We've established that blogging will continue to be one of the most important marketing activities for you to consistently engage in. But there is also no doubting that blogging takes a lot of time - a HUGE chunk of time - to get done. What do you do when time is precisely the one resource that you have very little of. Will you still be able to blog reasonably well and get to enjoy the benefits it can bring your business?
If you are time-challenged (and who among us isn't?) there happens to be a way for you to continue nurturing your blog by consistently coming up with high quality content. The secret is in working smart. Here are some tips to help you keep the blog alive even when you seem to run out of time much more quickly than everyone else.
Microcontent Is the Way to Go
This day and age of fast food, quick fixes and information overload has spawned a number of content formats that people can quickly and easily take in. From infographics to six-second videos to captioned photos, these little clumps of information are easy for you to prepare and just as easy for your readers to digest, yet can be every bit as engaging and as effective as that 500-word blog post you never have time to write.
Creation by Curation
By curating content, you can amass an immense volume of materials about your topic without having to actually create them. You can find relevant content about what you had wanted to blog about in the first place. You can then mash up the information you found, organize it and present it to your audiences along with your unique take and insights on the matter. When done correctly, content curation is a great way to help you increase your knowledge of the industry or subject matter, establish your credibility and trust with your audiences and build audience loyalty while at the same time delighting them with content that is entertaining or useful.
Tap Into the Wisdom of Crowds
Crowdsourcing content is a great way to engage your audiences. Just ask Amazon.com, which has built highly engaging content created by the very same people who patronize the site. At the same time, letting your readers write for you frees you from having to write the content yourself. And it is a great way to get your targets involved and invested in your business. Another advantage crowdsourcing gives you is that the content will always be fresh and different than if you created it yourself. Over time, your own work will begin to look the same and repetitive to your audiences, while crowdsourced content will keep looking fresh because the perspectives and approaches will always be varied and different.
Tap Into On-Going Conversations
Learn to listen in on the sentiments and concerns of your audiences and write content that directly address these. You may not win any literary prizes, but I assure you that your audiences will be very, very interested in what you have to say. Tap into the "what's in it for me" mindset and you will always have interesting things to write about, and you won't need to spend much time thinking about what to write.