest […]

Blog Exercises: March Current Events

It’s time to blog the news and current events in our Blog Exercises for March. The first Current Events exercise was in January, and it featured some ideas to help you get motivated to blog some news and current events. Find a way of making the news or a current event tie in with your […]