Making Blogging Easier is Often in Conflict with Providing Real Value to Your Reader…But it Doesn’t Have to Be
Let’s face it. As content providers and bloggers, our sole mission is to provide value to our audience and to generally do so by making their life easier. They shouldn’t have to work too hard to consume your awesomeness.
What typically happens with this approach is the easier you make it for them, the harder and more effort it is for you.
It’s a cruel reality.
So, how can you make it easier for them while also making blogging easier for you? What particular tools can be implemented to not only provide them easy to receive value but also help you easily generate stellar content?
Content Delivery Process
In order to better understand how to help them out, let’s first look at the basic content delivery process.
It all starts with an idea. You then take that idea and craft a blog post. That blog post is published and you then push it out to your various marketing channels.
Now, let’s look at it from the reader’s perspective.
They don’t care about what it takes to create and deliver content to them. They just want it delivered, and they don’t want to work too hard to find or consume it.
So let’s see if we can break down each phase to serve both the reader and the author a bit better.
Step 1 – Idea Generation
When you first start out you will have a ton of ideas and topics to write about. As time moves forward the ideas start to dwindle. It’s inevitable that you will encounter writer’s block at some point. It’s ok, we all do.
As a blogger, you need to implement processes that will spur future idea generation so you can keep your idea backlog full.
Here are a few ways to make blogging easier with idea generation.
- Read other blogs in your niche – Reading other bloggers can quickly spark ideas for your own blog. I’m not saying to copy what they said but rather think of unique perspectives on the same topic. One cool way to stay on top of blogs is to install an RSS feed reader into your browser. I use the feeder.co plugin for Chrome.
- Listen to podcasts – This is a variant of the first method. The same concept applies. While you are listening to podcasts, of any genre, think of how it applies to your own message.
- Follow current events – People love to read about current events. See if you can take a hot topic in the news and put a spin on it from your perspective.
- Use news aggregator services – Tools such as Feedly allow you to quickly digest headlines to see what others are posting in particular subject areas.
- Use a tool to capture the ideas – Use a tool like Evernote to capture every thought you have throughout the day. You’d be surprised how many topics cross your mind during the day.
As a reader, you really don’t care about the blogger’s idea generation. You just want saucy, interesting content.
Step 2 – Blog Post Creation
Ok, you have an idea, now you need to create a killer blog post. There are three major parts to the standard blog post – the graphics, the headline, and the content.
The Graphics
There are a number of tools available to you for the quick and easy creation of stunning images for your blog post. But first, you need to find images that are free to use without extreme licensing restrictions or cost.
Here are some of my favorite sites for images.
Now that you have an image, you will need to do some basic editing to get it to where you want it for the blog post. That could include resizing, adding text to it, or adding preset filters.
Here are some of my go-to sites for graphics editing.
- Canva.com – Image editing
- PicMonkey.com – Image editing
- Photoshop – Image editing
- QuotesCover.com – Adding text over an image
Now that you have an image and you pimped it out a little bit, there is one more thing to check.
The size.
You always have to be cognizant of the size of your images. If there was one major culprit of slow websites, it’s the images.
Make sure you don’t force your visitors to abandon your site due to slow loading large images. Resize them to smaller dimensions and save them as .jpgs. That’s the most basic approach to helping your audience see the image you worked so hard on creating.
The Headline
I’m going to share one of the greatest hacks I’ve learned for headline creation. This was a technique I learned from the folks over at Copyblogger.
Use popular websites to help you generate fantastic headlines. They recommend using a site like Cosmopolitan.
Face it, you are not a copywriter. Neither am I.
Cosmo has trained professional copywriters coming up with outstanding headlines that are proven to reach out and grab potential readers. Leverage the work they do for your own blog.
Using this technique is not solely reserved for headline creation. You could also use it to think of ideas for a blog post.
Scroll through their pages and simply replace particular words in the headline with something related to your business or niche.
Next time you are hit with writer’s block, go check out some headlines and see if it sparks some creativity on your part. I’ve done this many times.
Let’s look at an example. Here are two headlines pulled directly from Cosmopolitan.com.
Here is how I could rewrite these headlines for my own niche.
- 14 Things Only Bloggers Understand
- 14 Things Only Parent Entrepreneurs Understand
- Here’s How to Get a Super-Cheap Web Hosting Platform
- Here’s How to Get a Super-Cheap Graphics Editor
The Content
This part doesn’t really need a fancy tool. You just need to sit down and plug away at the content.
Now, with that said, you still need to properly format your content to make it easy for the reader to consume.
Make sure you break the paragraphs up so it’s not one big blob of text (this article may serve as an example). Make sure you create headers and sub-headers. Not only does this help the readers follow along, it also has search engine benefits.
I typically use WordPress directly when writing blog posts but also write drafts in Evernote from time to time. The benefit of writing directly in WordPress is you save time during the formatting process if everything is done inside the tool itself. I’m all about saving time!
Again, the reader really doesn’t come into play here. They just want well formed, well constructed, and visually appealing content. Give them what they want and they may come back for more.
Step 3 – Make it Available
Ok, the blog post is written, formatted, and laced with killer graphics. You hit the publish button and make it available to the world.
Now the reader comes into play. They really don’t want to do anything. They want the content provided to them so they can sit back and read it.
Here are a few ways you can them get your content.
- Directly to their inbox – From your standpoint this is the best option. You have direct access to their most prized asset, their email inbox. It also benefits the reader because it is delivered right where they live every day. I use Mailchimp to automatically send new content and for ad hoc notifications to my mailing list.
- RSS – RSS is not completely dead. Many people still use some form of RSS readers so make sure you offer your content via an RSS feed.
- Post to social media – Make sure you publish your new content to all of your social media channels. Again, for the reader, this is the most convenient location to become aware of your article. They don’t want to necessarily look for it, so it’s nice to have it pop up directly in the Facebook news feed.
- Offer delivery options – You can also look into different ways to provide the content. This may be written, audio, or visual. Some people are readers and will enjoy a blog. Others simply want to listen to the content via a podcast. There are others that want to watch a YouTube channel or catch a blab or Periscope session. While you don’t have to cover all of these methods right away, find the one or two delivery options that align with your target audience.
There you have it. A number of tools and techniques that you can use to provide value to your audience while making blogging easier for you. While this list is not comprehensive it at least gives you some ideas.
