All posts in “Blogging”

Bloggers Block….How do you get your mojo back?

Wangari Kamande is a Research Analyst at Social Media Group.

It’s been a long day for me. I’ve had a number of tight deliverables and research to complete, a shocking text message from my phone company telling me that my data plan has gobbled 100% usage within a period of 2 hours even though I have hardly used it all day, I have spent over 2 hours on the phone with tech-support, in a nutshell, it’s one of those days where I felt like a hamster in a maze. So, I sit here thinking, what do I blog about? And since I can barely string my ideas together, I decided to figure out how people deal with this issue I call the bloggers block.

There are a numerous reasons why people get bloggers block, here are few that I find to be quite common from past chats with friends and peers:

  1. Procrastination – you start to research an idea and all of a sudden your fingers unknowingly set you up for failure by somehow clicking into Youtube and you spend hours of time you can’t even account for, you’re thinking…what was I doing again?
  2. Fatigue – kind of how I am feeling now, bzzzzz
  3. Eating everything in your fridge – don’t under estimate the power of eating appropriate potions of nutritious food to get the good juices flowing into your brain.
  4. Writing too much & not listening enough – it’s like being on a date with someone who appears to be on the date by themselves, he or she talks too much and hardly finds out anything about their date. While the chatter box might be interesting, they end up wearing out their date and themselves too. It’s always more fun when it’s a two-way conversation, hopefully everyone stays stimulated.

So what are the solutions to this seemingly uncontrollable sense of mental blockage?

Source: Socialmediaillumination

 

Blog-surfing

Damyanti of Amlokiblogs says that as you browse the blogosphere, you get either triggered or challenged by other bloggers and this could become your next blog post. Kind of supporting my pain point #4, you start to listen and engage with others and who knows you might make a number of blog buddies by responding or quoting other blog-mates.

Take note of ideas in your everyday life

This is really a note to myself as I am constantly researching or reading about one thing or the other. When you come across something that’s interesting or provokes some reaction from you, bookmark it or write it down, this could serve as a future blog post.

Write a tutorial

This is great. You can teach your readers something that’s new and interesting. Here is a good example from Kira of Her New Leaf How to Have a Fantastic Weekend.

Set some interesting audacious goals and share them

I have seen a couple of blogs where bloggers have set to either run marathon or live on a tight budget, get over a shopping addiction and they document their experience of the journey. This brings a human touch to your blog and if you make it engaging enough it could spark conversation and probably motivate others to join the challenge.

Change your environment

I personally enjoy people watching, I try to maximise my lunches at the park during the summer because I am generally a curious person but watching others creates some interesting dialogue in my mind and sometimes gives me a burst of energy for work in the afternoon. Finding a new place to write blog post e.g. the Library, a park, a coffee shop, a friend’s house, near the lake, being surrounded by nature is likely to get ideas flowing.

As with most things in life, we are not always in the mood for even some of the things we enjoy, finding creative ways to turn those mundane days into something beautiful can be quite stimulating.

How do you get your blogging mojo back?

 

Social Media Roundup for November 6, 2009

Hello again, boys and girls.  It’s the Social Media Roundup, brought to you by the letters S, M, and G, and the number 3.

In honour of Sesame Street’s 40th birthday, I’m taking a page out of Google’s book and tossing up one of my personal favourite sketches to start off the roundup.

Yipyipyip…uh huh.

Party. Party. Party.
In SMG news, our 3rd anniversary party and #savethebou tweetup last night was a rousing success!  More on that next week in a full blog post, but thanks to all who attended and to @photojunkie and @modernmod for providing photo ops and bangin’ tunes.

Better Blogging through Pet Worm Ownership
Sonia Simone at Copyblogger has a great post this week on how Oscar the Grouch makes a great blogger role model, and it’s hard to argue with. I know that’s a blog I’d subscribe to. Slimey doesn’t actually feature in the article, but he’d probably make a decent editor.

Lists, Trends, and Retweets, oh my!
In Twitter news this week, Doug Haslam has a great analysis of the Lists feature rolled out last week, including a ringing endorsement for personal ego-surfing.  Not content to rest on its laurels, Twitter began more focused efforts to curate its Trending Topics and started rollout of its new retweet feature, which Mashable is doing a great job of unboxing on the fly.

nth Life?
Second Life has taken the wraps off the open beta of their Enterprise product, allowing businesses to operate their own private virtual world behind the firewall.  The office dress code just got a whole lot weirder, and catching a flight to a meeting has taken on a whole new meaning.

SNCR Always Satisfies
The 4th Annual Society for New Communications Research Symposium & Awards Gala kicked off this week, and has already generated reams of conversation. Congrats in advance to all the award winners to be announced tonight.