Blogger's Block - David Withington

WHAT DO YOU WRITE ABOUT
When There’s Nothing to Write About?

So what exactly can you write about… when there’s nothing to write about?

When you have Blogger’s Block and it won’t go away.

You can…

Repurpose Something

What do you mean by that, David?

Let me explain.

Last week, I was struck with a bout of perfectionism.

I knew what I wanted to write about, and I’d begun to write the post.

But it was nowhere near complete.

It wasn’t perfectly right.

Perfectionism at its worst.

So what did I do?

Instead, I took an email which I’d written many months previously, and I re-wrote it as a blog post.

Ooh! Are you allowed to do that, David?

Yup! You certainly are.

If you want to have a read, it’s over here on my How To Cruise website (a site for people who have never been on a cruise but want to find out about cruising).

You see…

There’s a page on that website where visitors can subscribe – and they’ll receive the free weekly “cruise chat” email.

I’ve written 164 of these emails to date.

So I carefully chose one of them, changed it around to become more like a blog post, added a picture or two and posted it on the blog.

And that, my friend, is repurposing: it’s taking one piece of content and recreating it into another piece of content.

So next time you’re wondering what to write for your blog, why not check out your…

Emails
YouTube videos
Podcasts

You might be surprised what you can use, and what great content it’ll produce.

Something to write about — What happened to you today?

Everyday Events

What happened to you today?

People love real life stories.

So if you can tell them about when you got the shock of your life that morning when you opened the door to bring in the milk, only to discover a bluetit frozen by its beak to the top of the bottle. And how you almost froze to death trying to rescue the poor bird.

But don’t just tell them a story.

Relate it to your topic.

“Go on, David. Give us an example!” I hear you say.

OK. Let’s pretend we’re writing for my How To Cruise website.

We could say something like this…

“Cruising is the perfect way to get away from all that. Imagine two weeks in the Caribbean with absolutely no ice – except for those welcome ice-cubes bobbing around the top of your chilled cocktail. A cruise is the perfect way to relax and soak up the sun whilst all your neighbours are scraping the frost from their cars each morning.”

OK. So you might not have your milk delivered to the doorstep. And you’re unlikely to get snow in September.

But I bet something interesting happens that’s worth talking about at least once a week.

Coffee is inspiring
[photo credit: Postcode Coffee House, Wigan]

Take a Friend out for Coffee

Some of my most popular blog posts have been the result of conversations with friends.

For example…

Let’s suppose you’re chatting over coffee with someone who’s asked you for some advice, and you have the solutions they need…

Hey, you might have the perfect blog post right there!

Why?

Because if one person has that problem, it could be that many others are searching for answers on Google.

So if you create the solution in your blog post and it becomes popular, it could well appear on page 1 of Google.

SEO at its finest.

Review Something You’ve Just Bought

I had to wait many weeks for OnePlus to release their new OnePlus 5 phone.

So when I finally got my hands on it, I decided to create a review.

Here’s what I did…

First of all, I created a short video and uploaded it to YouTube.

Then I wrote a blog post, and I embedded the video into the post.

I tweeted about the review (with a link to the blog post)…

The co-founder of OnePlus read the tweet and retweeted it to his 103,000 followers.

As a result, 342 people hopped over to see my blog post.

Some of those people clicked on my refer-a-friend link. And a couple of those got some free accessories when they bought their OnePlus 5 phone… and as a result, I got some points towards free accessories too.

All because I reviewed something I’d bought. Happy days!

Twitter Post OnePlus — From Twitter, people went over to my blog

Over To You

Hopefully, you’ve never suffered from Blogger’s Block.

But if you have, and you found a great way to overcome it, it’d be great if you could share a bit about that in the comments box below.

In the meantime…