Thursday, October 2, 2008

Types of Blog Posts

By John Motson

Writing a blog can sometimes get tedious. We have all been there. No matter how much you love your blog and love blogging on your topics of choice, there comes a time when you simply get writer's block and can't put together a worthwhile post.

Before you do something stupid that might alienate some of your readers, you should reference this list as it outlines some of the more common types of posts that you can write on a blog. I put together this list as a reference and have it on my desktop for consideration when I run out of blogging ideas.

Here is the list of post types that currently resides on my desktop:

Personalized posts.

Talk about something from your personal life. This type of post helps your readers empathize with you and feel like you are one of them. Don't overdo it as it can backfire - people can get tired of hearing about your pet turtle every week :).

Discuss a product you like or dislike.

Always fun to do. If you include some affiliate links you may even earn a quick buck as a result of a post like this.

Talk about someone or something you hate.

Nothing better to start a heated discussion then by expressing your honest opinion on a subject. Be careful to not get sued for libel though.

Link Love.

Collect a series of links and talk about them once per week.

Video Posts.

Make a video post talking about a useful topic.

Discuss current events.

Write about a currently popular news story. Current events give you almost an instant flow of traffic via long tail keywords as people search for the topic at the time of writing. Google Trends is an example where you can get tips for latest issues you can discuss. (e.g. On the eve of the American Idol final I made a post discussing the winner that got some 1000 uniques within a day, and continued to get steady traffic for another few weeks).

Break the news about something.

It is important to be the first or one of the first to break a news story as people then link to you in their reference to the news item.

Review blogging.

Review other blogs, stating your honest opinion about them. Owners of the blogs you review might like your review and link back to you.

Survey your readerships.

Ask them questions. It is very important to involve your readers - blogs as a writing medium exist for the conversational nature of a blog post.

Event blogging.

Sharing thoughts and impressions from a conference, event or seminar. There is something really cool about bloggers that attend various events and blog about them. Take pictures and notes, discuss it all on your blog after you get back.

Live blogging.

Blog at a fast pace about an event happening in real time. If you attend a match, an auction, or some other live event and you have your laptop with you, why not blog about it as things happen?

Repost blogging.

Regurgitate quality blog posts from before - no use letting quality content sit in an archive, bring it back for another run :).

Guest posting.

Encourage other bloggers from your niche to guest post on your blog. It is mutually beneficial as you get fresh content for your blog and the guest posters get traffic to their blog. It also helps build long-lasting working relationships with your fellow bloggers.

List blogging.

People love lists. Put together lists of things in your niche "Top 10 Best Goals Of All Time", "Top 10 Hottest Looking Actresses Of All Time", "Top 10 Easter Recipes Of All Time" etc. List posts often become very popular on social bookmarking sites too - more on that later in this text.

Time period overview blogging.

Do a weekly / monthly recap of what you posted about on your blog. These sorts of posts help keep steady traffic to posts that may otherwise not get that much attention as they get buried in the archives.


John Motson runs a domain name forum, domain name blog and has authored the popular domain name book Domaining Manifesto.

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