Keeping your Blog Alive When You’re Tired of Writing

This article will provide inspirations you can apply when you’re not in the mood for writing a post…

… for quite a long time. I’m sure you have often heard that regular content updates is one of the factors to keep your blog visible when people are looking. This is the one I’m also pushing. However, there were experiences where having no ideas to write on wasn’t the only obstacle prevented me from posting, but also when I had the idea but it made me vomit everytime I saw my Windows Live Writer’s screen. I just didn’t feel like composing words, structuring paragraphs and browsing for relevant images like I always do.

That wouldn’t be a big matter if it occured only for 1-2 days. But how if it lasts for weeks? While nothing is better than start posting immediately, here are second best alternatives I found to maintain your blog’s heart rate and keep it alive during the times of your mood’s recession.

Reorganizing tags

If you agree on how tags can be very useful to help readers find your archived content easier, then you’ll want to make them more organized. Read on the tips to better tags organization and you’ll get new readers find they navigate your blog comfortably and it won’t make them miss any of your latest posts.

Throwing away unnecessary widgets and codes

Have you ever heard of a stress relief method where people smash and bash used PCs, monitors, used cars, etc with sledgehammers to destroy them? I once read it on a local newspaper and it came to my thought that people are relieved when they’re able to get rid of junks in their life. Those junks were represented by those old stuffs, and stress was lessened when they were whacking them to pieces.

Although I’m sure that each of you guys have at least one monitor, but I’m more inclined to get rid of junks related to your blog.

• Starting with the header and footer part, there are quite a lot of code elimination to make your load time more efficient.
• If you display a clock widget, it will only make your readers wait longer for things they can get from the windows taskbar. This also goes for tools on your blog that don’t do any good for your readers or the readers have already had themselves.
• Auto-played songs or voices are mostly annoying. Especially if there’s no way to turn them off or they play for a long duration. Your readers may want to remember your blog forever… to never visit again
• Slimming down your blogroll. You may want to balance external and internal links. Long to short, when you have more external links than internal ones, you’re giving away PageRank juice more to other sites than your own. One of the place where this usually happens is the blogroll. Another cause is when I checked HomeBiz Resource using this bad neighborhood checker. I found there are invisible links on my front page leading to pharmacy and viagra websites. They are no doubt huge leaks that will make my PR sink faster than Titanic!

bad-neighborhood.com checking result

the links are invisible on the main page, but all is naked under “View | Source”

• Too many third party widgets, ad networks can kill your load time while not all of them perform well for your blog. Spend your time selcting which one works best for your blog and kick out the ones don’t.
• If you think you should install all the “Must Have Plugins” out there, then you should install none at all. The right time to install those plugins is when you need one. For example, a threaded comment plugin won’t be needed until there are enough people commenting on your article. Unnecessary plugs will increase your loading time while adding no value to your blog.

Most of those actions will lead to a faster load time and some will create extra space on your blog which pleases most readers eye. Do some liposuctions on your blog and you (and your readers) will be happy with a better performing blog.

Checking your blog for dead-links

Jim from Blogging StartUp views dead links as a violation against the Bible since they misdirect people who trust you and your blog. While I believe that none of you intentionally misguide your readers, it won’t hurt anyone to check for dead links on your blog and fix it. Keep your readers’ trust!

We should thank W-Shadow for providing us with this automatic broken link checker plugin for WordPress. And you may also want to check outgoing links using bad neighborhood checker as I did above in case someone breaks into your code and inject spam links.

Increase relationship with other bloggers

Sometimes meeting new people and hear what they want to say can refresh our minds since we’re no longer focus on what bores us. Find new blogger friends and start sending them email. The relationship can be long lasting and you’ll be happy in time for having a handful of kind blogger friends. Why don’t you try it on me? Feel free to drop me a line, introduce yourself at louis[at]bukiki.com

Some of the good places to find new blogger friends is blogcatalog and mybloglog. Microblogging tools like plurk works also while comment sections on blogs can be a good list of active bloggers.

Promote your old posts

Maybe your posts have been stumbled, dugg or sphunn, but everyday there are new social bookmarking sites coming up. Even though not all of them fit well with your blog’s characteristic, joining a new site in its early phase will make those who joined later tend to befriend you. It doesn’t stop there. They will sometimes prop, thumb up, engage, or fire up anything you submit.

You can also mail your new blogger friends you know they haven’t read one of your older posts. Ask their opinion and let them know they can stumble or digg it if they like it. And don’t forget, you can also do the same thing to this article

Joining contests

While the information content in posting a blog contest is minimal, it’s still considered as an update by search engine bots. And there usually aren’t a lot of typing involved, just a copy and paste. If you’re lucky enough, you can get from cash to premium memberships you don’t need to pay at all.

Is that it?

Not really. There are still other things to do, i.e. monetizing your blog better, maintaining relationship with your readers and more. Mr Javo posted about a related issue on useful things to do when you have nothing to post.

So what is the different between tired of writing and having no idea to post? As stated above, tired of writing is when there’s nothing in your mind but draft ideas. You don’t have the passion and willing to compose a post, edit and publish it.

Have you ever affected by a sudden mood drop in writing a post? What did you do to keep your blog alive?

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