If You Have A Blog But Not A Lot Of Time, Here Are 5 Tips To Help

Ten minutes a day, three times a week is enough for you to make serious waves with your blog. However, if you want to add content more frequently, and you don't mind sharing your blog's identity with other authors, then adding guest bloggers is a good idea. However, the trade off with not adding your own content and allowing others to add on your behalf is that you will have to devote the extra time you aren't blogging to monitoring the posts and comments on your blog. For a site that talks about a common issue or interest, or that is set up to create an online community, allowing this kind of authorship is a great way to build a readership. However, make sure to keep an eye on your content to be sure that it is appropriate, fits the theme and isn't spam.

by: Lynette Chandler

1. Start a Community Blog. A community blog is just that, a community of like-minded people who contribute to a blog. One of the obvious advantages to this type of blog is that you don't need to spend a lot of time posting yourself to be part of an active blog. If you have a community of three or more people and you each post at least twice a week then you will have a pretty active blog. Be sure to use an RSS feed and have all contributors post the feed on their sites to get the benefit of each sites visitors.

2. Hire a team of bloggers. Newspapers have contributors, blogs can too. If you've ever used writers to do articles and content for you , they can do the same type of thing with a blog. Many of the most successful blogs are already doing this. The combination of group promotion effort, regular updates and pinging can help bring in traffic quickly. One thing to note here is blogs are a somewhat social tool. Some very popular niche blogs are not all that visible in the search engines, yet they get a lot of traffic because people recommend them and they become a sort of buzz hub. Search engines do not always pick up on this but they do eventually. This is why group blogging can be very powerful because you're leveraging the power of not one (your) influence group but several people's influence group. If you do pay your bloggers, you can always offset this cost by displaying Adsense ads. Many popular blogs earn a good amount in Adsense, that they make a nice profit even after paying their bloggers team. After a while it becomes a passive income stream.

3. Recycle Content. By taking previously published articles, interviews or even audio and breaking it up into blog sized pieces you can recycle old content and make it new again! You can break up long pieces into a bunch of segments and have a series going for, say, a week or so. Then you won't have to worry about coming up with new content for a week!

Audio and video are great tools for blogs. Users go to blogs to find content about things they are interested in from sources that they trust. Providing them with good content and interesting extras that they would not normally know about adds value to you and your blog as an information source. Recycling content is a good idea as long as you create enough of your own to make it unique. Add your own insight and incorporate external content as part of your identity. This will add to your status as an expert in your field.

4. Include audio. For some of us, it's much easier to speak than to write. So, mix up your blog. Carry a small portable MP3 recorder or blog by phone. What a convenient way for moms who are running around all day , busing the kids where they need to go , doing errands , and whatever else needs to be done. Maybe you're stuck in traffic, or waiting for the kids to get out piano class or school. An idea or thought strikes and you think "Oh I need to share that on my blog" so, pick up your phone (assuming you have a cell phone - and many of us do), dial a number, say what's on your mind, save it and you're done. Your blog is published. If you're using Blogger, you can do this for free through AudioBlog. It involves calling a long distance number, but most cell phone plans don't charge extra for long distance anyway so you're not incurring any extra cost.

If you're using another blog publishing tool like WordPress, Movable Type or TypePad, then you'll need a service like AudioBlogger.com. This one is a paid service but it's only $4.95 a month and it gives you more options like a nice flash player, statistics and even video that make it worth while.

5. Automating Your Blog. One of the things I love about using Wordpress as a publishing tool is that it offers a forward blog entry option that saves me tons of time. By using this tool you can blog ahead of time and have your entries posted on the day and time you choose. So let's say you have a week's worth of posts ready to go. You don't have to come back each day and post, instead you write everything up in one day and schedule a new post out 24 hrs after the next. This will save you time!

Let's face it. There will be times we have a ton to say and times we have little or nothing to share. Instead of having multiple entries one day and nothing over the next few days, by using forward entry you can blog everyday of the week. Or rather you blog once and the blog publishing tool does the job automatically the rest of the week. You can even forward blog for weeks and months ahead of time.

Note: Blogger users unfortunately cannot do this because Blogger publishes all entries regardless what you date it immediately.

Blogging shouldn't feel like writing a book. Just be mindful everyday of experiences you have that could be useful to your audience. Or, when you are reading through your daily information sources and going about your routine, point people to information that is going to help them or their business. This will reinforce your status as a valuable information source to them and, in the best of cases, a trusted advisor. People want practical solutions to their problems and real world examples for growing their businesses. Although community blogging is good if you want tons of content posted regularly, be sure that diluting your voice doesn't negatively affect your goals and purposes for your blog.

About The Author
Affectionately nicknamed Tech Diva by her peers, Lynette Chandler regularly dispenses blogging and RSS help to countless business owners. Visit http://www.BloggingStarterPack.com to learn more about blogging and get a copy of her video free.

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