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Not Just Blog Posts – Content Types for Your Blog Checklist

50 Things to Blog About Checklist

It’s one of the most challenging things about blogging – getting started. If you ever get stumped on what to write about, here are 50 ideas to help get the creative juices flowing.

1. Take a photo. Share a picture instead of words!
2. Share a relevant YouTube video. Perhaps even analyze it a bit in your post. It doesn’t require a lot of work to watch and then find the best videos.
3. Shoot a video of your own. People love to see a blogger’s face rather than just read their words.
4. Comment on another blog post on your blog. For example, if another well known blogger makes a strong statement, respond to that statement on your blog.
5. Comment on a news event and on how it relates to your field.
6. Write a How To post. Walkthroughs, tutorials and how to’s tend to do very well online.
7. Bust a Myth. What are common beliefs people hold in your industry that simply aren’t true?
8. Tell an entertaining and educational story. What were some turning point moments in your career?
9. Create a Q&A post. What are common questions people have and what are their answers?
10. Examine a Problem. Take an issue that people often get stuck on and go in depth into its causes and solutions.
11. Write a Top X List. For example, “Top 50 ways to get blog traffic” or “Top 12 hip hop dance moves.”
12. Ramble. Just talk aimlessly and passionately about a subject. Be sure to set it aside and read it a day or two later to make sure it’s relevant before you post it.
13. Write about common pitfalls. What are mistakes that beginners might make without knowing it?
14. Interview an expert. Post it in audio or video form on your blog.
Not Just Blog Posts – Content Types for Your Blog Checklist
15. Review a product. What are its benefits and its drawbacks? What sets it apart? Would you recommend it?
16. Comment on state of the industry. What’s going well and what isn’t’ going well?
17. Ask your audience a question. What do they think about Topic X?
18. Post the top resources for someone in your industry. Give links, downloads, videos, etc that might help them in what they’re trying to do.
19. Make a prediction on the future. What do you think is going to happen in the next 12 months?
20. Write about an in person event. For example, “What I learned at Affiliate Summit X this year.
21. Share a provocative opinion. What’s an opinion you have that just isn’t politically correct?
22. Why someone is right or wrong. Write a post about why you think someone is right or wrong about a certain subject.
23. Make something complex simple. Break a hard process down into its parts and make it easy to do or follow.
24. Share a thought process. How do you get from point A to point B in your thought process?
25. Blog about a personal experiment. What’s something you tried? Did it work or did it not work? What would you do differently and what would you recommend?
26. Do an audio recording. Sharing yourself via MP3 rather than text can lead to more connection with your readers.
27. Write a sarcastic post. It shouldn’t be aggressive, but be a little satirical post that contradicts popular opinion.
28. Give away an eBook. Pack it with value and just give it away for free.

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Day 10 – Get Social & Secure Your Accounts

Goal?: Secure your social media accounts, Brand them to your authority blog

Today you want to setup your social media and email accounts. I like to start with Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

Start with Gmail that way you have an email address to sign up for all the social media accounts. Then go to each of the social sites listed above and sign up trying to use the name of your website if possible. Otherwise just choose something close that resembles your blog.

For Twitter and Google+ you’ll be setting up a normal account but for Facebook you’ll be setting up a Facebook page. You set up a Facebook page under your normal Facebook account so that way you are the Administrator of the Facebook page. This will be separate from your personal account but must be set up this way in order to create one.

When you set up your social accounts you want to brand them to your authority blog. This means you should use your logo and color schemes where possible. Take advantage of things like the Facebook page cover photo to add even more branded possibilities.

When choosing which social sites you should have a presence on think about your audience. Where do they hang out online? For example, niches like Home Improvement are Pinterest heavy.

We will get more into how to use social media for driving traffic later. Today you just want to secure your accounts and update them with your logo and information.

Day 11 – Blog Design & Branding

Goal: Create a brand for your website and start designing your blog to match your brand.

Today is the day you start focusing on branding and building a blog design around your brand. You want to make something that stands out and is identifiable as your brand.

Branding is going to be all about taking your blog name, logo and design and differentiating yourself from other blogs and people in your niche. If you have some design skills I would start with the logo and work from there. If not, you may choose to outsource the design of a logo to get what you want.

You can even outsource your logo design on Fiverr or cheap online logo designers. However, just remember that with branding you want to set yourself apart. Sometimes these cheap logos are just made from stock templates so you might not stand out too much. Just something to keep in mind.

