One of the biggest problems that beginning bloggers have is knowing what to blog about. Either they think they can’t write very well, or they just don’t have very many ideas. Well if you’re in that boat, here’s a tip you may find helpful.
Try writing about what other people are saying about your topic or niche. Find two or three other blogs in your niche…read what they have to say…and if you find an interesting post, write about it. I call this blog skimming.
Say your blog is about real estate in your local community. A typical blog skimming post will read something like this:
I found this great post over in The Real Estate Blog called “When Will Real Estate Values Begin to Appreciate Again?” by Aubrey Clark. Aubrey claims that the current slump is forcing us to return to values held by our parents’ generation.
In his opinion the cheap credit of the last decade actually devalued our homes by making it much too easy to get into home ownership. As he says, “I cannot predict when the real estate market will bounce back, but I can tell you what needs to happen before it does. America needs to reinvest in herself by getting back to solid buying and selling principles.”
In other words, we need to start caring about the value we ourselves have invested in our homes, and less about how much we can make by flipping them.
This sounds like very sound advice to me.
See how easy it is to come up with great content for your blog? Your readers will appreciate this kind of post. The blogger who you are quoting will appreciate the reference because you will be sending traffic his way. And you will have learned something in the process too.
Just make sure to give credit where credit is due. Give a direct link to the posts you are skimming. The other bloggers will very likely return the favor some day. And don’t just lift the content. Include a short summary, a quotation, a link to the original, and then add a comment or two of your own. There’s no easier way to create really interesting and useful content for your blog.
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