Professional Blogging For Dummies®

Chapter 14. Keeping Your Blog Fresh

In This Chapter

• Dealing with writer's block and keeping your blog fresh

• Keeping your blog going when you take a break

• Exploring strategies for engaging your community and growing your blog

You've launched your blog. Congratulations. Now the really hard work starts.

Unlike a Web site, which you can pretty much set and forget, your blog needs constant feeding and attention to be successful. And not just at the beginning when you're trying to build your audience. You want to get readers and you want to keep them. That means keeping your blog fresh, compelling, interesting, and relevant to your audience, whether it's 10, 10,000, or 1,000,000.

You also need to think about how you want to grow your blog. Over time, you may become interested in other topics — some closely related to your original focus, others not so much. Do you add the new topic to the current blog or start a new one? What about adding additional authors to carry the load? Should you ever walk away and start over?

This chapter shares my thoughts on these topics, but they're only a suggested direction. Your personal objectives and experiences are your truest guide to your right answer for your blog.

Jump-Starting Your Muse

When you first start writing your blog, you have no shortage of ideas and material to draw from. Over time, however, the bank gets depleted. Most of the time, not having a firm idea is okay. You'll get an idea from the news or read a post that you either strongly agree with ...