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Kickstart Your Blog this Weekend

Kickstart Your Blog this Weekend

Publishing fresh content is an essential ingredient for any website. It’s a great form of communication, it improves your standing as a leader in your market and the more pages your site has, the better your results in the search engines. But starting and maintaining a blog can be a pain, especially if you don’t feel that you’re much of a writer. What should you write about? How often should you publish? How do you keep going? Let me help you break through these barriers with this simple project that you can complete this weekend. In just 2 hours, you’ll have written a blog post and have enough content ideas for an entire year.

Step 1 - Choose six blog categories

Recommended time - 10 minutes

It’s much easier to come up with post topics when you have specific categories in mind. Have a look at other blogs in your industry as well as your favorite blogs. Note the categories that you think will work well for you or you might get creative and come up with your own ideas. Although I already have a blog, I went through this exercise and decided on the following existing or new categories for my next batch of posts:

Tutorials - not surprisingly, this is what drives this site and our business, but we need to mix it up a bit, otherwise the ideas would soon dry up and tutorials tend to be very matter-of-fact. Creating other categories allow us to show-off our personality a bit more.

Weekend Projects - this is a new idea that strictly speaking is still a tutorial, but I’ve given it a different classification because it helps sprout new post ideas.

Glossary - our Joomla Glossary is an existing category, but it could use more content and these posts are good because they are short and easy to produce.

Contests - again this is an existing category, but it is new and as we got good feedback from the first contest, I’d like to run more.

Extension / service reviews - this category is great win/win/win. Readers win because they learn something new about their topic of interest. Assuming you write something positive, the supplier of the product/service wins because they receive free exposure. And you win, because you establish or improve a relationship with someone within your industry who may go on to recommend you.

Website Reviews - this is a new idea. I plan to approach people via our forum and ask them for permission to review their website. This same approach could be used to interview your customers to see how they have used your product or service.

So go ahead and brainstorm to choose six broad categories for your blog. You could create dozens of categories. But one of the goals of this project is to establish a formula that you can easily replicate, so you keep your blog going strong for years to come. You see, once you establish a format for a particular category, you can replicate this formula for subsequent articles to save you time. For example, you might choose to interview some of your customers. Once you’ve written a few interview posts, you’ll discover what works best and you can replicate that to make your job easier in the future.

Looking for more category ideas? Lesson 1 of our Email Marketing series in Joomla Pro provides 20 ideas.

Step 2 - Five by Six

Recommend time - 30 minutes

How often should you publish a blog post? This depends on your goal for your blog and your available time. If you’re writing a blog to build the size of your website and you’re in a competitive market, you might produce 10 posts a day! For most people that’s impractical, although if you have a team, it’s certainly feasible. One a day would be great. But if you’re reading this, there is a good chance that you haven’t ever started a blog, or your current one has stalled. So let’s get practical and suggest - for the moment at least - that one post a fortnight is feasible. A monthly post is inadequate as that means you’re only communicating 12 times a year. A fortnightly schedule helps to raise you above the noise of the millions of messages that your audience receives and so you remain in the front of their minds. That means your goal for 2013 is to publish 26 blog posts.

To do this, add five blog post ideas to each of your six categories. That gives you 30 topics - 26 plus 4 spare. You might need the spare ones just in case something changes and you can’t go ahead with one of the others.

To prove this works, I have listed many of my next 30 posts below. There are some things I can’t reveal at time of writing as it requires agreement with potential new connections, but I will revisit this post and link to the appropriate pages as they appear. I also plan to publish more frequently than every fortnight. As you’ll see, the idea in this step is simply to come up with the topics - not the content. Perhaps these ideas will inspire your own brainstorming session.

Tutorials

  1. How to setup search results in Google Analytics
  2. How to force a download instead of the file opening in the browser
  3. How to create an image map
  4. How to use jBar
  5. How to setup an alternative captcha

Weekend exercises

  1. Kickstart your blog (that’s this post)
  2. Fix up your SEO (meta description, 404s)
  3. Kickstart Your Email Marketing
  4. Add social media marketing to your Joomla site
  5. Write an FAQ page (or About page or how to find us page)

Glossary articles

  1. ZIP
  2. SEO
  3. SEF
  4. Frontend
  5. Administrator

Contests
Sorry - can’t reveal these yet

Extension/service reviews

  1. Incapsula
  2. Admincredible
  3. Joomla Security
  4. CDN for Joomla
  5. Widgetkit

Website Reviews
Ask five customers for permission to review their website

Step 3 - Write Outline for Two Posts

Recommended time - 20 minutes

The hardest part with any writing is getting started. Avoid procrastinating by choosing the two easiest topics on your list and brainstorming every point that you think might be of interest. If you happen to end up with a lot of ideas, it may make sense to break the article into two or more posts.

Just like the previous step, you’re not too concerned about the detail at this stage. Just list the main points. For example, one of my proposed posts above is a review of an extension called Widgetkit. My outline might be:

  • Intro - what is it, why you would use it
  • Main features
  • Example 1
  • Example 2
  • My experience - what was good/bad
  • Conclusion - final thoughts, rating out of ten

So keep it brief, but if you do think of some more detail and you’re worried you might forget it later, make a note of it in brackets. Still not sure where to start? Blog posts don’t need to be long. A great initial goal is to aim for three facts.

