Starting a blog: how to make connections & get blog ideas.

Starting a new blog can feel like you are writing in a vacuum. And that’s when you are writing, what about the times you have no idea what to write about?

The following is by no means a complete blogging strategy, but rather a way to

• find inspiration for your blog posts
• become more involved with the blogging community

Step 1: Monitor blogs for relevant subjects
You will need:

• Google blog search
• IrishBlogs.ie popular topics (for Irish bloggers)

Set up searches relevant to your field/business in Google blog search – Google blog search has handy links at the bottom of any search you do that allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds or set up email alerts.

Email alerts are good because they serve as reminders to blog, as they are more intrusive than RSS.

Don’t forget to include in your search terms your name and the name of your business & website so you can also see and respond to what others are saying about you or your business.

Check out IrishBlogs.ie popular topics – along the top of the site they show the trending topics, with more information below. Under the heading for each trending topic there are links to the blog posts about the topics. There is an RSS feed available for the popular topics so you can keep up to date with popular topics easily.

If you don’t use an RSS reader, read my article on Google’s easy to use RSS reader.

Step 2: Watch for items of interest to you
Once you are monitoring topics using the above tools, watch for posts on subjects you feel strongly about. The ideal is to find posts where you agree with the blogger, but have your own slant on the topic.

Step 3: Respond and engage!
Write a blog post on the subject and be sure to reference and link to the original post.

“Blogger X wrote recently about Topic Y and made some very good points, my own perspective is that…”

Of course, you can link to a number of different blog posts on the subject matter throughout your blog post, you don’t have to limit it to one.

This technique will raise your own awareness of like minded bloggers out there, while letting them know of your existence. When you link to a blog post a trackback will be sent to that person’s blog letting them know about the link.

The extra tip:
When you’re monitoring blogs, if you find posts that interest you but you don’t have a whole blog post about it in you – leave a comment.

Like the blog posts, this is best done when you have a perspective to share on the subject. Most commenting forms include a field for your website, be sure and include a link to your blog – people will often follow that link to get a better sense of who is behind the comment.