How to Revive Your Dead Blog

One of the hardest things to do after losing interest in blogging is finding the desire to start again. There is always the fear of failing again, but with the right commitment and a few ideas it can be done successfully.

Redesign

In my mind, the best way to get your creative juices flowing is a redesign. Obviously the visuals are a big part of this, but take a look at your code. I recommend starting clean. Take some time to decide how you eventually want your blog to handle. Will you be posting images? Do you want advertising? Will your markup be SEO friendly? Try to begin to establish your image.

If you are just starting out, make sure you are crosschecking your code in multiple browsers often. One of the hardest things to do after seeing your mangled design in IE6, or 7 for that matter, is narrow down the problem.

If design isn’t your bag and you are using a pre-made template, find a way to make it your own. An hour to learn a bit of CSS won’t kill you, and a few tweaks here and there will set you apart from the rest. But don’t butcher it. There are days when I wonder why some of the top themes are so popular, and then I remember Myspace.

Focus Your Content

A great tool to assist you in working on your new design is to take a look at your pool of topics. Are you going for a specific niche? Add some elements that allow users to immediately identify with it. Perhaps your blog is more personal and covers a variety of topics. Drop a few subtle hints, but don’t scare people away with “Fluffles the Cat says:” as the first subsection in your sidebar. The main idea here is to decide on a good set of topics. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional sidebar. In fact it adds more personality to your blog and allows your readers to see who you really are.

Connect with Relevant Sources

For most of you, blogging started with reading blogs. If your blog has died off, maybe it’s time to start getting involved in other’s efforts again in an attempt to reignite your initial passion. At the end of the day, blogging is about conversation, or at least the prospect of conversation. Make sure your comments are relevant. This means no “Hey that’s cool, I write stuff too at ….” People will follow your name if they like what you have to say.

Schedule Posts

For some reason this technique is a mystery to most bloggers, as it was to me when I started my first blog. The ability to write ahead of time seems bizarre when people think of the Internet as an impulse platform, but this can be a great way to get ahead and avoid the pressure of constant updates.

In the same vein, make sure you dedicate time to blog, or give yourself a reasonable quota that you would like to meet. Don’t overestimate your ambition, but don’t underestimate it either. It’s all about finding aconsistency that fits you and your topic.

Don’t make the same mistakes again

Perform an autopsy on the fallen blog. Find out what killed it and find out what worked. Bring back some articles that worked, and ditch the ones that didn’t. Better yet, fix the ones that didn’t and make them into something useful.