A blog is a great tool that any one can use to express their opinions while driving other people to their site. Most people are probably wondering what all the blogging fuss is about, so hopefully this article will help you better understand it.

Anyone can blog, but it takes a lot of useful information in order to learn to blog effectively. Some people want to blog, yet they can’t think of anything to write about. For those people, I have designed this list of things that can help you get rid of that writer’s block.

1) Find Inspiration.

Successful blogging is fueled by great inspiration. There are a lot of great places you can find your inspiration, but first you should try to focus on the industry you or your business is most associated with. If you are selling eBooks (whether written by yourself or others), some inspirational sites might include sites in which writers in general are talking about their writing experiences. Or possibly sites on which other eBook sellers might be discussing some of their accomplishments or failures with selling certain topics, etc. You have to really think about what your business or site is all about and then search for related blogs that other people are writing to find topics that you might have an opinion on or being to expand on. Maybe there’s something about the topic they neglected to mention and maybe you could be the one to write about it!

A few great sites to check out are Digg and Delicious. If something is popular on one of these sites in your industry, it may help to inspire you to write about it. Delicious not only allows you to bookmark popular posts for later reading, but it also can give you lists of what other people are bookmarking. This can be very helpful in finding out what people in the industry want to know about.

Keeping track of current events is also important because if your blog content is not current with what people are talking about or wanting information about, it may not be a very popular topic. That doesn’t mean that you can’t write about an old, out-dated topic, it just means that whatever information you are bringing to the table should be fresh and new, in order to grabs the readers’ attention. Looking for and reading other blogs related to your industry is also very important. If you can find a good blog that will be similar in content to yours, it can drastically help you come up with follow-up posts or new discussions based on what you’ve read. As I mentioned before, they may have missed something that you could be the one to write about.

2) Research.

After you are inspired to write something, it cannot hurt in the least to research your topic for more useful information. You may find more to write about or relevant facts that you can include for your readers. Google is obviously the first place most people turn, so be sure to do a thorough search for more information before you begin writing about your topic. Other great resources include Digg, Twitter, and other social websites, such as Delicious and StumpleUpon. Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In are great places to ask others in your network for more information and links about your topic of interest. You can even set up questionnaires and post them to your social media networks asking for help from your friends. Delicious and StumpleUpon are great sites to search to see if your topic of interest has already been covered and to see what’s been said about it.

3) Writing.

Start writing early and give yourself plenty of time to write. Starting late at night will just make it more difficult because you will probably get tired more quickly and either never finish or write a post you are not so proud of. A great idea is to write your post in another program, such as Microsoft Word, Notepad, or TextEdit, and after you’ve reviewed and perfected it, copy it into your blog. If you use WordPress for your blog and use a Mac, a great program to use is called MarsEdit. It allows you not only to add new posts with topics as they come to mind and save them until later when you’re ready to write about them, but it also allows you to publish to WordPress straight from your desktop. This can be very helpful and save lots of time!

Another important thing to remember when writing a blog post is to make good use of headings and subheadings. This helps users quickly and easily navigate through your post for topics and areas of interest. Use keywords frequently to help increase your chances of people finding your post, and use bulleted lists when you have that type of information to convey. Readers are drawn to lists as they are generally compact and easy to spot.

4) Images.

If possible, using images can help to energize your post and add interest as well. Readers often enjoy seeing an image along with blocks of text in order to help them visualize what the author is trying to say. You can often find free stock images to use on sites such as freestockimages.net, as well as affordable professional-grade images on sites such as iStockphoto.com. Flickr is another great resource in whcih you can find photos which you can use as long as you credit the photographers with a link back to their account.

5) Before You Publish.

Before you publish a post, always preview your post and make sure it looks the way you expect it to before posting. Double check everything you have written by re-reading your post and checking for any spelling or sentence errors. Be sure to add tags to your post and choose an appropriate category, if applicable, and change the URL or permalink if you need to. Schedule a good time for your post to actually publish rather than just publishing it when you get finished writing it. You need to try to think about your target audience and when the peak times they may be online and available to read are. Posting in he middle of the night is not going to allow your post to reach as many people unless you are targeting a different time zone than you’re in. Posting on the weekends is also generally not the best idea because a lot of people are away from their computers. Trying to target either during business hours or shortly after could be one of the best timeframes you can choose.

6) Promotion.

Did you read my previous article about the importance of utilizing social media networks in order to help promote and advertise your website/blog? There are some great plugins out there that will allow you to automatically publish your blog posts each time you publish an article, so this can be very time-saving and useful in getting more viewers to your site. Ensuring you utilizing your RSS feed is also a major plus. WordPress has a built-in RSS feed, so encourage viewers to sign up for your RSS feed so that they may be alerted when new articles are posted. If you use Feedburner, you can have e-mail alerts sent out whenever a new post is published as well.

If you don’t use the automatic posting plugins available, then be sure to post something on your social media networks about your new blog articles as often as possible. Post something whenever you write a new article as well as when a previous article might relate to something someone else has said or even when a new article comes out in relation to what you’re previously written about. Also, be sure to provide a way for viewers to share your blog posts with others, such as through their social media networks or by e-mail. This may encourage others to write about your post, which helps you out even more, especially if they give you a link back and have a lot of followers.

Consider submitting your articles to news websites or to other related-bloggers’ websites. If they find the material or topic interesting, they may post it or respond to it with a link back to your site, which can help publicize your site as well.

7) Follow Up.

Every great blog ends with some kind of question. This helps encourage readers to comment or write some kind of response, which helps get the discussion going. This also means you have to check for responses and reply back. No one wants to comment on a post only to have the author never seem to notice, so be sure to let them know you read what they wrote and give the a nice reply!

If your post receives positive feedback, consider writing a related post to follow it. You can base your new post on feedback you have received, which could include comments on making your blog, post, or site better, and conflicting opinions, which you can discuss in further detail.

8) Ask For Tips.

Use your social media networking sites to ask friends and followers for tips on topics to write about, resources, or just simple blogging tips. Some of them may be great bloggers which you can learn from!

I know a few of my friends who struggle with writing, so I hope that this list of tips will be helpful to you all. Blogging is such an important tool in today’s day and age, and utilizing it to its full potential is very important as well. I cannot stress this enough to my clients and readers alike. I never understood the importance of blogging until recently. I did quite a bit of research and have found it’s great potential and advantages. Again, if you haven’t read my previous article about using WordPress, blogging, and social media networking, take a few minutes and read through them. What tips do you guys have that I can add to my list?