Blog Content: What to write when you have nothing to say

Do you find yourself logged in to your blog account, ready to post, and all you end up doing is staring at your screen while your fingers occasionally mimic typing? Just me? Hmmm.

It can be difficult to sit down and write an entry for the sheer sake of writing an entry. However, to be blogging in an advantageous way, that's exactly what has to happen for your blog to be a useful information source and marketing tool!

Blogging a few times a week is the optimum for keeping reader traffic coming back to your site and hungry for more--leave your blog for too long and you may find that your readership wanes.

Here are some blogging tips to help get your writing juices flowing!

1. Write about your inspiration for your characters/topics. Did you base the character on someone? Did the idea come to you in a dream? Readers love to know why authors choose character traits and motivations and it is a great way to let your audience in to your book's world.
2. For nonfiction books, create a numbered tip list based on information in your book. You can always refer back to that blog and expand on any number of those topics for blogs in the future. Aim for about 5 or 10 tips.
   
3. Start your writing off with the sentence, "I don't really have anything to say because not much is going on." Then explain what the "not much going on" has been. You'll quickly find you can go back and change that initial sentence to read, "I've been really busy."
4. If you really can't think of anything to write, or, if you've mostly been reading online instead of writing offline, you can create a blog that provides links to interesting sites. Examples of this can even be seen on the Wheatmark blog where we share links to interesting topics we've come across.
5. On the days when you have TONS of ideas for blog posts, write them and either a) save them as drafts for your next dry spell or b) change your post options to date them for future release. You can do this on most blog platforms. On Blogger, the option is under the "Post Options" arrow at the bottom left of your composition window to the left of your labels for post field.
   

Remember, blogging is a great way to exercise your writing muscle and is also a great way to continue building your author platform. When in doubt, start writing some drivel. You can always delete an entry, save an entry that isn't working as a draft and come back to it later, or just write a little tidbit--not all blog entries have to be elaborate. Sometimes just a quick entry about a book signing or a photo of you opening your delivery of books (or simply a picture of your cat sleeping on your computer keyboard helping you "edit" your next manuscript) is all you need!