How To Insure Your Blog’s Future

We are all familiar with the concept of insurance. It’s hard not to be as we all keep paying the bills for it. But providing your blog with an insurance is a beautiful concept, and one that no serious blogger takes likely. So what do I mean by insuring your blog’s future? Simple. Blogging is all about creating content that helps you attract and retain readers from all around the Web. Now, if you are providing good solid content to your readers each and everyday, there is a good chance that they will stick with your blog for a long time.

That’s a big if, however. Most bloggers go through a period which I’d like to call after-honeymoon crisis. When you start something new, like blogging, you are pumped up about the possibilities, and you get excited when you accomplish the smallest things. However, the novelty can wear itself out after a while, and you are left with the the cold truth that unless you keep providing valuable content to your readers, they are not going to stick around. Blogging is a tough business. Most niches have more than a couple players in them, which means if you slack off, your readers will jump ship. So it is essential to protect your blog by creating a content bank which you can tap into during tough times.

How To Create an Effective Content Bank For Your Blog

Quantity: Creating a content bank for your blog takes a lot of work, but you want to make sure you account for quality and quantity when creating your bank. I suggest you should aim for at least 30 posts or 30 days worth of posts (depending your posting frequency). We all go through periods that we feel less motivated, less energized, or just plain ill. By giving yourself 30 days to bounce back, you leave yourself with enough room to get rolling again (if you are ill for more than 30 days, you probably need to more worry about your health and less about your blog).

Quality: you should avoid the temptation of creating quick fire posts for the days that you are planning to take off. While it is acceptable to have 3 to 5 polls in a month, I don’t recommend going over that. The quality of your posts should be the same if not better than your regular posts, which means you should do proper research, proofread, and do the routine things.

Your Network: all professional bloggers have a group of people who they mastermind with on a consistent basis. You can often use your contacts to gather guest posts for your blog. Guest posts are very important to your blog as they familiarize your readers with a different voice and bring more variety to your blog. You should also use your network to conduct interviews with market veterans, and post them to your blog in 2 or 3 posts each. It’s amazing how you can create so much content out of these interviews.

Your Niche: If your niche is broad enough that enables you to dig out a few sub-niches, you should try to write as much content as you can about sub-niches that are relevant to your blog. Let’s say your niche is blogging. Your sub-niches would be business blogging, make money blogging, photo blogging, and … Now “blogging” is a very broad niche with so many competitors, but you get the point. It’s all about digging deeper to generate content that stays fresh for more than a couple of days.

By now it should be apparent that “news” posts are not appropriate for your content bank. These posts get old really fast, and they give away the fact that you are not around. You can always write your own take on a piece of news and try to spin it in a way that makes it stand the test of time, but you want to make sure your posts looks as fresh in 30 days as it does today.

Most professional bloggers have content setup for months. That’s how they can dedicate months to research, travel, and other projects. Think about it. The difference between rat race and running your own business is that you can choose to work ultra hard for 4 months and take the rest of the year off (not that I am suggesting it). But you won’t be able to do that without proper planning, now would you?