Blogging is an essential piece of any content marketing strategy. From engaging your audience to building your social community and adding SEO value to your website, it’s no longer an option but a must for all businesses.
However, there are times that you will hit a roadblock. Writer’s block happens to everybody, at one time or another. I’m sure even Shakespeare and Stephen King had to get over this hill at some point during their lives, but they were able to do it. So can you.
I recently experienced writer’s block while crafting a client blog post and instead of getting frustrated I decided to put that blog on hold and write about some tips for how to conquer writer’s block in the content marketing world.
How to Beat Writer’s Block in 6 Steps
1. Brainstorm. I find that the easiest way to overcome writer’s block is to brainstorm with at least one other person. Other people will have different ideas and perspectives regarding your topic. Every month, the entire lotus823 team gets together to brainstorm blog topics for each of our clients. The result of these brainstorms is a fresh stockpile of ideas from team members who both work closely with the client and most importantly those who are on the outside and offer valuable insight and creative ideas.
2. Join the conversation with influencers. In my last digital marketing blog post, I looked to Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester to help drive my point home. Whether it’s a specific person or a company as a whole, see what they’re talking about and then throw your two cents in the conversation. You never know who may be listening, or reading!
3. Be aware of what your competitors are saying. I know that you’re probably concerned with everything your competition is doing. I don’t blame you – most of the time customers can choose one way to get a specific product or service. If your competitors have a blog or social media accounts, see what they’re talking about and sharing. You can bring different opinions to the community of people following your industry.
4. Duplicate past blogging success. As a digital marketing specialist, it’s absolutely necessary to have a tool like Google Analytics tracking the traffic that’s coming to your site. That’s because it shows what pages are getting the most traffic to your site and can show which pages people are leaving from the most. For every report I work on, I check to see which blog posts generated the most traffic and try to write similar blog posts to it in the future. If there was a blog post from a while back that generated a lot of visits, see if there’s a way to write a follow up to it. It’s all about understanding what a user is looking for.
5. Duplicate past social success. If there’s a certain post that got a lot of engagement (i.e. likes, shares, retweets, etc.), then it’s reasonable to believe that people liked the content enough to broadcast it to their network. Find past posts that you have shared on your profiles that has worked, and duplicate that content. How was the content crafted? What can you conclude about the type of image used?
6. Do something else. If you’re thinking way too much about what you’re writing, then take a break from it. Step away and regroup. There are only so many work hours in a day, so complete a different task that needs to get done. Maybe doing something different will light a spark and give you an idea that you didn’t think of because you were too focused on writing. What steps do you take in overcoming writer’s block? Let me know in the comments section below!