The last few days have been quiet at DotComDud.com with no posts since the 3rd. I do apologise for the lack of updates. Unfortunately, I got side tracked with real life and didn’t have enough time to sit down and hammer out any complete blog posts. This made me realise, I need to have a system in place for this kind of situation. So I’ve decided to spend some time on creating a few backup posts.

What is a backup post? They are complete posts that will sit in my drafts list until they are needed. I don’t just mean writing up 5 posts and then gradually publishing them over the next week either, these posts will only be published when the situation calls for it, such as when I can only get online for a couple of minutes in a day. I’ll be able to publish one of these pre-written posts and be happy with the knowledge that my blog isn’t starting to look like a ghost town.

Here are some important points that should be considered when creating your backup posts:

• Are you using your A-grade material in posts that might never see the light of day? I am not saying that your backup posts should be rubbish but don’t waste your best ideas on posts that will potentially remain drafts for a long time. If you have good stuff to write, get it out there as quick as you can
• Will they age well? Backup posts shouldn’t be “in the moment” posts. They should have a timeless quality to them, so that they are still relevant in 2 months or 2 years time when you need them, not just when you wrote them. Writing posts about current news and events is great right now but as an example, will your readers care about the 2008 US election as much in June next year?
• Set aside some time, perhaps once a month, to check on your backup posts and add/edit them as required. A good backup system is one that is maintained properly.
• Consider labelling your backup posts, so that it is clear what they are for. As I’ve done in the screenshot below, I’ve added “BACKUP POST:” to the draft titles, which I will remove when they get posted.

So what kind of posts make good backup posts?

• Simple lists of common resources - Top ten lists of your most useful links, your favourite blog or best online time-wasters. Your readers will probably know about all the resources you list but having them all in one place is always handy and these drafts are easy to keep updated as time goes on.
• Revisit an old post with some updated information - This means that a lot of the post content will be recycled from an older post, meaning less work is required to create the post and it also comes with the added benefit of exposing your latest readers to your classic content.
• Questions for you readers - Rather than creating an entire post, how about posing a few questions to your readers. Posts like this can be great as regular posts as well, they are quick to create, help encourage discussion and you can use the responses you get to craft a new post in the future, discussing the results.

Finally, as time goes on, you can add new backup posts and to publish the ones that have been lying dormant, waiting to be released upon your readers. There is no point in writing posts that will NEVER get published but having some spares up your sleeve can only help in keeping your blog rolling.

Are your posts nothing but brutal waves of text smashing against your reader’s entertainment spans, driving them to boredom and away from your blog? Ask yourself, do you as a reader look forward to reading long, poorly formatted writing or do you just click over to a different page? Laying out blog posts that look attractive to people before they’ve even read the headline is very important.

You don’t want to scare readers off. Formatting your text properly with paragraphs, headings, bullet points, bold text points and important excerpts highlighted are all useful but you shouldn’t forget the advantages you get from including images as well. Images not only mix things up with a bit of colour but you get the added benefits of;

• Pictures can be a great eye catcher, so if you post title doesn’t get readers interested, a picture might do the job instead
• Images are a great way to add your personality to the blog. You can have images that match your gimmick, reflect your niche, appeal to your demographic (such as pictures of attractive women for a largely male audience, don’t forget - sex sells) or anything you can think of, it’s your personality after all that you are trying to communicate
• Being able to summarise information in one picture instead of paragraphs of details.

Good pictures can be hard to find though, even more so when you take the time to find pictures you can legally use. That’s why I thought I’d share the great resource that is Wikimedia Commons! You can search among more than 3 million images on just about any topic you can think up. The majority of the images are free to reuse and all images have their exact licensing details clearly listed. So be such to check it out next time you are writing a post that could do with some pictures to spice it up and bring your post to life.

More details on the reuse of images from Wiki can be found here.