Anyone who’s ever started a blog eventually hits a slump.

If you’ve been there you’ll know what I mean. Suddenly the steady flow of ideas that drove your content production grinds to a halt. Every word has to be dragged out of your brain. And nothing you write seems up to scratch.

So you stop for a bit.

And then “a bit” becomes “a bit longer”.

“A bit longer” becomes “ages” and pretty soon it’s been weeks if not months since your last blog post. Inertia sets in and it seems almost impossible to get going again.

So here are 7 simple ways to get started and beat your blogging slump.

1.     Revisit an existing topic. Pick one of your existing, successful blog topics form a while back and update it with new information and ideas. That’s much easier than starting from scratch and chances are most people won’t have read the original so you'll be introducing them to your best work.

2.     Write a personal story. You might think your blog posts need to be about big, important concepts and full of hard data and facts. But people have been fascinated about personal stories since we started gathering round fires in caves. Business blogs need to deliver valuable content, but often the best way to do that is in the form of a simple, personal story sharing your experience with a topic.

3.     Keep a notebook to write down ideas for blogs. Comedians and writers keep a notebook with them at all times (including by the side of their bed) to capture interesting things they see or think during the day (and night). If you haven’t scribbled a note down within 30 minutes of seeing something interesting it’s a cast-iron certainty you’ll forget it.

4.     Spark off other people’s blogs. Read other blogs or books, listen to podcasts and watch youtube videos from people in your field. I guarantee that every day you’ll see something interesting, funny, controversial, wrong, joy-inducing or anger-making. Use your blog to respond to them, build on what they’ve said, give your own examples, disagree with them. Link to the original and give credit too, of course.

5.     Do something interesting. if you’re struggling to think of something interesting to write about, do something interesting and write about that. If you blog about leadership, take up a leadership role in a volunteer organisation and write about your experiences. If you blog about sales techniques, deliberately test two different techniques against each other and blog about the results.

6.     Do the “Daily Practice”. In James Altucher’s “Choose Yourself” he describes how every day for the last dozen or so years he’s made a list of 10 ideas on a huge variety of topics: it’s his “daily practice” for exercising his “idea muscle” so that when he needs it, he’ll be able to come up with good ideas quickly. I’ve been doing the same for a little while now and it really works. Frankly, most of my ideas are rubbish, but that’s not the point. Every now and then I’ll do “10 ideas for a blog post on superconnectors” or “10 ideas for a blog post on landing pages” and I always now come up with at least 2 or 3 decent suggestions because the practice has improved my idea creation abilities.

7.     Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Voltaire’s quote is very apt here. Many bloggers end up blocked because they set the bar too high. They’re trying to hit the ball out of the park with every blog post and that’s just impossible. As long as you’re writing good stuff that will help people it’s worthy of publishing on your blog. Give yourself permission to do an OK post rather than a stellar one every now and then.

About the Author

Ian Brodie is a marketing strategist, blogger, and author of the Amazon bestseller “Email Persuasion”. To get free access to his very best marketing strategies to win more clients, head over to http://www.ianbrodie.com

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