Real Words

One of the things that I’ve noticed on most of the blogs and article-hosting sites (such as HubPages) that I read is that online authors tend to be really good about posting on topics that are related to the day or month of the post itself. The obvious example is that there are lots of blog posts and articles about Christmas each December. However, you’ll also see this all throughout the rest of the year when people write on everything from summer vacations to taxes. And you’ll see it in relation to social and political events as well (for example, how many blogs talked about the inauguration this week even if they weren’t political blogs?!)

I’m the first to admit that I’m not particularly good about this. I do tend to hit the major holidays with some timely posts although that’s due more to the fact that those topics are on my mind at the time of the writing than through any real planning of my own. But despite my own lacking in this area, I can definitely see some benefits to writing on timely topics.

Some of the benefits I see in regards to writing on seasonal or otherwise timely topics include:

• There’s always something to write about. It seems like you always have topics to choose from when planning your blog writing around a calendar.
• You’re writing about the stuff that’s on your readers’ minds. This means that they’re going to automatically feel a connection with you that you can then build upon.
• You’ll probably do better in search engine searches. I’m not actually sure if this is true but I would imagine that the hot topics of the day are the ones that people are looking up in online searches.

So, if you see the benefit of writing on timely topics, how can you structure your writing so that this is how it ends up happening? Here are some tips that I think benefit the writer who wants to blog on the topics of the day:

• Keep a calendar handy. Whether you use a wall calendar or a desk calendar or the calendar on your iPhone or the Google calendar, you should have some system for keeping track of all of the things that you’ll want to be writing about on a timely basis.
• Strongly consider using the Google calendar. As just mentioned, the calendar itself is what’s important but something like a Google calendar is particularly great because you can color code the different things that are on there (so you can have holidays in one color and social or political issues in another color). It just keeps things better organized.
• Keep track of all of the major holidays that you might want to write about. A basic wall calendar will provide you with this information.
• Think about adding in some of the funky holidays as well. Use a calendar such as the bizarre calendar here to find some of the strange holidays. Specifically calendar all of those that are even remotely relevant to the topic of your blog (official pen day for writers, for example) but also calendar any that you just think you’d like to mention. There’s always a creative way to tie them in.
• Block off some room at the start of each season on the calendar. Make a list of all of the posts that are relevant to that season (graduations in the spring, summer travel, etc.)
• Think about any other annual or seasonal events that really interest you or that get a lot of attention from the readers of your blog. Film events, political events and other social events are all fair game for timely topics to write on.
• Pay attention to other blogs. You’ll notice when everyone’s blogging about the same thing and that can remind you that it’s time for you to start blogging about that as well.
• Brainstorm a list of topic ideas for various holidays, events and seasons. It’s a good idea to keep these lists handy so that you can access them at the right time each year and not have to struggle to think about what you should be writing.
• In terms of content, remember that you really only need to loosely tie the holiday or timely topic into the post. The focus should still be on writing whatever the content of your blog is. So if you’ve got a writing blog then you can do holiday posts on “great gifts for writers” and summer posts on “where writers most want to travel”.

That’s my two cents on the topic anyway. I’d love to know what other writers think about the importance (or lack thereof) on posting topics that are relevant to the day/season that we’re writing in.