Now, if you find you don’t have enough time to write your own blog entries, or if you would like to introduce other viewpoints or facts into your blog, you may want to consider using material from some of the many free online article directories.

These websites are dedicated to providing all kinds of content. Mountains and mountains of content, all free for you to use at your convenience in your blog.

Why would anyone give content away like that? Actually, there are many reasons. Some authors want to make a name for themselves as experts in a certain area, so they write several articles on that topic to share.

Others want to pull traffic to their personal web pages, and share the articles they wrote for their own blogs or sites with the public with that aim in mind. Still others want to share information about a new product, and welcome all comers to comment on the press release and link back to their product page.

Of course, each and every one of these authors wants proper credit for their work. They get that credit when you include their byline (signature) information along with the article. This is usually a condition of using the free content.

Also, most require that you publish the work as is (no editing!) and that you to link back to their website so that readers can see their information in context. However, these conditions are not a problem for most users, and you should be able to easily comply, opening up worlds of ready-made content for you to incorporate in your blog.

Typically, all the information you will need to include with the article to cite it properly will be available at the end of the article in a little space called the resource box. This resource box will have the authors name, a link to a page of the authors’ choice, and sometimes a one or two sentence description of the author and the site included.

Headline news reviews can also be a good way to incorporate outside material into your blog. One tactic that is often used is to copy a news story into your blog, or provide a link to the news page for your readers. Above the link or news article, you can put a paragraph or two expressing your thoughts on the matter. It is a quick way to create more posts and more unique content for your blog.

Another way you can get information to make a new blog post is to use Google search for facts, ideas, and trend information. When using Google, you are searching for facts to help generate an original post for your blog. First you need to consider an element of your topic to search for online. Then, you can run a Google search and see what you find.

Naturally, you will get pages and pages of results for any query. However, one of the nice things about Google is that you can quickly and easily review large amount of information.

The first thing to note is that the results listed in the tan box on top and down the right hand column of the page are paid placements—these are not ‘organic’ results. Organic results are the naturally occurring matches for your search.

Generally, the organic results section of Google will give you better quality information than paid placements, who may simply be trying to sell you their product rather than provide you with any information.

To get original content from your Google research, select several results from your search page. Quickly read through the information presented on each page. Take notes of interesting points on a pad of paper or bookmark the web page for later use.

When you are done, look back over your notes and think about your observations. You should now have enough material for a good quick blog post. Just write up two or three paragraph putting your spin on the information you found and post it to your blog.

You will be surprised how far a reputation for good quality content can take you. Just having lots of information at your site is no good to your reader. He or she is looking for useful tidbits of information. It is your job to filter through the mountains of information out on the web and separate the wheat from the chaff. Present only the interesting and informative bits and you will have readers loyally coming back to read all of your updates.

Finally, a quality blog post should contain only accurate and true information. Gossip, slander, and lies are not popular in the real world and they are not well-liked in the blogosphere, either. Also, deliberately spreading false information about individuals or companies online can get you into offline trouble with the law. So play it safe—check your facts, stick to what you know or can prove, and don’t attempt to mislead your readers.

An exception to this rule would be a gossip blog. If your website is Colorado Buffs Football Rumors, then publishing less than 100% proven information is crucial to your venture. However, even if you run a celebrity gossip, sports commentary, or other entertainment blog, remember that deliberately misleading your readers and consistently publishing false data will ruin your reputation and drive traffic away from your site.

Getting Ideas and Doing Research

Now that you know the basic elements of a blog post and the characteristics of a good quality blog post, you should be able to sit down and write as many as you like, right?

Wrong! We’d all love to just have eloquent posts flow effortlessly from our fingertips, but it never seems to be that easy. Blogging can be fun and enjoyable, but it is also hard to just sit down at the computer and pound out dozens of good quality posts, even if you know a lot about your subject. No matter how well you know your niche topic there will almost surely be days when you are not able to think of a single good idea for a post for your blog. Writers block does not discriminate. It strikes online authors as well as their offline counterparts.

Fortunately, there are two easy ways to find new topics and original content for your blog, both free. The first tool is headlines, and the second tool is Google. When using headlines, all you need to do is look at the breaking stories of the day and consider how your niche area is affected by the news. Responding to current events is a great way to keep your blog on the cutting edge of new developments. Also, by watching the news you can get other ideas of things that might be weighing on your readers minds.

Good quality blog posts can be about any topic, but they share a few key characteristics. Good blog posts use good grammar and spelling, inform or entertain the reader, and contain accurate and true information.

Good grammar and spelling are essential to a good blog, and yet many bloggers ignore the basics of good writing when posting to their blogs. Some think that because a blog is less formal than other kinds of web communications, rules don’t matter. However, this is not true.

It is especially untrue if you plan on using the blog as a source of income. You don’t have to be perfect, but using a spell checker before posting up your content and making an effort at good sentence structure will help you communicate with your readers. Using good grammar and spelling will also help improve your virtual reputation in the eyes of your readership—they will consider you to be more intelligent or at the very least well-educated.

For the sake of your readership, write using traditional punctuation, capital and lowercase lettering, and try to get your posts presentable.

Presentable posts are easy to read. They are broken into short paragraphs instead of one solid block of text. This makes posts easier on the eye of your reader and makes your readers more likely to return to your blog.

Also, short paragraphs with lots of white space look less intimidating to a potential reader than a dense block of text, which may scare them away. Keep your blog looking warm and inviting by having posts that look easy to browse.

Next, your blog post should inform or entertain your readers. You earn repeat blog traffic by having useful information or quality entertainment items housed at your site. Idle thoughts and keyboard ramblings are not likely to earn you readers unless you are very funny.

Therefore, earn repeat visitors by having good information available in your niche for your readership to enjoy.

Now that you have chosen your niche and set up the technical shell of your blog with WordPress, it is time to get to the heart of things: Content!

Content is very important to your blog. The level of content provided goes straight to the heart and soul of the operation. Therefore, it is very important to have good content on your blog from the very beginning.

Fortunately, there are a number of sources where you can get the material and data needed to make good content for your blog. However, while there are many places to learn and absorb data, there are only two ways that content actually gets added to a blog. You can either write the material by yourself and post it up on your blog, or you can get content from somewhere else and post it up to your blog. This is the “create or cut & paste” dilemma faced by many bloggers.

Now, out in the blogosphere there are some people who may say that you are not a “real” blogger if you are not creating 100% of your blog content on your own. These purists will insist that you diminish yourself and your blog when you incorporate previously created content on your site. This can be an especially strong accusation in blogs that are based around your personality, especially if you are passing off the work of others as your own. Yet using premade content openly and acknowledging that you do so and crediting the authors should not carry any stigma.

You may personally have qualms about incorporating content written by other people into your personal blog. After all, it is your blog so why not have each and every piece of content be your own work? However, to have a money-making blog that keeps people coming back, you need new content frequently, and it can be difficult to come up with all of that content on your own.

Therefore, if you want to consistently provide fresh content for your readers, you can’t be a purist. You need to deliver the goods in the blogosphere, and the goods here mean frequent updates for your readers. The most important thing for the long-term health of your blog (and your wallet) is to have good quality content, no matter who wrote it.

Naturally, the above is not to imply that you should take the work of others and pass it off as your own creation. Unless you have hired a ghostwriter for that specific purpose, any borrowed content should be properly cited, much as you would cite a quotation in an essay. But we’ll talk more about what is known as “content acquisition” in a moment. In the next post, I’ll review some basic guidelines for creating your own content that you will need to remember and consider as you put together material for your loyal readers.