Tagline: It is important to also come up with a nice catchy tagline for your blog. This can be very memorable for your audience and sum up your blog in just a few words. Come up with 4 or 5 words or a short sentence that explains exactly what your blog is about.

Logo When it comes to your logo focus on simplicity. A lot of people go with complex logo designs and that’s not what you want. Go over to Google and do an image search of company logos. Notice how simple and readable the majority of them are? Most of them will be two to three colors, very readable, and simple.

One thing to really pay attention to is the colors that you choose for your logo. Color can also represent certain Industries or niches. For example, Medical & health related businesses usually use blue in their logos. So think about what kind of colors represent the industry or niche that you are in when choosing colors. This will also come into play when you design your blog.

If you are good at designing then use Photoshop, GIMP, or other similar software to make your logo. If not, you want to outsource this task. A quality logo says a lot about your business.

Blog Design

We don’t need to go into too much depth about designing your blog. What you really need to know is to make it consistent with your brand and optimize for results. The reason we don’t focus on blog design is because WordPress and WordPress themes make it really easy to make a great looking authority blog. To top it off you can outsource customization or design for a very low price. Not to mention that most paid themes come with support packages and are usually willing to help you customize the theme. WordPress has a great user­base that is willing to help.

When choosing a theme for your authority blog we recommend going with a paid theme. Or start out with a free theme and move to a paid theme as you go. Keep in mind that you can get a high­quality theme anywhere from $50 to $100 so you may just want to go ahead and go with it to save yourself some headache later.

There are a lot of great theme providers out there but one that we use and highly recommend are the StudioPress themes for the Genesis Framework. When creating an Authority Blog we like to choose a magazine or newspaper style theme for our blogs.

Most paid themes give you color options and are easily customized if you are not comfortable with CSS, HTML and PHP. This way you can get everything to look how you want it and match your blog theme to your logo. One of the reasons we use the Genesis framework is that it’s so easy to change colors, add optin boxes and many other features that make customizing it a breeze.

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Attention-Getting Headline: Ex. Flat Abs…At Last!

This is your introductory page that you can add a couple of paragraphs too Introduce yourself and/or your company and why you created this report. Start out with something like “Congratulations on taking the first step to flatter abs. I’m June Cleaver and have been helping people flatten their abs and get into better shape for the past 7 years” …. etc.

The key here is to establish your credibility.

When You’re Ready to Move onto the Next Step… (or other subheadline)

Include a product promotion on this page. Tell them that the report is going to explain [XXXXX], but when they’re done, they should pick up your product, sign up for a list, claim a free sample, etc.

Add a photo that draws the eye in here. Not necessarily a product photo as you may not want to shove a product at them at this point. You want them to just start thinking about your offer and keep it in their mind as they read your report. For our flat abs example, we might show someone
working out or something else that will cause the reader to stop and notice this part of the page.

Now, let’s get started…

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Images

Images are the most common form of media on the internet aside from text. They are relatively small in file size, at least when compared to videos, and they can make a very large impact in terms of both traffic and user interest and engagement.

Images are useful in many ways. Not only do they make a website more engaging and aesthetically pleasing, but they can be useful for promotional purposes (such as pinning on Pinterest) and for drawing attention, demonstrating steps in a process, and showing people examples.

Years ago, it was common to see images such as animated bullets, graphical divider bars, and wild background images. These days, such images are frowned on, as they make a web page look unprofessional and out of date.

These days, it’s more common to see photographs

Don’t include photos just for the sake of including photos. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a blogger include a bunch of photographs that don’t really pertain to the article they are writing just to beef it up with images, and it’s frustrating.

For example, let’s say you’ve written an article about email marketing. Images you might want to include would be screenshots of the various services you’re talking about, and images that show users how to perform some specific task that they might not otherwise understand without the picture.

Images you would not want to include would be generic pictures of mail or mailboxes, generic @ symbol graphics, and random pictures of email messages.

The only exception would be if you need a featured image for your blog and you don’t have any specific images that would pertain to your blog post. You could use one generic image in that case, but it should fit as closely with your subject matter as possible.

Whenever you include images on your website or blog, you’ll want to be sure they’re optimized for Pinterest, as this can be a major source of traffic.

SEO for Images

Many people don’t realize SEO can be applied to images, but image can actually bring in a significant amount of traffic if they are used correctly. It’s important to apply good SEO techniques to all of your images to get the most out of each one.