NB: This is the 17th installment in The Inspired Solo’s Build a Better Business Blog in One Month series. Designed to help solo lawyers and other professionals boost their blog’s performance, the series consists of a daily lecture and task (or tasks) that focus on one “blog improvement project” at a time. Each post in the series is tagged with “[BBBB1]“. You can start the program at any time. Catch up with other BBBB1 posts here.
Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time
Day 17: Lecture
Today’s topic is all about blog fodder: the raw material we use to create those brilliant blog posts. We’ll explore why it’s important to have a resource file for future posts, how to collate and store all that information, and how to use those ideas later as creative prompts.
Blog Fodder: Where Does It Come From?
Probably the biggest question or pushback I get from nonbloggers (besides the “I don’t have time to blog!” complaint) is “Where on earth do you come up with ideas for all those posts?”
It’s sort of amusing to someone who’s been blogging awhile, because we all know the truth: there’s no excuse for a blogger to ever run out of blogging ideas! Sure we may struggle with the right way to frame a particular topic, or have difficulty expressing ideas in just the right way, but the basic ideas themselves — well, they’re everywhere. That’s what this topic is all about.
I call it “blog fodder” — the raw material we use to create blog posts. Fodder is the seed of the idea of the post — not your theme, not your title, not your subject, not even your main point. It’s just the starting point — the page that makes you go “hmm, that’s interesting” — the quote that starts the gears whirring in your brain.
The biggest problem with blog fodder is not “where do I find it?” but “how on earth do I collect and store all of that in a way that makes sense and that I can actually work with?!”
Storing and Tagging Blog Fodder For Future Use
There are probably as many methods for storing and working with blog fodder as there are bloggers. Some paper addicts I know actually create a blog book — a physical printed notebook or binder with notes for future posts, lists of topics, printouts from other blog posts on other sites that they want to comment on later, an editorial calendar.
If the printed page holds more appeal for you, then by all means, choose this method. Select an easy-to-open three-ring binder, and create sections — one for ideas, one for your editorial blog calendar, and one for drafts in progress. Keep fresh paper in the binder so you can add to it when the mood strikes. Then, when you see a blog post, news item, or other website page that triggers your creative juices, print it out and place it in the binder.
I prefer the digital approach myself, and here your options are almost endless. I’ve already written about two tools I have a lot of experience with — Rusty Budget and Evernote. Frankly, I’ve started relying more and more on Evernote, and less on Rusty Budget, as Evernote will also collect URLs, and has a handy one-click button that transfers selected text to the Evernote interface, where I can then manipulate it to my heart’s desire with tags, formatting, and additional notes or text.
You can also use the ubiquitous and elegantly simple text document. Plain text is really quite an amazing tool for bloggers, when you stop to think about it. The format strips away all codes that are potentially incompatible with your blogging software, and the resulting file takes up very little space on your hard drive. I compose all my blog posts in text files these days, which is also great because I have an as-I-go real-time archive of all my blog posts. And of course, every Mac and PC has a text editor built in — TextEdit for Macs, Notepad for PCs.
There are all kinds of special editors and notetaking software you could also use: One Note, Notebook, Scrivener, MarsEdit … they’re definitely worth a try. But to keep it simple, all things considered, I highly encourage you to give Evernote a try. It’s free, it syncs up both with the cloud and with other computers on which your account is set up and the software installed, and it’s quite robust. The tagging feature lets you keep all your blog fodder in one notebook, and your tags can sort things out by your blog categories, as well as any other criteria you wish to add.
Task for Day 17: Hunt For Blog Fodder, and Store It Well
Today, we’re going to be squirrels hunting for nuts, only our nuts are the individual little pieces of blog fodder that will serve as the creative genesis of future blog posts. Select one of the methods above — or create your own, or try something else (do share with us in the comments, though!) — and sort all your “nuts” accordingly. Aim for at least 20 pieces of blog fodder to give yourself a variety to choose from — sometimes, the “muse” doesn’t really gel with a particular topic, and you just really want to write about something else, so it’s good to have choices.
