I'm blogging every day. Here's a short series on the why, how, and what's of it.
- Why Blog Every Day
- How to Blog Every Day
- What to Blog Every Day (this post)
So far I've talked about the reasons I've started blogging every day as well as how I'm going about doing it. Now I want to dive into what I intend to blog about every day.
Coming up with content—ideas, really—isn't easy. But there are some general rules I'm setting up for structuring those ideas.
1. Sometimes write long, sometimes write short
I'm not holding myself to writing lengthy posts every day. Hopefully the shorter ones will still have some relevance, but there is a realistic limit to how much I can blog about as well as how much time I have to spend on it. My first priority remains my current novel-in-progress.
2. I won't shy away from reusing my own content
I have multiple novels, short stories, and nearly 500 blog posts out there. That's a lot of content that I'm not going to shy away from re-using to fit my needs. I might take an excerpt out of my novels and post that. Or a favorite quote by a character. Or make a list highlighting posts on a particular topic which I feel might deserve a shout-out.
3. Take advantage of guest posts
I see this a lot on the blogs of others. Having someone else do the heavy lifting is a great way to keep the streak alive, get some fresh content, and build community spirit. In fact, I recently posted my very first featured guest post.
4. Break long posts into multi-part series
I don't like reading overly long blog posts. However, sometimes a topic requires such length. Those times I'll break the really long post into several smaller ones. Just like I'm doing with this one.
5. Make use of simple content
My Word of the Day posts are a good example of this. I find them relevant because I'm picking words I like or think are interesting or even pertinent to the fantasy genre and, let's face it, I'm not doing a whole lot of work. Wordnik picks the words and provides the definitions. I use their content and always credit them. I'd like to expand on this idea, though, and break into maybe a fantasy term or definition of the week sort of thing. This is something I need to explore some more.
My Weekly Schedule
I'm going to consistently blog on a Mon-Sat schedule. For each day, I'll be focusing on the following:
- Monday: Word of the Day
- Tuesday: Substantial post of some sort
- Wednesday: Shout-out, either of one of my posts or series or maybe someone else's. This might alternate with author interviews or guest posts.
- Thursday: Substantial post of some sort
- Friday: Focus on some aspect of the World of Uhl where my novels are set or something else from the content of my writing. For ex., character profiles, info on places or races, maybe even some writing samples.
- Saturday: Writing progress for the week
Conclusion
Those are just some of the ways I intend to keep coming up with something to post. The danger is that it becomes wholly about the posting itself and not about the content. As soon as the content begins to suffer then I need to back away from blogging every day or make some serious adjustments if I intend to keep doing it. To tell you the truth, I don't know how long I'll keep this up. I imagine I'll get tired of it eventually. But if you stick around you'll get to see how far I go and where it takes me.
More Reading
Join my reader's group and get The Hall of Riddles (An Alchemancer Prequel) and The Assassin's Dilemma (An Assassin Without a Name Prequel) as a welcome gift.