Continual and consistent blog posting is THE foundation your site is built upon. Without interesting content that is updated frequently there is little reason for the blog reader to continue returning to the site. This is an integral component of developing a popular blog. To add even more pressure a site owner may feel the blog building process does NOT happen overnight either but rather over a period of time. So now you are looking at an investment of your considerable efforts over time BEFORE you even see any signs of success … brother!

With all that said how does a person maintain a high level of enthusiasm and energy to consistently create blog entries while waiting for success to happen? It is only natural for someone to either run out of ideas to write about or the enthusiasm to even write. What to do?

Here are 5 tactics I use to re-energize my thinking and enthusiasm when both seem to be depleted for creating new blog entries.

Rant

Select a relevant topic (or make it relevant) to what you write about and target something about it that bothers you. Discuss why it bothers you and why your readers should care. If the topic is popular enough you will likely get a lot of traffic to your post.

Report

Sometimes just following current events (again you do want some relevancy) and relaying this information to your readers can make for a very good post. To some this type entry may seem 'lame' and without originality. It is important to remember that many a popular blog have built their entire following on simply reporting the news to them.

Reviews

Product reviews are a great service to your readers insofar as readers already trust you and this allows you to 'get up to speed' on any new products. This is also a great 'lead-in' to offering the same product for sale to readers provided of course the review is favorable.

Reveal

A format that has become very popular on television is investigative reporting. This is also an approach you can use for your own readers if you know of unethical or 'shady' practices that are exercised online. Reporting such activity is a great way to strengthen the loyalty of the blog reader and also gives the potential for being a 'blockbuster' post.

Reiterate

Dust off one of your more popular 'former' entries or articles and create a new post by pursuing it from a different direction. It is also a great idea to take an old article and focus on an area of the article that did not get much attention when it was originally composed. For instance say you wrote a 'top 10' list type of article. Take one of the items on that list and dedicate more attention and detail to just that one item in a post.

This type of format can give you plenty of content which you can develop for future post at times when you are low on new ideas.

Blog posting can and should be the most enjoyable part of managing the site however when you are low on ideas it can be dreadful. In order to develop a popular blog it is important and almost mandatory that your entries are frequent and intriguing. It is quite natural however to lose enthusiasm over a period of time since the blog building process can be a slow one. The 5 tactics discussed above serve to help 'mix up' the style and direction of your entries. Not only does this help to 'reinvigorate' your thinking but also presents to the blog reader an interesting twist apart from the style to which they have become accustomed. As the saying goes 'variety is the spice of life' so give yourself and your readers more spice.