Blog Tipz

You’ve run out of ideas for new posts. You have to meet deadlines and even on your personal blogs, you are unable to get your posts started, due to the lack of ideas. This situation can happen to anyone, even the most creative bloggers/writers.

The challenge of coming up with great posts has challenged bloggers for years, although there is a great way that you can nearly eliminate this problem with just a few visits to other websites.

The most popular content is ranked by users on sites like Digg, TweetMeme (for Twitter), and Like Button (for Facebook), giving you a glimpse into the most popular content on the Web. So much content is being shared at any time that even these sites can be difficult to use when you need new topics to write about.

For the most part, shared content revolves around two main types: original content, such as news stories, blog posts, and photographs, while the second group revolves around collections and remixes, ranging from list posts to edited photographs and remixed songs.

I’ll take a quick look at the front page of Digg and then we’ll look at how you can apply these trends to come up with interesting blog posts.

• There are two posts in the list format, “6 Bizarre Mysteries (That Are Still Totally Unanswered)” and “The 6 TV Badasses We’d Love to Have a Drink With”. These posts are popular across all types of sites, so it is no surprise to see them on Digg.
• Seven of the posts are news-specific. While news generally doesn’t revolve around the main television stations, it might depend on the time of the day, as many of the news posts currently on Digg are from sites like Telegraph, The NY TImes, CNN, Kiplinger, USA Today, and MSNBC.
• Four articles deal specifically or link directly to an image, while one links to a video. The other articles also include some type of images, but their main focus is on text.

How to Integrate Current Trends into Your Blog

Even if you don’t have a news blog, it can be a good idea to base your new posts on the current trends. Contrary to popular belief, some of the most trafficked posts deal with current events, rather than timeless content. Sure, the timeless content will still have rewards down the road, but that is only if it becomes popular today, is linked to frequently, and then is ranked well in search engines for a wide array of terms.

A popular post format working its way across the social networking sites right now is the “in-depth” post, with analysis of current trends, such as the Facebook debacle. Readers want to know how certain events will impact their life, rather then just the news, which can be found on the original site.

While there has certainly been debate about the format of list posts, these posts are popular and will remain so. They have always been popular, even in the days of newspapers and print. They grab a visitor’s attention and can become popular in a matter of minutes. Putting the time into researching the posts is ideal, and it’ll result in a post that will be linked to across social networking sites and relevant blogs.

The key is creating unique content. Until you have become as large as some of the most popular blogs, you’ll need to set yourself apart in some way or another. The key to doing this is to create content that few other sites have, and this may include breaking news. Scour the web for hot trends and then see if any new developments have taken place. Starting a really local blog can draw in the traffic levels that will let you earn an income – al inspired by sites like Topix.

Other Ideas to Keep in Mind:

1. Breaking a news story may not result in a lot of traffic unless it is an a popular niche, like technology.
2. If you simply re-post news topics found on other blogs, you’ll likely exhaust yourself, as you’ll generally need to post more than ten new posts per day.
3. Generating ideas based on the top news stories can be just as difficult as creating a post about something you have never researched before.

No matter what type of site you run, keeping tabs on the popular social networking sites and the directories connected to them will allow you to constantly see where markets are heading. Even if you have a blog about an extremely specific topic, you can still perform searches on these sites and see how well other posts have done.

Remember, the only thing that matters in all this si that your site stands out. Focus solely on what your visitors are looking for even before they tell you. Stay involved in your niche and create a community around your site to maximize the time you spend writing posts.