Overview: With blog content creation being a top priority of more than 50% of corporate marketers, learn how to avoid stagnant content creation

Blogging has many benefits; however, even with the ability to reach, engage, and convert prospects, your blogging might start to slow down until it becomes, well, stagnant.

Why would your blog be experiencing a wall, especially if you’re in a corporate industry where part of your marketing budget is dedicated to blogging? Entrepreneur gives great insight as to why this could be happening, for corporations or not:

1. No Content Calendar

2. No Ideas

3. Not Enough Contributors

4. Focusing On Too Much Of The Same Type Of Content

5. No Time

Staying in line with this insight, we’re going to break down these 5 points and include our professional suggestion on how you can avoid uninspiring content creation.

NO CONTENT CALENDAR:

Save your team the stress of wondering what to post next on your social media and create a pre-planned content calendar.

Hubspot research states that companies that publish more than 16 posts a month generate 3.5 times more traffic than those which publish less than 4.

Could this be the reason your blogging isn’t as inspiring as it once was? It’s easy to write content in the beginning — it seems like there are a million topics to cover. But what happens once those million topics seem to be covered?

Social Pilot explains that it’s difficult to conjure impactful topics out of the blue without having some kind of strategy.

“And oddly enough, 63% of businesses don’t have a documented strategy, which means they resort to an ad-lib approach and come up with the topics they will cover on the fly.”

Is this the part where we abashedly raise our hand for being guilty?

The thing about impromptu content creation is that some companies can pull it off… if they’re not compromising on quality.

“While the impromptu technique is good for some businesses, it is still no excuse for low-quality content. That’s why brands eliminate the risks and start out with strategic planning of a content calendar to churn out high-quality posts.”

A content calendar is a great way to stay organized without losing that momentum. Here are some additional benefits of creating a content calendar:

• Keeps you organized and on track

• Excellent for brainstorming

• Maintains consistency

• Keeps your audience engaged

• Crucial for staying in the know

• Provides visibility across departments

• Executes your social media marketing strategy

• Keeps track of your performance

We’d argue that the third point of maintaining consistency is the most crucial in regards to this specific topic of not hitting a blogging wall. If you’re able to have consistent content to push out, you’re less likely to hit a blogging wall, that’s it. Test this out for yourself (try a month or two) and see if it’s true.

NO IDEAS:

Even though you have KPIs to hit and a writing cadence to keep up with, it’s not always easy to think of the topics you’re going to write about.

It seems like there’s so much to cover, yet nothing at all. This is especially true if you’ve hit a content block. However, there’s a solution… and it’s rather easy.

PieSYNC shares that the key to easily and quickly generating lots of blog post ideas is “getting in a creative state of mind and coming up with ideas in bulk.”

What they’re referring to is a content brainstorming session. This is something their team does when they feel like they’ve run out of blog post ideas.

“This is something we do at PieSync every quarter or so to bring our ideas together and replenish our content queue fast.”

In their 4-step process they do the following:

1. Idea generation

2. Vote on all of the ideas

3. Discuss and narrow down the ideas

4. Add the best ideas to your content calendar

Throughout these steps, contributors will have time to write down ideas, vote, elaborate on top choices, and ask questions.

NOT ENOUGH CONTRIBUTORS:

Reaching scale with content marketing is hard, especially in today’s landscape with competing priorities, remote work, and a largely digital conversation. So, sometimes, outsourcing could help. Sky Word talks about the importance of external contributors to your content creation in this article.

“External experts can bring fresh ideas and perspectives to your content as well as help you produce more of it to stay competitive.”

Hiring these creatives not only alleviates some pressure from your already busy team (we’ll address the ‘running out of time’ point in a bit), but it also helps you build up your talent bench.

• Your team might be struggling to achieve daily tasks while participating in writing and marketing initiatives.

• Building up your writing talent bench is key as digital becomes the most important publishing channel.

If you haven’t considered partnering with an expert content creators, don’t write it off. Contributors can help you level-up your offerings, speak directly to the audiences you care about, and give precious time back to your internal team.

FOCUSING ON TOO MUCH OF THE SAME TYPE OF CONTENT:

With digital marketing, you need to keep your audience hooked. If you provide the same old content styles and information time and again, you’ll bore them.

With that in mind, Medium gives two reasons why you shuld use a variety of styles and topics in your content: it keeps things fresh/relevant and it appeals to different types of people. (Helping you remain interested in the writing process is a whole different perk).

Here are some pointers to keep in mind:

• If you’ve been producing shorter content, consider embracing longer, value-led blogs

• If you’re interested in shorter content, focus on crafting perfect social Stories

Storytelling can come in many forms, so if you’ve been writing for some time now, take advantage of the growing video production

NO TIME:

Ah, the infamous “no time” to create content. Finding time to do much of anything these days is like finding a needle in a haystack. So, what can you do to make more time?

Besides implementing the previous points, Content Creator Hailey from My Content Empire brings up some good points to help you find time to create more content:

• Create a Time Budget

It may not be a lack of time that keeps you from creating content, but just a lack of managing or budgeting it. Her Monthly Action Plan Generator is the perfect tool for this because it helps you gather your action-planning tools, create a summary, and build out an action plan.

• Pre-write Without Expectation

• Separate the Content Planning and Content Creation Phases

• Work in Your Biological Prime Time

Content creation is best when we’re at our most creative and focused, so your BPT is the perfect time for these activities! Remember that everyone’s BPT is individual to them. It’s worth figuring out your biological prime time so that you can save your creation time for these hours.

PRO TIP: What to do in the surrounding time? Work on other projects that don’t require as much creativity. For example, 100% of my work requires content creation/creativity. However, some blog creation, for example, is more technical than creativity. I’m also aware that my “slow down” time happens several times throughout the day — around 10a, 12p, and 2p (incrementally). I plan to work on low-creativity projects during those time, often juggling multiple projects throughout the day to avoid lack of productivity.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

One personal blogger wrote that hitting a blogging wall means taking a break, dredging through with “boring words just to feed space,” or simply calling it quits (all of these are tough to experience, but we definitely don’t recommend the latter).

Content creation requires time and focus, but it isn’t impossible even if you find yourself hitting a wall. Apply any (or all) of the tips above and see if any (or all of them) work for you!