Take your blog vertical with lateral thinking

I had some great professors in college, although even the best of them made me want to fashion voodoo dolls from old leg warmers (hey, it was the 80s) and spend afternoons slashing their little voodoo term papers with a thick red pen. One I remember quite vividly is my freshman English Lit. professor.

I had spent tons of time on a paper that was returned to me with a pulsating “C” on it. “What gives?!” I thought and marched up to her desk, requesting an explanation for why she panned my 18-year-old brilliance. “This is nothing but a regurgitation,” she said simply. “A summary is not an analysis. Next time, put some thought into it.”

Filled with righteousness indignation, I spent the rest of the day seething about how unreasonable she was. I was just too immature to accept the gift she was handing me, and it took a few more thudding grades to “get it.”

To get the traffic and attention you want for your blog, listen to my freshman English professor. Although she’d never use the term “thought leader,” that’s exactly what she was encouraging us bright-eyed freshman to be. To take your blog posts, traffic and comments skyward, and break the “me-too” blogger habit, try this:

Observe
“Live in the moment” is important guidance for a writer. Pay attention to everything that happens around you. If you’re an overthinker like me, it’s easy to get lost inside your own head. The trouble with that is that you miss out on plenty of juicy ideas and stories. If you’re dismissing this concept, yet you find yourself at a loss for blog post ideas, just give it a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover what you’re missing out there.

Think
When you make an interesting observation, latch onto it. Look at it carefully from all sides before you toss it into your memory dumpster. If it’s not clearly a post topic, it may be a colorful story you can twist into a post. If it’s something you read somewhere else, and you think it’s worth writing about yourself, have at it – but not before you take the next step.

Lift Off!
This is where you “use the brains God gave you,” as my gruff (but loveable) Italian grandpa used to say. So far, you’ve got “C” material. Now you need to make it an “A.” Foodie that I am, I like to think of this as the taffy pull. When you make taffy you start with a pot full of hot sugar syrup. It’s not until you knead and pull it that it becomes a delectably chewy confection. So give that idea a good pull and see what you can make of it. For example, the fact that more people have camera phones is an observation. Concluding that digital camera sales may fall takes some brain power. Outlining ways small businesses can invite customers to post pictures of themselves buying or using their products while they’re out and about – now that’s taking it up a notch.

Photo credit: Howzey via Flickr