BLOGGING FOR DUMMIES: HOW TO CREATE CONSISTENT CONTENT

Most bloggers will agree that it’s more than an uphill task to create consistent content as much as it is tiring to even come up with the content itself. Lack of consistency precludes creators block, a situation where you lack any impetus to blog.

Have you gone through such a phase?

Don’t worry. Every creative does.

Consistency is important for various reasons:

1. It gives you credibility. There’s nothing as satisfying as letting your audience know that they can trust you to provide content that they want — at a consistent rate.
2. Consistency is the fine line between failure and success. It gives you the impetus to continue with your work. Lack of consistency breeds laziness and stagnation of progress.
3. It gives you relevance. Content that is not consistent with changing trends and times is usually very boring, bland and not exciting.
4. It allows you to be versatile. Lack of consistency impacts a blogger’s ability to adapt to a change in the needs of the audience.
5. It gives you control. This is the ability to tinker with your content. When you are consistent, you are able to make changes to your content and update it to the preferences of your audience.

There are three vital ways bloggers can ensure consistency in their blogging. They include:

1. RESEARCH

Researching builds up your well of knowledge and equips you with content that is based on concrete ideas.

If you’re shallow on ideas, you might wing it once and perhaps have so many views on your blog post, or sales for your artwork, or amazing reviews for your portrait and countless views on your YouTube channel.

But that’s a one-time thing.

A creator needs to be consistent with their content. This will allow a consistent flow of engagement with your audience.

Your audience appreciates a well-researched piece of work. This will make them come for more. And share it as well.

A mediocre creator is only after the fame that comes with a single piece of work (this is what mainstream media is notorious for). But as short-lived as this notion is, you will not only be frustrated to wow your audience the next time but you will also suffer from a creative block. Read more on how to overcome a creative block in this article: Ways to Overcome Creative Block 

Luckily there’s a simple remedy when a blogger feels devoid of content.

Do a lot of research in your niche. Have a notepad or a Word document where you save the research you do. Fine-tune it and save it for sharing. Be sure to also draw some experience from what you’ve seen, heard, smelt, felt and perceived as a human.

Personally, I use Evernote on my PC to save online articles on the topics I am working on. It compartmentalizes my articles and even saves them offline for archiving purposes.

2. ENGAGE.

Engaging with your audience helps you remain consistent.

How?

When you post a video, a blog post or any piece of creative content, the feedback your audience gives you helps you judge how that particular work performed. That sort of organic feedback is vital to a creator.

Engaging with your readers creates rapport because they trust you will answer them and you indeed do listen to them.

Using such feedback to create better content that answers the questions posed is one of the ways to assure yourself of consistency. Responding to your audience’s feedback is an important part of the “engagement equation”, as CopyBlogger notes in their article, “5 Ways to Bond With Your Blog Audience“.

3. CURATE

Curating is basically stock-piling content. I am fairly guilty of curating content. This is important when your schedule is tight and you don’t have the time to draft your work before your deadline. Curating is equated to bulk-production of content that can be retrieved easily, previewed, edited and published when needed.

Remember that you’re not after quantity, but quality. There is definitely no need to write a three-hundred worded blog post that is poorly researched-on or edited just to beat a deadline.

Curating allows you to produce quality in quantity.

Sometimes schedules may clash and you may forget to post content for your audience (it happens, sadly!). This is precisely what happens when bloggers are short of content. This can be corrected by simply having a curating strategy.

The best way to curate is by dedicating days when a blogger’s energy levels are high and they are motivated to write down as many content ideas as they can. (Don’t write down numerous blog posts at a go, just simple blog ideas for the next time you publish).

Also, fill up your calendar with activities you would like to achieve in terms of blogging. Whether it’s fixing some technical flaws or filling up blog ideas, a calendar helps you to curate and stick to a schedule at the same time.

I normally use the Calendar app on my phone and make sure I write down any sort of blog ideas I may have. This helps me avoid not posting content, or worse, lacking any content to post.

BONUS TIP!

Don’t lose your value.

It may be taxing to produce consistent content. I know this. It can be frustrating to think that a lot of people are eager to read your content and look forward to quality content.

As you push on to be consistent, don’t lose your value as a brand, company, individual creator or even leader. People may fail to even appreciate your content, you may have less than a hundred views on your video or blog posts, zero shares (or less) or even no feedback but spam.

This is everything any creator goes through and should. Because it is a stepping stone and a milestone that creators ought to learn from. No one starts high. So don’t lose your principals and ideals because your consistency is not being rewarded.

It will happen soon. 🙂

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