Quiddity! - the SEO Blog

Being a newcomer (I hate the term 'newbie' – Agh!) to the world of blogging and social media, I had to take a time out and think to myself, what's the best way to approach the second post on a new blog?

By second post, I mean the second serious post. You'll see that I made not one but two (I don't do things by halves, you know) introductory posts, before what I like to refer to as my 'first-post proper '.

I've run it a bit like the English FA Cup (the pinnacle of English football/ soccer tournaments), in that they have two rounds for all the lower division clubs, and then the Premiership and Championship teams join in on the third, which is referred to as the 'first-round proper'. See what I've done?

So how would a newcomer like myself go about tackling that 'difficult second (in my case fourth) post'?

Niches
Well first off, I realise that I'm squeezing myself into a pretty tight niche here. How many readers will actually be contemplating their second ever post? Not many, I'll wager.

Nevertheless, not one to let common sense get in the way of a bad idea, I decided to press on regardless.

What are your Peers Saying?
Well firstly I visited my usual haunts of Sphinn and StumbleUpon as they're always a handy resource for finding new stuff and getting expert hints and tips, as well as the latest breaking news regarding this industry. I also ran down my RSS feed, in no particular order, to check out my favourite blogs that I hadn't yet picked up on.

Reading what other people within your niche or industry are saying is a great source of inspiration. You can use your post to comment on what they've said, disagree with, or put a brand new spin on it entirely. The world, indeed, is your oyster. And with said world opened up to you through the internet and social media/ networking sites their really isn't any excuse not to find something worth writing about.

Which didn't help me (I'm still looking for that excuse, And I'll come up with it, if it kills me).

Be Original
So hey! If I couldn't think of a new spin on what somebody else was saying, I figured out (after much banging of one's head against the keyboard) that perhaps I should say something startlingly original myself. Start a whole new ball rolling, so to speak. But what? What could I possibly have to say that could be of interest to anybody returning to - possibly with baited breath - or stumbling upon this humble little blog? 

Well the second post is of major importance, as ideally you want it to maintain whatever momentum the first post has built up, if it's seen as a letdown then you could lose your audience just as quickly as you gained it. 

... Still with me?...

Then there's always the temptation to either do a rehash, or a 'part two' of your first post. All well and good for a quality, established blogger , but this early on in a blogging career, it might just mark you out as a one-trick pony. The important factor here being that you want your audience to return for the third post.

So draw on your strengths, whatever they may be. If you write well , let it show. If you are an expert in your field , don't be afraid to share your knowledge. If you hold strong opinions , let rip with them. Controversy always sells.

But there was I, racking my brains for something original to write and coming up short every time. Unless, of course, anybody's interested in what I'm having for dinner tonight... No? Thought not.

Get to the Point
So where to next? Well with time running out, I needed to find a point to my post. Something that would reward the reader for staying with me through to the end - that way I could fill around it afterwards and hope nobody noticed.

Maybe that approach would pay dividends. 

Well it didn't! Unable to come up with an original theme - actually experiencing feelings of fear and doubt that whatever I wrote would fail spectacularly and see me booted out of the blog-o-sphere post-haste - my attempts to find a salient point worth making and then working backwards from there, were sorely  lacking.

Inspiration can come from the Unlikeliest of Sources
So I put on the Beatles' White Album. Perhaps a bit of music would inspire me. I reached the final track on disc 1, a song called 'Julia', the first two lines of which go:

Half of what I say is meaningless,
But I say it just to reach you...

There it was. It hit me there and then. A summarisation of the entire blog-o-sphere written in 1968! I was recently told by a more than reliable source that he'd seen a statistic stating that 86% of people, when it comes to the web, don't actually read anything. Instead, they scan, picking out the bits of information that are of relevance to them and quickly forget or ignore the rest. Therefore, a good deal of what is written will never be read as it was meant to be. I for one am guilty of this and I have to wonder if it has something to do with the human brain not yet ready to accept great blocks of text on a monitor screen, having become accustomed to paper and print, or at least something we could hold in our hands, for the last 2000 years or more.

Problem Solved
So I had it. That 'Difficult Second Post' should:

1. be short and to the point.
2. not ramble on.
3. maybe take the form of a list, making it easier to draw out the relevant info.
4. be mindful of the fact there's only 14% of a prospective audience that'll read the whole thing anyway...
5. once finished, be deleted and rewritten from scratch.  
   

Now all I had to do was write the beast! Failing that, I could just wait until the 'Nigh-on Impossible Third Post', and let rip then...