I am in the middle of designing a workshop/webinar to help a group of people with their blogging and would love your input. What do you think is the most challenging issue when coming up with engaging blogs to attract the attention of our chosen audience? I have my ideas but would love to know what you think.
For some of us the words just flow and inspiring blogs can be churned out by the dozen without so much as a bead of sweat breaking out on our brow. However for some of us, it is more like trying to give birth to a breach baby as it clings desperately to the womb of our imagination refusing to come out into the glaring light of the public eye. The process can be much more painful and traumatic.
Creating a great blog is actually quite a challenge. There are so many components that we can/should/could consider.
Catchy titles that capture people’s attention is often the hardest – if you can’t get the punters in through the door then it doesn’t matter how great your offerings are.
Conjuring up great content that is engaging and interesting to read can be the next hurdle. Once you have got people’s attention you need to keep it long enough to get your message across.
Then of course, there is the issue of how do we invite people to engage? Ask them questions? Provide thought provoking concepts that shake their belief system? The most effective is often to be outrageously controversial but that does bring about consequences which may or may not be easy to bear.
Optimising content for search engines requires a certain geekiness – not everyone’s cup of tea of course.
Social media integration – making it easy to share absolutely vital in this age of crowd sourcing and pertinent public opinion.
Predicting reactions, creating time to react and interact with your audience can be off-putting.
Finding our writing styles, our unique tone of voice and nurturing authenticity – do we recognise ourselves in the words we string together?
Taking those first tentative steps when we have yet to ever stick our heads above the parapet and let the world know that we actually exist. It can make the best of us quake in our boots as the critical public scrutinise and judge.
Idea generation – is this the biggest stumbling block? Or is sticking to just one idea of many the stickiest issue?
How much information should we share anyway?
How long is too long? Is there any point to doing short blogs?
If we are prevaricating then there must be thoughts and emotions hindering our progress into the blogging world – but are we all really that aware of what they may be?
What do you find the most challenging about writing blogs and why? What do you think prevents others from taking the plunge with their digital quill and make those pixels weave insightful tales?