Blog Exercises: Bye Bye to Dumb Drafts

Demian Farnworth of Copyblogger wrote a brilliant article, “5 1/2 Reasons You Should Kill a Draft Blog Post. It’s today’s blog exercise.

In summary, Demian’s tips are:

The idea sounds bad to you days later.
It’s likely to create controversy you don’t want.
It looks like something you wrote last year.
It looks like stolen content.
It looks shallow.
It looks like a lunatic wrote it.

On an off day, my posts resembled that before you see them.

And sometimes, you will never see them because they are unfixable.

Blog Exercise Task from Lorelle on WordPress. Demian has summed up your blog exercise today.

Create a list from his article and print it out and tape it to the wall right next to your computer monitor – hell, tape it to the monitor or keyboard so your eyes will see it before you ever hit the publish or send button.

Then turn your new radar eyes on the content sitting in your drafts. Scan them with those points in mind. Sounds bad? Shallow? Crazy? Slinging gas on a fire? Blast it to the trash bin.

Remember that old chair you thought you could fix? The one sitting in the garage, taking up space, creating a fine home for spiders and mice? It was a good chair in its day. Served many a behind well. But it’s broke. It’s become a “roundtoit” project, something you will do when you get time and ’round to it. These are your drafts. Sometimes a draft is worth fixing. So fix it already. Sometimes the draft needs a trip to the bins.

There are always great ideas. We’re all full of them. I never said every idea was an idea worth following up on or letting see the light of virtual day.

To help you understand that not every idea is a good idea to publish, here is a quick summary list of the worst ideas in history – biased opinions of course, but some of these met all my qualifications for bad, shallow, crazy, and just plain dumb – favorites – bad engagement photos, Ryanair’s standing only flights, and Western Union turning down the telephone because they thought it was a joke.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.