Comments on: Your readers are great writing inspiration

By: David Airey

David Airey — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:17:38 +0000

Tom, that’s another source of writing inspiration, I agree. I don’t take part in forums as much as I used to, but still find them useful.

By: Tom L

Tom L — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:25:59 +0000

I blog every day and it´s difficult to get fresh ideas for a blog post.Therefore, i go to forums and visit other blogs to get ideas. Having good copywriting on your home business blog will keep you at the top of search engine results for your keywords and help close sales.

By: David Culpepper

David Culpepper — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 00:55:52 +0000

Hi David, very good post. Reader questions and comments are an excellent source of inspiration. And thank you for the link love… always appreciated!

By: JHS

JHS — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:09:20 +0000

I wrote about this topic a few months ago:

http://www.jhsiess.com/2007/01/21/write-stuff-inspirationh/

By: David Airey, graphic designer

David Airey, graphic designer — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:33:22 +0000

Knowing what I know now, my first posts were poor, though at the time I thought they’d be useful for visitors. That’s what I get for starting a blog with no knowledge of what they were. Still, I’m learning. You can always re-feature your first articles when your readership expands. I think it’s a good thing to do every now and again. Chris at Blog-Op does a great job of pulling his older, popular posts to the forefront.

If your popular posts are ones that take little thought, don’t think of it as not understanding your audience, think of it as understanding them more than you realise.

By: Michael from Pro Blog Design

Michael from Pro Blog Design — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:38:20 +0000

There are a lot of good questions there, and very hard to know an answer to.

I wrote about 8 articles pre-launch. The awkward thing there is that your first few are going to be read by virtually no-one. Originally, I planned on writing some of my weaker posts there, but another blogger convinced me to do my best, because they would be the very beginnings of my blog. In the end, I went with his way, and I think it worked, though there are still one or two posts which I wish I’d saved until I had a bigger audience to actually read them. (But if I had, would I have ever gotten that audience?)

One point I can definitely agree on is that “some of my most popular posts were ones that took very little thought.” A couple of my posts have taken me by surprise with their popularity, while others that I thought would be my best just weren’t. Perhaps this has something to do with not entirely understanding my audience? (Something I think I’m improving at… slowly)

By: David Airey, graphic designer

David Airey, graphic designer — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:57:18 +0000

Hi Michael, that’s a point worthy of a new post. There are questions such as, if you anticipate a less-frequent posting schedule in the future, would you be better saving your ideas as drafts to promote consistency in the long run? If there’s the worry that your blog appears new, with little content, why not bulk it out before the launch?

By: MDB

MDB — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:50:42 +0000

I think bloggers need to seek inspiration from everywhere. Just taking a simple question as you say can turn into a great post or just looking at a simple thing from a different angle than you usually do can suddenly open your eyes and others.

By: Michael from Pro Blog Design

Michael from Pro Blog Design — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:35:17 +0000

David,

“I’d much rather have quality or quantity. When I started blogging I felt wrongly compelled to churn out a new post every day, without fail. That’s just silly though.”

I think you’re entirely right here, but when your blog is new, I think you have to work harder. By writing an article every day, I am giving my current subscribers a lot of content to read, and I’m hopefully likely to accumulate some more backlinks with the wide variety of articles.

That extra work is needed at the start to pump up your blog, and lose that “new” feeling. It’s not too hard to do when you’re new, because you have loads of ideas.

In the long run though, I agree entirely. I couldn’t keep this up forever, and will no doubt fall back to a less frequent schedule sooner or later. At these times, I also hope to use the same sources of inspiration you have mentioned here. (One other source is forums. It’s the same idea as reading comments and emails; you’re connecting with other people in your niche, and hearing what they’re asking. :) )

By: David Airey, graphic designer

David Airey, graphic designer — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:29:51 +0000

Brian, perhaps you're referring to Vivien (inspirationbit), which is much more likely. Check out #5 in my 5 essential WordPress plugins for the answer. Tara, I reckon those posts that are spurred by reader comments end up being the most popular ones too. It's about what people want to read, that's easier said than done. Simon, I agree. I'd much rather have quality over quantity. When I started blogging I felt the need to churn out a new post every day. That's just silly.