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When Kelly Diels and I put out the call for The League of Extraordinary Bloggers, Tara Gentile was one of the first to step up. Tara is a dynamo, running both Scoutie Girl, a blog focusing on hand crafted living and conscious spending, and taragentile.com where she helps little businesses think big.
Blogging Outside the Box: Approaching Your Blog with Creative Spirit
-by Tara Gentile
Creating and using a blog is a creative act. Whether your goal is cold hard cash, celebrity status, or touchy-feely community building, putting a blog out there into world is an act of creation.
Creativity means thinking outside-the-box, discovering innovative solutions for status quo problems. Blogs themselves were once an outside-the-box way to publish digital content. Now they’re adrift in a sea of sameness.
So… you’re a business blogger, a blogging blogger, a law blogger, a design blogger, a code blogger. What have you done lately to challenge the status quo in your own niche? How have you broken the mold to set yourself apart?
Breaking Out & Breaking Through
At my own blog, Scoutie Girl, I broke through just a few short months ago. Until that point, I was chugging along doing things the “right way” in my niche, gaining readers here, making some money there. But not growing my readership – and my sales – the way I truly wanted to. One day, I started doing things my own way:
- Since everyone else in my niche posted tons of pictures and very few words, I started posting 1000 word entries several times a week.
- While others posted 15 times a week, I decided to post 5.
- As others continued to struggle with direct ad sales, I created my own product.
- Since others looked to be the first to post a new collection, I chose to concentrate on the roots of our movement.
- White others wrote about stuff, I wrote about people, their stories, and my own life.
I succeeded. My blog is the talk of the town, my posts are regularly shared virally, and I can’t wait to have that next spark of inspiration to do it all over again.
Climbing Out of Your Own Blog Box
Ready to claw your way out of your blogging box? :
- Think about your niche. Think about what all those blogs have in common. What’s the tried & true rule of business? Consider it, mull it over, dissect it. And then do the opposite. Do something crazy. Just give it a try for a few weeks. Wait and see if people notice. See if people act.
- When people do act – by commenting, tweeting, connecting – engage them. Ask them questions about their comments & tweets. Get them to tell you more about what they reacted to. Find out what problems they have.
- Once you find out those problems, create innovative solutions. Oh sure, that’s easy to say but hard to do. I get that. Being creative isn’t easy. Maybe a solution is a series of in-depth posts. Maybe it’s a series of incredibly short posts geared towards conversation. Maybe it’s a new topic, a new direction, a new goal. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a product you can sell.
- Repeat.
When you’re done mining your own niche for creative, upside-down ideas for your blog, check out other niches. Each niche has quirky little techniques you can tweak to use on your blog. Incorporate different post ideas, different layouts, interactive plug-ins – each niche has it’s own box. Rummage through that box for a bit and you’ll find all sorts of new inspiration & innovative ideas.
Approaching your blog with an eye towards creativity and innovation can reinvigorate you as a writer and your readers as customers.
{image credit: create, love, laugh via flickr}
Tara Gentile blogs about
creative living at Scoutie
Girl and big thinking at taragentile.com.
When not listening to NPR or playing toddler games, she's running a boutique
web design & brainstorming business, helping small businesses think
big and get personal. Tara geeks over the indie craft movement,
WordPress, & conscious spending.
