Feed Your Need for Blog Post Content

If you have a blog, you know that you constantly have to feed it. I've had this blog since 2007 and one of the constant challenges is creating a continuous stream of engaging, interesting blog content.

For those of you who are new to blogging — or even those long-time bloggers like me — here are some ideas to help keep the content flowing!

• Repurpose What You Have. Look at your most popular content according to your analytics and engagement. Turn this content into different forms, and expand the content by adding case studies and additional data. Turn a 10-point blog post into 10 more in-depth blog posts about each point. Create video content and embed that on your blog. 
• Read Group Discussions. Check out jobseeker-targeted groups on LinkedIn and see what your target audience is talking about. Read the active discussions. The ones where people ask questions and people offer a lot of different answers are the best places to get ideas. Every question can be a blog post and the discussions can help you come up with more ideas.
• Take Notes. Keep a notepad near you or use your smartphone to take notes about conversations, questions, and other information as you see it and hear it. You'll often get ideas while driving your car, taking a jog, or listening to other people talk. Keeping notes and writing it all down will help. I keep my idea lists in Evernote.
• Create a Calendar. Create a content calendar that is designed to inform, educate, engage, and activate your audience. You can use a source like the National Day Calendar to look for ideas for content.
• Create Trending Content. Outside your calendar, you'll want to keep your blog exciting by adding in trending, newsworthy content that's all about what's happening right now. Can you tie in something from current events into your blog — like when this JetBlue flight attendant quit his job in spectacular fashion?
• Use Pass-Along Materials Content. A great way to get content that you can use for your blog is to use Pass-Along Materials content. This done-for-you content can help you come up with ideas, act as research, and be used "as is" or with few changes.

When you understand who your audience is and what your goal is with the content you're publishing, it will be a lot easier to come up with ideas that are fantastic, thought-provoking, fresh, and effective in meeting the needs of your audience.

Do Your Blog Posts Suck?

Blogging can be a great way to attract new clients, increase your online presence, attract media attention, and educate/inform your clients. However, if you want to write effective blog posts, you need to know who your audience is and target every post to them. You also need to create a plan of action for your blog posts, both individually and as a whole. For instance, you might start your blog posts with general themes, moving toward more specific advice and information as your audience becomes more informed. 

While all that is important, let's get down to the nitty-gritty about what should be included in each blog post.

• Blog posts need a great title. The days of puns in titles are over. It's important to create a blog post title that tells the reader what's inside the post. This is why they'll click through to read it. People do not like being tricked and will be more focused on the trickery than the post if you're not clear in your titles. If you're looking for a free online resource for coming up with titles, check out Jim Edwards Wizards (click on the tab for "Free Wizards"). I LOVE these.
• Catch their interest with your first paragraph. Your first paragraph is very important in terms of blog posts. You only have seconds, one or two sentences at the most, to capture your audience's attention. This is where understanding your target market comes in. Create a compelling first sentence and first paragraph that catch the reader's attention.
• Give readers a glimpse of your personality. Nobody wants to read dry blog posts stuffed full of keywords that ultimately say nothing. While it's true you want to include keywords, show the reader your personality inside of your blog post. Let them know a little bit about your story, and how you think.
• Create an informative body message. If you've planned out your post well, with an outline, you will be able to create the body message easily. The body message is the meat of the message that you want to deliver.
• Provide a conclusion in the last paragraph. Nothing is worse than reading something and feeling like it's left unfinished. Remember to make some conclusions in your last paragraph that ties everything you said together. Then ask your reader for feedback. Ask them a question about the content and invite them to answer.
• Don't forget the CTA. Always include, within that last paragraph or directly under it, a specific and clear call to action (CTA). Do you want them to respond, to share, to buy? What do you want them to do? Tell them how and why to do what it is you want them to do.

