Blog content: techniques to generate
The most valuable asset of any blog is content. Who will argue? Every blogger realizes this fact. And every blogger thinks hard - how to generate much of this asset that will help to gain extra visibility for his online property?
There are two ways to go:
1. Fast, easy and inefficient
2. Hard, long and rewarding (unfortunately, not always the case)
Let’s start with option one: fast, easy and inefficient. What do I mean here?
Yes, it is duplicate content and link posts (when you just find some worthy news and post it on your blog with the link to the source). Both post types are fast and easy to generate using some news aggregator, top websites in your niche and copy/ paste functions of your mouse. One more advantage of these posts is they help to grow your website and look it more established.
Disadvantages? Due to the duplicate nature of the content you are not likely to do well in the search engines. When it comes to the news, even if you reword it properly the chances that you will beat the top news websites in your niche are scarce.
Let’s go to the second option: hard, long and rewarding (unfortunately, not always the case).
Here I talk about so-called ‘unique posts and articles’. They are not unique. They are just standard articles that you can find plenty on the Internet (including the one you read at the moment – just Google for ‘blog content generation’ and you will get thousands of similar ‘unique posts’). What are their ‘uniqueness’ and value? It is the fact that the blogger adds some comments and information based on his own experience.
How to write ‘unique’ posts? Yes, you have to write them from ground relying on your research, experience and general knowledge (your general knowledge will expire shortly and if you would like to keep posting frequently you will need new angles, aspects and research results. Or – post types discussed at the top).
What are your options for inspiration and research (in addition to the search engines) to generate ‘good’ posts? Well, they differ from industry to industry. The ones that I use:
- a news aggregator (in my case – bloglines.com)
- technorati.com and other popular blog search engines
- del.icio.us and other social bookmarking websites (see the list of 33 services posted here)
- top industry websites – RSS feeds or e-mail newsletters
- top industry forums – unlimited source of wisdom and experience
- industry printed magazines
- top industry sources in other languages
- wikipedia.org
- trackengine.com/ webwatcher.com – the services alert you when there are changes on the pages you add to your account. Great if you keep an eye on the websites that do not send out e-mail newsletters or generate RSS feeds. But recently I seldom use them
- eBay.com
Summary: It is up to every blogger which way to choose. Personally, I am in favor of a mixed approach.
I have tested both ways and know for sure that sometimes you can get a considerable amount of traffic by using duplicate content and news (I call it ‘noise’ and still think it is a valuable part of my websites if some unbiased comments are added). It is also a good idea to rotate different types of blog posts, post categories not to bore your readers.
[tags]blogs, content generation, news aggregator, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]
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