At a recent blogging workshop in Barrie, the room was alive with excitement as beginner bloggers were brainstorming in pairs about potential topics for future blog posts.
As I tuned in to one conversation, I suggested that one of the ideas I heard could actually be a potential series of four or five posts.
Wow! From no blog to your first five blog posts – all from one idea!
And just imagine if you were using my Weekly Blogger method. That series of blog posts could serve as your monthly articles for FOUR OR FIVE MONTHS! Then you would simply add some connecting posts each week that link back to each feature article.
Sounds pretty sweet, but how do you know if an idea will work for a series?
- You have different clients with similar problems. For example, a relationship coach might be writing about how to compromise, and realize this is just as relevant for business partners and friends as it is for life partners.
- You’ve made a list. Maybe you’ve already come up with a Top 10 (or 5, or 3) list and now you want to delve deeper into each point.
- Your writing is overflowing. You start writing and as you get into the flow, it turns into a long post that is no longer focused on a single topic, but is now a collection of related ideas.
- They’re asking you for more. You’ve received several frequently asked questions that are similar but don’t have exactly the same focus.
- Things are getting heavy. Sometimes you’ll want to teach your readers a deeper, more complex system or explore aspects of a theory you’re working on (e.g., this series I did about the stages of content marketing).
Another approach for generating a blog post series is to convert a longer piece of writing (e.g., a book chapter or longer article) into several blog posts.
So when you get your next great idea, why stop at just one post? See if you can get a whole series out of it!