Aside from these factors, it's important to also be concerned with headings, bullets and plenty of white space. Your headings need to be keyword-rich headings that make sense for what is about to be read by the reader. By using bolded headings, and larger text for headings, the headings will stand out better. By using bulleted points the same thing occurs. It just makes it easier for your reader to take in what is being said. People read by "scanning" and a blog post with bullets, headings and plenty of white space makes it easier.

Images that you include should be relevant images. If you're looking for blog images, check out Fotolia.com. For about $1 each, you can get great graphics to illustrate your blog posts.

By taking into account all these factors in your blog posts, you'll create effective blog posts every single time. In other words, your blog posts won't suck!

Penelope Trunk Tells Resume Writers To Blog

To go along with my new gig as a guest blog author, I was researching some other blogs. When you type in "blogs for resume writers" in Google, basically you get a listing of resume writers who blog.

One post was by Penelope Trunk, who has established a fairly unique voice in the career blog community. The post was about how to edit your resume with the eye of a professional resume writer -- so naturally, that caught my attention. I scrolled down through the comments (thinking of posting one myself), but was stopped dead in my tracks by this comment by Margaret W on March 18, 2008:

Huh. I hired a professional to rewrite my resume a few years ago; it was a total disaster. It read like a template from CorporateSpeak 101, and was not appropriate for my skillset or for my industry. One can say that this was a cruddy resume writer because he didn't fully understand my goals. Or maybe I didn't communicate them well.

I finally landed a new position after I ditched the plastic resume and handled writing it myself. It also didn't hurt that I got the job through connections. I also got my subsequent (and current) job through connections, where the resume is something they're obliged to hand over to the HR drone for her files.

* * * * * *

Penelope responded:

This is a good time to say that the resume writing industry is sort of like the social worker industry — it's a real crap shoot who you get unless the person comes recommended from someone you trust.

Sidenote to resume professionals: You should blog. It's a way to establish credibility with an audience that is inherently weary of the industry.

So I thought I'd assemble a short list of career professional blogs I've compiled -- as a way of inspiring you to start your own blog.

• Keppie Careers (Miriam Salpeter)
  
• Career-Resumes (Peter Newfield)
• Blue Sky Resumes (Louise Fletcher)
• Resume Power (Kim Isaacs)
  
• Resume Edge (Darlene Zambruski)
• CollegeRecruiter.com

Are you a professional resume writer who blogs? E-mail me and I'll include your blog too.

I'm A Guest Author!

As you know, from time to time, I feature guest authors on this blog. Now I've been asked to be a guest author on another blog, Teena Rose's "Start, Operate, Profit!" blog for resume writers. I invite you to read my first post, where I select my "TOP 5" favorite posts from Teena's archive.

Teena's blog focuses primarily on start-up issues for new resume writers -- a natural, considering that she's the author of a book on the subject, "Starting a Home- or Office-Based Resume Business."

Teena also has a much stronger grasp of the ins-and-outs of online technology, and I'll be drawing on her expertise in the next few months to help my readers understand more about this, and how they can incorporate in search engine optimization and other techniques to help them generate new customers.

If you're a member of my E-List for new resume writers, you can expect that I will be asking for your help in the next few days to identify topics for future posts on Teena's blog.

Blog About What Matters to Your Clients

Wonder about how to justify your prices to clients? Put it in terms they understand -- and blog about it to draw their attention to the issue while you build your credibility.

For example, I'm researching Nebraska's unemployment benefits for an upcoming Resume Writers' Digest Special Report. In conducting my research, I found some interesting information that is extremely relevant to prospective clients. Many people think that unemployment benefits will keep them afloat if they are out of work. But the reality is, unemployment benefits are a safety net -- and there are quite a few holes in that net.

Using information culled from about 15 minutes of research, I wrote a blog post on Nebraska Unemployment Benefits that is sure to open the eyes of more than a few prospective clients. I could use the same information in a news release I send to the local paper.

(Feel free to use the post as a model for your own blog post or news release.)