Curing Blog Writer’s Block

The phones are quiet, you’ve answered all of your email, and you’ve set aside an hour or two to update your blog.  You get a fresh cup of coffee, settle into your chair, pull up your keyboard, and…nothing happens.  Your blog editor is open, your cursor is blinking patiently in the corner, but you can’t think of a single thing to write.  After a few minutes, you start having flashbacks to your tenth grade creative-writing assignments, so you close the window and move on to something else. 

Sound familiar?  This condition is known as Blog Writer’s Block, and it’s an increasingly common affliction.  It can lead to stress and frustration on the part of the blog writer, boredom and impatience on the part of the blog reader, and, ultimately, missed sales opportunities for the blog writer’s business.  Luckily, Blog Writer’s Block is easily treated—you just need to start thinking differently about your blog.

Here’s the rule you need to remember: sitting down and trying to come up with something to write will NEVER work.  You need to have your material ready ahead of time, which means you need to be looking for subjects while you’re living your life and running your business, not when you’re sitting in front of a blank computer screen.   Any time you read something interesting, have an interesting conversation, or come up with a new idea, think of it as something to write about in your blog.  This may take a little getting used to, but it’s worth it.

This isn’t to say that you need to be passive—you can and should seek out inspiration.  You just need to do it before you sit down to write.  There are lots of places to look, but two good starting places are the news and your own readers.

The news, whether it’s specific industry news, business news, national news, or local news, is probably the best place to get your blog material.  There’s a never-ending supply of it, and it’s what many blog readers are looking for anyway.  You don’t want to use your blog to report the news, but rather to comment on stories that your readers are likely to find interesting. 

Feel free to write about general-interest stories, and feel free to give your opinion about them.  You don’t want to do this sort of thing on the others sections of your website, but blogs are one place where it’s OK to be a little more personal.  Obviously, you shouldn’t write about stories that your customers will find offensive, and you should avoid giving extreme opinions that may alienate large segments of your customer base.  If you’re reasonable about it, adding a little personality to your blog will make it more fun to read and will make your customers feel more connected with you.  If you can relate a news story to your industry or business, that’s good, but it’s not necessary all of the time. 

When you blog about a news story, don’t copy the story and paste it into your blog post—just provide a quick summary of the story, tell your readers where you found it, and provide and a link to the source.  For one thing, some of your readers will have already seen the story, and they probably won’t want to read the whole thing again, and for another, you’ll avoid trouble over copyright infringement.

Your readers can also provide you with a wealth of blog material, and you’ll know in advance that the ideas you get from them will be interesting to them.  The reader comments on your blog are the obvious place to start.  Often, blog readers will make a few comments on a post, then one commenter will bring up another related topic, and before long the comment thread suddenly becomes a conversation on a completely different subject.  Your readers will almost certainly be interested in getting your thoughts on a subject they’ve been discussing, so rather than just adding your own comment, write a brand-new blog post about it.

You should also solicit information from your readers: ask them what they’d like to read about, ask them for feedback on your products or services, ask them for success stories and customer referrals.  Besides giving you ideas for new blog posts, the information you get will be useful in a hundred other ways, and top of that, it will make your readers more engaged and more likely to return to your blog.