Tips for Creating the Ultimate User-Generated Blog

All blogs can be classified into two main categories, even if you don’t look at them at a nitty-gritty level.  They are “user/editor” generated and “source” generated.  In other words, there is content that you are linking to directly, such as news sources and reports, and those that you have had to create yourself, such as tutorials and tips for readers to pass on to others, or primary source material.

In general, you would think that content that you generate yourself is the best content – receiving the most backlinks, subscribers, and traffic, but this isn’t always the case.  A majority of news sites are able to grow so rapidly because their posts average between two hundred and five hundred words, compared to a minimum of 800 (plus time) to 3,000 or more in “how-to” articles.

In this post, I want to help you brainstorm, edit, and finally publish the content that you have created, intended to help your readers accomplish something.  While this blog isn’t completely generated by myself (there is news and links to other sites), it is, for the most part originated around the concept of providing valuable information.

The Basic Tips to Get Started

1. Be sure that you choose a niche that are are comfortable writing about at the very least once per week.  If you can’t commit this amount of time (each post will generally take a few hours), you won’t be able to promote and market your blog to its full potential.
2. Establish a good place to post the tutorials, which may consist of upwards of ten images and videos, so this may require your own domain and hosting plan.
3. Decide whether you will post alone, invite others to post alongside you, or hire other people who will become daily contributors.  The best model for this type of tutorial site is multi-author, as each person will be able to focus on a different aspect of each process.
4. Create a theme, have one designed, or start with a “default” theme platform to launch your site on.  Preferably, there should be more room to place content than a traditional blog theme, although you may have different views on this.
5. Be sure that you have the equipment – including time – before you start.  It may be necessary to acquire a video camera if you are going to do tutorials away from your computer. 
6. Market your site more than traditional blogs, as it’ll require more, unless you have a background in search engine optimization, it’ll take some time before you can rise to the ranks of sites that have been creating tutorials for many years.
7. Brainstorm a topic that you want to produce.  Next, think of the method that you will use to produce it – images, text, etc.  
8. After you have finished producing, it is time to edit – collect and organize all the content, do some fact checking if necessary, then begin creating the content in its finished format – editing video, cropping images, etc.  
9. Finally, prepare a working final copy, 90% ready for publication.  At this stage, it is time to do some final editing, adding keywords, optimizing your titles, and doing some final touch-ups.
10. It’s complete!  You can now publish your tutorial, guide, or how-to.

Other Tips/Advice

• Be sure that your readers are always in control – encourage feedback from them and issue polls/feedback tools so they can express their opinion.
• Vary the format of your posts and tutorials.  Perhaps switch between text, voice-only, video, and images to create a more appealing effect.
• Interest your readers!  Tutorials don’t have to be dull, even if the reader is looking to quickly visit your site and leave.
• Don’t copy others.  One of the most visually appealing formats of instructional/explanatory videos comes from the Common Craft team, who have created extremely simple, yet informative explanations of how things work.
• There is no set, prescribed method of how to create tutorials.  Some people have taken different routes and have been able to get the same point across as someone who follows the cut and dry method.
• Fill a void – an area that people want to learn about that few have covered before.

Conclusion

If you are ready to venture down this path, it would be best that you “test the waters” before you do it full time.  Remember, there are many sites/blogs that have already made it big with this type of work, but if you can bring your own personal touch to your videos, you will be able to grow your network to expand multiple arenas.

Not all tutorials will be as successful as others.  The format may be on the decline, but people still need to learn how to do “stuff,” even if it may be on the lines of more traditional process.  You should learn how to adapt the format and method used over time to produce the desired results.