How to blog

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What do I do with my new blog? How do I write and manage this? Take a look here.

Blogging 101 and Writing 101 Are Back!

How to Create a list of Blogging and Article Topics Easily

First, you want to make a list of subjects. These will be nouns or concepts which will form the foundation of your article writing topic list. I have posed four different categories to help both organize topics and to stimulate the subject list making process. By asking the questions, “what am I familiar with?’, “what things interest me or do I want to learn about?”, “what are things I am currently learning about?”, “what are popular or hot subjects online right now?” you will create a list of subjects for topics. See examples below of some ideas I came up with.

1. Things I am familiar with such as:

Software Evaluation
Boy Scouts of America
Hiking
Backpacking
Writing outlines
Sales
Automobile Industry
Auto Repair/Maintinance
Japan
Bible/God
Bit Torrent
Sales Training
Personal Development
Photography
12 Step Recovery Programs
Geocaching
Paper or Card Models
RC Airplanes and Helicopters (Park Model Electrics and Indoor Micro’s)

2. Things of interest or want to learn about, such as:

Conflict Resolution
Living History
Local Activities
Scroll saw
Business for Teenagers
Public Speaking
Facebook
Building Boats
Motor Boats
Water Skiing
Snow Skiing
Blogs
Ancestry
Wood Working
Canoe/Kayak
Graphic Design
Ghost Towns
Gold Mining
Panning for Gold
Metal Detectors

3. Things I need to learn about or are in process of learning about, such as:

How to write articles
Topic selection for articles
Off-line Blogging
Saving Money
Home Repair
Graphic Design
How to play chess
Geo Caching
Kiva – Micro-Loans
Get out of Debt
Find and use Portable apps
Photoshop
Preppers
SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan)
TEOTHWAWKI
Survival Planning
Building a Bug-Out-Bag

4. Write about popular subjects.

The key here is to find out what those are. There are several ways to do so, here are some:

Google Zeitgeist takes a snapshot of what people are searching for on Google
Feed Blitz Email has many ideas
Makeuseof.com email has many interesting current and popular websites that might help as well
Local Chamber of Commerce events can provide current ideas
E-How lists most popular searched articles
Google Hot Trends tracks top searches
E-zine.com has many articles to expand your knowledge base
Twitscoop allows you to track hot search words on Twitter

5. How to Formulate your article

a. First of all, generate your list of article topics similar to above steps.
b. Break these down into aspects of the subject
c. You can make a list of questions concerning each subject
d. Make a list of how to’s for each subject
e. By the time you are done, you should have 10-30 different questions or aspects of each subject
f. Each question or aspect can be a paragraph o maybe even a whole article
g. Keeping the focus narrow will also keep the articles short and concise which will make them more readable as well.

If you can generate 30 topics and then 10 questions or aspects of each of them, you will have created a list of 300 possible article topics At 3 articles per week, you now have almost two years of article topics. Here are examples from my own process. Take “home repair” as a subject. Now I break it down and create questions about it.

What are safety procedures for home repair?

What are the basic tools needed for home repair?

How to Basic Lawncare?

How to sharpen a lawnmower?

When and how do you maintain a water heater?

How do I prepare for winter?

How to repair drywall

How do I deal with wasps?

…And the list goes on. This is one subject and I still have many subjects to go yet.

Now all you have to do if figure out how to carve out the writing time and discipline yourself to get them done. The time management and how to prioritize your time to publish and write articles, whether to make money online, generate a larger following and readership or just express your thoughts in a public forum is a subject for another post.

Good luck and good writing.

Randy May

Technorati : Earn money online, article topics, online publishing
Del.icio.us : Earn money online, article topics, online publishing
Flickr : Earn money online, article topics, online publishing
Zooomr : Earn money online, article topics, online publishing

Links and Info on Writing and BLOGGING

This mostly a list of links that I want to explorer in my learning to blog. I thought I would publish it in case it helped anyone else as well.

 

Have a great day!

 

http://feeds.copyblogger.com/Copyblogger

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http://www.copyblogger.com/saturday-night-link-fever/

http://www.copyblogger.com/the-structure-of-persuasive-content/

http://www.copyblogger.com/the-5-immutable-laws-of-persuasive-blogging/ /

http://www.copyblogger.com/copywriting-success/

http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-be-a-persuasive-conversational-blogger/

http://www.copyblogger.com/find-blog-post-images/

http://www.copyblogger.com/no-links/

http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-stop-being-invisible/

http://www.copyblogger.com/increase-blog-subscribers/

http://www.copyblogger.com/the-two-most-important-words-in-blogging/

http://www.copyblogger.com/cool-stuff-for-new-bloggers/

http://www.copyblogger.com/blogging-writing-guide/

http://www.copyblogger.com/blogging-high-school/

http://www.copyblogger.com/copywriting-101/

http://www.copyblogger.com/seo-copywriting/

http://www.copyblogger.com/landing-pages/

http://www.copyblogger.com/keyword-research/

http://www.copyblogger.com/copywriting-course-reviews/

http://www.copyblogger.com/grammar-writing-mistakes/

http://www.copyblogger.com/5-simple-ways-to-open-your-blog-post-with-a-bang/