Content Development Tips: Four Blog Posting Guidelines

Here are some posting principles which I follow when I develop content for my niche blogs:

• Alternate Posting. This simply refers to posting on alternate days for each blog and not on a daily basis. This should be initiated after your niche blogs are set up, indexed and already receiving search traffic. This spreads out the workload and keeps your productivity level high. You don’t want to abandon the niche blogs early on because writing for them has become a chore.
• Future Posting. This is a rather useful technique for those of you who prefer to work in concentrated spurts or have unpredictable timetables. This involves writing up several posts at one go and then editing the post time stamp so that they will be published at a future date. Note that this method is not good for time-sensitive material but rather general informational/opinion-based articles on the niche topic.
• Weekly Linkbait. It is important to write at least one detailed and extensive article every week. These type of articles attract the most incoming links and referral traffic. Write these types of articles little by little over several days or slowly over the weekend, because they can be too difficult to finish in just one sitting.

Seven Content Types for Niche Blogs: Post Options to Consider

Here are seven types of content you can create for all your niche blogs. I’ve included a brief introduction to their methodology and have also listed the approximate amount of time each content type will require, although this will vary from person to person.

Mixing up different content types will give you flexibility during the content creation process and allows you to prioritize effectively. For example, when you’re writing a linkbait article for a specific blog, use a simple video post for another blog to save time and energy.

1. Lazy News Blogging. This is quite an art form and involves timely posting about breaking news or developments in your niche topic while adding a brief personal opinion, which usually comes in the form of one or two paragraphs.

   Method: Use social news aggregators or meme trackers to source for the freshest news on any topic. Techmeme, Megite and PopURL.com are the three websites that I recommend and you can easily pull a story out from these sites for a blog post.

   Time needed: 10-15 minutes

   
   
   

2. Speedlinking or Link Posts. This is the one of the quickest ways to drum up a blog post. Depending on how you write them, they can be seen as a networking tool and a way to make your blog seem more relevant to the niche.

   Method: Grab a social bookmarking account from a website like del.icio.us and set up an online feed reader account with a list of the relevant blogs in your niche. Track your feeds daily and when you come across a link-worthy article, bookmark and tag it.

   Do the same for sites you come across while researching online. Whenever you need a speedlink post, pull up all the links under the specific tag and publish them. Remember to editorialize the links by adding your own thoughts to them.

   Time needed: 5-10 minutes.

   
   
   

3. Video and Image posts. Visit Flickr, StumbleUpon or YouTube and type in your keyword. Grab an image/video and then write one or two keyword-rich lines about it. Publish and you’re done.

   Time needed: 5 minutes or less.

   
   
   

4. Roundup Posts. A roundup post is simply a post that includes links to note-worthy articles on your blog within a specific time frame. This can be published on a weekly basis if you write two or more posts every day.

   If you only write one post a day or every alternate days, publish the roundup post either bi-weekly or on a monthly basis. Here’s an article on how to create your own roundup posts.

   Time needed: 10 minutes

   
   
   

5. Article Republishing. This involves using relevant articles from free article directories. Visit a website like Ezine Articles and do a keyword search. After which grab the entire article and publish it on your site. I recommend only using free articles if you are going the smaller and multiple niche blogs route.

   I don’t really use free articles because it’s rather easy to come up with a similar unique article in a few minutes. The high republish rates for some articles means that there are already several other websites already ranking for the same specific key phrase you are targeting.

   Time needed: 10 minutes

   
   
   

6. Linkbaits. Linkbaits are simply detailed and original articles that are likely to attract from links and traffic from other websites. Depending on your ability and the type of linkbait, they can take several hours to create.

   However, the overall structure of a successful linkbait is no mystery when you carefully examine some social websites. The Del.icio.us Popular pages can easily allow you to see what types of articles attract the most attention.

   Time needed: Indefinite

   
   
   

7. Opinion posts. These are usually the easiest to write because you don’t need to perform much research online. Drawing upon your personal experiences will let your audience feel that they know you better as well, which is important for visitor loyalty. Pick a specific topic and share your experiences or thoughts about it. These posts usually do not require too much energy to write.

Time needed: 10 minutes to 2 hours.

Web-based Content Development Tools/Resources for Niche Bloggers

In my previous post on creating your niche blogging plan, I’ve mentioned that you could either create multiple smaller blogs for search traffic or several medium-sized blogs, each with a strong audience base.

However both niche masterplans share a common ground in terms of content development and these web-based resources can be very helpful regardless of the type of niche blog you are creating.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a passive way of doing topic research as it only requires you to set up alerts for specific phrases or words that relate to your niche. Depending on your settings, you’ll get notifications on the topic sent to your email inbox either daily or weekly.

This is useful when combined with alternate posting or when you really don’t have the time to source for new information. To get more out of Google Alerts, I recommend setting up alerts for variations of relevant keyword phrases instead of just a single keyword.

Personalized Start Pages

I love using personalized start pages like Netvibes because you can aggregate a lot of informational content within a single page.

Here is what I normally do: Set up a Youtube and Flickr column according to specific keyword tags and include feeds from all the blogs in the niche I follow as well feeds from the usual news agencies. I will also include a customized search function for podcasts and blogs.

A To-do list for the specific niche blogs will also be helpful and I’ll then set the start page as my homepage or keep it open on a single tab in Firefox. Keeping everything you need within a single page can be a huge time-saver when you need to come up with a blog post for any topic.

News Aggregators & Blog Search Engines

Social news aggregators like TailRank, Megite and Techmeme are repositories of large amounts of news and are usually reliable indicators of buzz. Social voting platforms like Netscape, Digg and Reddit can also provide you with a broad spectrum of hot and interesting topics.

If you are looking to reference other blogs, blog search engines like Google Blog Search or Technorati can be useful. I do prefer using Google Blog Search because its very responsive and you can filter news according to the specific time frame.

For instance, if I’m writing an article on a specific celebrity I can choose to browse through the freshest blog posts, published in the last hour or more. This allows one to stay relevant and up to date on any topic as well.

Part II of Content Development Tactics for Niche Blogs

Hopefully, this article has offered some useful tips for some of you out there who are gradually becoming weary of creating content for your niche blogs. Perhaps these tactics and tools will make things easier for you.

In the next article I will examine the other side of the content creation process or more precisely, the various methods to get other people to create content for your blog.

This is a natural procession from developing content on your own and is a good way to sustain your niche blogs while moving on to other profitable online projects and interests.