by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: March 17, 2010   Last Updated: April 15, 2012

Bloggers work to produce regular content. Regular content is not always easy to produce!  There are several roadblocks to being productive and cranking out a blog every day or several times a week. The worst roadblocks include lack of ideas, exhaustion of content, and lack of resources.

One way to exhaust content is to put the whole story or the entire collection of thoughts about a topic into one grandiose masterpiece of two or three thousand words. The first step toward increasing productivity is to break up the articles. There are various ways to do this including series, shorter articles and serials.

One large article can be broken up into many blogs by covering specific areas. Shorter articles are easier on the online reader and can get more attention from both the writer and the readers. With large topic areas, many more ideas will come up and the theme can go on for a while if one portion is dealt with at a time. 

When short of ideas, get out there with a journalist's approach! Local places of interest, scenic or historical spots, and special events are prime choices. The writer can research the historical background of the place, conduct interviews with participants, take photos or videos and can write richer content. 

Two essential resources for a blogger who wants to inform are: a digital camera and an understanding of open stock images that are available online. The camera does not have to have all of the bells and whistles, nor does the camera have to be expensive.  Knowing how to upload, crop, embed and resize will provide endless opportunities to illustrate stories, articles and essays.

Be more observant and get more information when going to events or regular places.  A trip to an historical hamburger joint or diner can result in a great photo essay with text. The place, it's history, some illustrative photos and some interesting personal memoirs can be combined to create a memorable article. 

If there is a protest, ceremony, press conference or major happening in the community, there are many article ideas that can result. More information comes from interviewing, asking questions, taking notes and doing what a journalist does.

Sometimes, the writer wants to entertain. A periodic survey of the latest games, fun websites, or embeddable widgets will provide one article or a regular series of articles. Knowing how to use and to embed interesting "widgets" is a great skill and set of tools to have when other ideas are in short supply.

A blogger's productivity is enhanced by scheduling some information gathering activity or another on a regular basis. Beyond the writing, there is idea conception, becoming more skilled in using multimedia tools and resources, and getting out there and finding things to write about. A productive blogger will be working on one or more of those projects every week, even if the articles are not written and published on a daily basis.

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