I'd like to share with you a few of my daily blogging techniques that keep me going, and that I hope keep you guys coming back to read. It took me quite a while to get comfortable with blog writing and hopefully I can shortcut your learning curve with what I've learned through 513 Daily Golden Nuggets.
I do my best to write at least 500 words in every Nugget. I didn't come up with this number arbitrarily; it happens to be the magic number that many print publications ask for when you write an editorial. Sometimes my Nuggets are 800 words, and sometimes they are 400, but 500 is always my target.
At first you might find it impossible to write 500 words, 400 words, or even 300 words. Be verbose in your writing without repeating yourself or keyword phrases for your products and just do your best to reach 300 words.
I'm usually very long winded when I speak, and when I really put my personality into a single Nugget I end up with something that's 1500 words long. Parsing that down means I go through every sentence and every word to see if each is actually needed to tell you what really needs to be told.
If I'm just blabbing, then often times I delete it out. If I'm pontificating, then I will save that for a different place online when, and where I allow myself to have a soap box moment. Don't pontificate in your blog if you also expect to generate sales with it.
(Case in point, those last two paragraphs are not actually needed to tell you what needs to be told today. Since this Nugget was originally more than 800 words and I could just delete them, instead I split this single Nugget into 2 days. I also want you to see, and recognize the slight irrelevance in the above two paragraphs so you may one day recognize it with your own blogs.)
One of the most valuable lessons I learned about blog writing came from Ted Nicholas. He's managed to make more than $1 Billion in sales through his prolific writings, and all his books are good to read.
Anyway, Ted once told me that you should never write the title of your book, blog, article, or education piece first. When you write your title first you create a constraining mindset for what you should be writing about. This causes writer's block.
Instead, just freely write. Say what you need to, edit out the wheat from the chaff, and then create a title that matches the editorial.
Depending on your persona you have a few options for creating titles:
1. Write titles that match the actual topic.
2. Ask a question that is answered by the topic.
3. Create titles with double meanings.
4. Make an obscure reference to something that most won't understand.
5. Mention a typical painful topic that your blog answers.
6. Use shock value just to get the click.
The best SEO value comes from #1 and #2. The rest are only good for short term click through value from social networks.
So now that this Nugget is 526 words long and rewritten 3 times, I just went back and wrote the description. In this case I'm using #5 above for the title.
I called this blog "3 Blogging Tips Shared by a Blogging Pro." New readers will see that title and wonder who the pro is, and what those 3 tips are. Beginning bloggers will search for as many tips and tricks to make their lives easier; blogging can be mentally painful, maybe my tips will help them... thus this blog gets the clicks