Step 4 - Write First Post

Recommended time - 1 Hour

If you’ve gone through the above steps, this final task will flow naturally. Look at the outlines for the two articles and choose the easiest one. Getting started is the hardest and even seasoned writers often write the introduction last. So if you’re stuck, try this approach:

  1. Skip the introduction
  2. Take the first point from your outline and expand it to three sentences
  3. Repeat step two for each point
  4. Write the conclusion
  5. Add one or two images
  6. Write the introduction
  7. Add a headline (title)

Blogs should include a comments section. So finish each post by inviting readers to comment.

Yes you really can write a post in one hour. Don’t overthink it. You know more about your topic than your audience so just go ahead and share that knowledge!

You’ve now written your first post and you have an outline for the second one. Hey - you’re on a roll! Why not go ahead and write the next one now? And then write the third one in a fortnight. That way you’re always two weeks ahead of schedule.

Don’t leave it another year to start your blog! It’s easy, effective and many find it addictive. You don’t have to be a brilliant writer (I’m not!), but ask a friend to check your spelling and grammar if that’s a weakness.

Ask your questions or share your blogging experience below in the comments.

Want to know how to create an awesome blog with Joomla? It’s all revealed in our Joomla Pro course. 

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Comments 9

Marcus Thomas on Thursday, 27 December 2012 11:02

Richard,

Great idea. As a complete newbie there was an some enthusiastic activity back in November, but I have let it slip all through December, so this gives me the momentum to get back into it - so well done.

Marcus

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Richard, Great idea. As a complete newbie there was an some enthusiastic activity back in November, but I have let it slip all through December, so this gives me the momentum to get back into it - so well done. Marcus
Mike Martin on Friday, 28 December 2012 20:11

Hi Richard
What a great blogging idea, I started a blog but fell at the first hurdle, what should I blog about, this blog helps, thanks.

Clearly, you have the benefit of a blogging audience through your main website, buildajoomlawebsite.com, but how best can someone starting out build up an audience, how do you circulate a blog. Any advise on this would help me a lot.

Have a happy new year and by the way, how are the fish, have you still got 17 and what are they.

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Hi Richard What a great blogging idea, I started a blog but fell at the first hurdle, what should I blog about, this blog helps, thanks. Clearly, you have the benefit of a blogging audience through your main website, buildajoomlawebsite.com, but how best can someone starting out build up an audience, how do you circulate a blog. Any advise on this would help me a lot. Have a happy new year and by the way, how are the fish, have you still got 17 and what are they.
Richard Pearce on Saturday, 29 December 2012 07:31

I have African Chiclids. This year wasn't so kind to them so numbers have dwindled.

There are no short answers to your other questions. This was written with the thinking that you already have an audience. But in the future, I might create a broader course on this topic. Partnerships are an excellent start. Are there other blogs in your industry where you can submit guest posts?

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I have African Chiclids. This year wasn't so kind to them so numbers have dwindled. There are no short answers to your other questions. This was written with the thinking that you already have an audience. But in the future, I might create a broader course on this topic. Partnerships are an excellent start. Are there other blogs in your industry where you can submit guest posts?
Mike Martin on Saturday, 29 December 2012 09:34

Richard
Thanks, looking forward to the next installment.

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Richard Thanks, looking forward to the next installment.
Guest - Geoff Ashton on Saturday, 19 January 2013 22:01

Thanks for that detailed action plan. As someone new to blogging, this should really help to get me organised. I'm trying to learn joomla so I can do CMS on my professionally designed (and paid for!) website, but it's proving somewhat of a challenge! As far as blogging goes, my main issue at the moment is that I can't get it to email me whenever someone posts a comment.

0
Thanks for that detailed action plan. As someone new to blogging, this should really help to get me organised. I'm trying to learn joomla so I can do CMS on my professionally designed (and paid for!) website, but it's proving somewhat of a challenge! As far as blogging goes, my main issue at the moment is that I can't get it to email me whenever someone posts a comment.
Richard Pearce on Sunday, 20 January 2013 08:07

If you're not receiving any email notifications, such as when someone registers on your site, then your email settings in Global Configuration are wrong. But if it's just comments, ask the extension developer for advice. We use EasyBlog for this blog and it works well. The same folks who make this also have a Comments extension called Komento that works with native Joomla articles.

0
If you're not receiving any email notifications, such as when someone registers on your site, then your email settings in Global Configuration are wrong. But if it's just comments, ask the extension developer for advice. We use EasyBlog for this blog and it works well. The same folks who make this also have a Comments extension called Komento that works with native Joomla articles.
Tristan Montano on Sunday, 17 March 2013 09:21

Hi, I tried to download your book, but it said invalid email address. My address is valid. what's up with that? thanks, Gary

Also, your capcha is outrageously challenging and frustrating. whoever invented these should be shot.

0
Hi, I tried to download your book, but it said invalid email address. My address is valid. what's up with that? thanks, Gary Also, your capcha is outrageously challenging and frustrating. whoever invented these should be shot.
Richard Pearce on Monday, 18 March 2013 16:09

Shoot us an email via our contact form and we'll get you sorted.

0
Shoot us an email via our contact form and we'll get you sorted.
Frank Ugochukwu on Monday, 09 September 2013 17:05

I like how you have presented this. Getting organised is definitely the first step to blogging more.
Thanks for the awesome post.


Also , I agree with tristan, the captcha is a bit difficult. I was overjoyed when it finally stopped coming after I signed up.

0
I like how you have presented this. Getting organised is definitely the first step to blogging more. Thanks for the awesome post. Also , I agree with tristan, the captcha is a bit difficult. I was overjoyed when it finally stopped coming after I signed up.

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