Liven It Up Ten

Ten Things to Revitalize Your Blog

Ask for Opinions: Get feedback from your visitors on what they'd like to see at your weblog. If you're not getting a lot of traffic, talk to your blogging friends, or cruise around and check out what they're doing at their places.

Change Your Template: If it's not a huge hassle putting up a new template, you may find switching to a different theme, page arrangement or color scheme will ignite your enthusiasm for new content.

Have a Mini-Workshop: Are you an amazing outliner? Do you have the ultimate character worksheet? Have you found the perfect deadline week diet? These are all great topics to discuss on your blog.

Hold a Challenge: Set a goal for yourself and challenge your visitors to join in. This can be anything from timed wordcount goals (aka write 500 words every day for a week) to reading a certain portion of your TBR (one fun variation is to see how many books you can read in a month.) With challenges you can do update posts, too.

Interview a Character: Sitting down with your favorite character and doing a Q&A is not only fun, it's also a good way to exercise your characterization skills. Angle your interview by taking on the role of a fan, a news reporter, a police detective or your character's nemesis.

Rename Your Blog: Sometimes a simple trick like renaming your blog can be the one thing that makes all the difference. If you're not sure what to rename it, see the next idea.

Run a Contest: Holding contests are fun, especially if your visitors are competing for a prize (doesn't have to be an expensive one.)

Show Off an Accomplishment: Sharing something you've done often inspires others to get going on their projects. It's also fun to talk about the ups and downs of any project you've tackled and finished.

Start a Weekly Feature: Designate one day for a particular feature: Biz News, Writing Wisdom, What I'm Reading, etc. If you can't think of a feature you'd like to do every week, join an ongoing weekly blog feature group.

Tell a Story: Your blog can be a window to your days, your life, your worlds. What would we see if we looked in there yesterday, last week or tomorrow? Tell us.