I regularly get email from people, asking how I manage to write blog posts most days and still keep the ideas and content flowing.  It’s easy to see why, when you consider that a regularly updated blog with useful content is more commercially valuable, than one with fewer, valuable blog posts.

So, here are a few of my tips.  Enjoy!

Don’t SEO every post you write

Most of the posts I write here, are not written with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind.  Yesterday’s post is a prime example.  It breaks just about every SEO rule. It’s too short, doesn’t target keywords or use a title tag or have any headings etc.  However, it was a fun post that made a good point very quickly.  Interestingly, most of the bloggers I know, who publish on a very regular basis, do not optimise everything they write either, such as; Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Danny Brown and Louis Gray.

SEO is important.  Really important.  I optimise a great deal of the content here and as a direct result, I get hundreds of new, targeted readers every day from Google and Co.  However, I can achieve all my SEO goals without the need to fully optimise everything I write.  So, don’t feel you have to optimise everything. You don’t.

Make time for writing blog posts

One of the reasons people find it hard to publish blog posts on a regular basis, is that they just don’t have the time.  It takes time to come up with an idea for a blog post and then to write it in as interesting a way as possible.  So, if you are a poor time manager, it’s going to be tough finding the time required to write regular, good quality blog posts.

Here’s a quick tip, which has given me several hours each day, or over 130 EXTRA DAYS a year, of extra time.

I don’t watch TV!  Yes, as a fan of boxing and football I will watch the big fights / games, but there are no TV shows I must watch.  My mindset regarding TV changed, when an elderly man once told me; “son, when you reach my age you won’t look back on your life and wish you had wasted more time watching TV shows!”  Interestingly, I recently discovered that Seth Godin feels the same way as me about TV.  He put it like this: “I don’t watch TV. At all. There are so many other things I’d rather do in that moment.”

Play with your kids.  Go to the gym.  Take the class.  Spend time relaxing with your friends.  If you want some more time each day, reducing your TV time is one of the less important things to cut out from your schedule.

Give yourself permission to get it wrong

One of the biggest hurdles facing many bloggers, is that they fear publishing a post that isn’t perfect.  In their search for the perfect blog post, they find that it takes them several hours to write a post; instead of 30 minutes or so.  Give yourself permission to write the best posts you can at the time.  Remember that blog posts can be edited and updated, if you later find you missed something important.

Capture your ideas

We all have ideas flow into our mind, but most people fail to capture them.  As a blogger, if I see an interesting article that gives me an idea for a blog post, I save it.  If I get an idea when I’m out walking, I capture it using an audio recorder.  Make it easy to capture the ideas you have and then put some time aside to get these ideas written down.  Flesh them out a bit.  You will be able to tell very quickly if the idea is good enough to turn into a post for your blog.

Learn to deal with critics

Often, when you make a point on your blog about something that is a matter of opinion, your own opinion will be criticised (and rightly so.)  Fear of criticism stops a lot of people from writing about certain subjects that are relevant to their industry / readers or expressing their opinions.  Both of these will limit the volume and (in my opinion) the value of what you publish.

For example, I wrote a post last month about my positive experience with Dell customer service.  I knew at the time that it would attract comments from people, who either strongly agreed or strongly disagreed with me.  If you check out the comments, you will see a number of really pissed-off Dell customers, telling me how wrong I was!  Those comments add balance to the post and allow people to see a far wider range of experiences.

People disagreeing with you or being critical of your view point, are a key part of blogging; however, many people really struggle with it.  This is why I wrote the following post on how to deal with blog critics and criticism.

Publish your best content on your blog, not on Facebook etc

Many people who have blogs that they seldom update, have Facebook accounts that they regularly update with insights, ideas and useful links.  There are many reasons why this is a really bad strategy for a commercial blogger.  One of which, is that it sees you investing your content development time building content on someone else’s platform, whilst yours is being neglected.

Use Facebook, but not at the expense of your own commercial blog.  Some of the info you post on Facebook could be slightly expanded upon and turned into a great little post, which you can THEN share on Facebook!

So, what would you add to that list?

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I have 2 quick questions for you today, which can help you massively increase your sales:

• What is the single most powerful form of marketing that you use?
• Why don’t you use it more often?

2 million in extra sales, with 1 simple idea!

Back in 1997, I spoke with the owner of a building supplies company.  Their biggest source of new business was a highly profitable catalogue, which they sent out every 6 months.  These 2 catalogues were responsible for the vast majority of their sales.  I asked him why he only sent out 2 a year and not 4; 1 per quarter.  He told me that he assumed 2 catalogues a year was the right balance.

I explained that he shouldn’t assume anything, until he had tested and measured the results.  At my suggestion, he gave it a try and saw an immediate, huge increase in business.  He later told me that our 10 minute conversation earned him almost £2 million over the next 18 months, for which he was extremely grateful.

Whilst it’s very important to ensure that you are using the correct forms of marketing (use this marketing check list), and using them in the correct way; it’s just as important to use them regularly enough.

Of course, with marketing there is always a balancing act.  If, for example, the business owner I mentioned a moment ago had sent a new catalogue out every week, the cost of production and distribution would have massively increased.  It’s likely he would get too few additional sales, to justify the massive additional cost.  However, by slowly increasing the regularity of your marketing, you can find the sweet-spot; the point where your marketing is being used with ideal regularity.  Not too frequently and not too infrequently.

Why not take a moment to review the most effective forms of marketing you currently use and see if there’s a possibility, that you are not using it frequently enough?