Why Reactive Writing is a Great Way to Find Ideas for Your Blog

See on Scoop.it – Creating Great Blogs

Why opinions and reactions to content you read can instigate ideas for your own blog.

Luigi Cappel‘s insight:

This is very good advice. When you have an opinion on something, you are letting out your inner passion and whether you are curating a story or commenting on something that has happened, perhaps in the news, to you, or someone you know, the way you write will be personal.

One of the things people often say about my writing is that it feels as though I am talking to you right now, even if we’re not in the same room, or even in the same country.

When things get emotionally charged, you do need to consider your long term readership of your blog. If you decide to criticize a person, brand or opinion, you can polarize the readership. This can be really good because you want comments on your blog and debate is a great reason for comments.

On the other hand you can easily alienate people, so you need in my opinion, unless your audience is specifically of the same opinion as you, to keep it to a level that doesn’t beecome heated and nasty.

Ultimately its about how you want your audience to perceive you. Some of the most popular bloggers are highly opinionated and deliberately controversial and that gets them a lot of readers. Their motive may be their political agenda or simply to stir the pot as it were.

If your blog is designed to sell you as a brand, then you need to consider how people will feel about what you write. If you feel strongly about something like helping people manage their finances and not lose the roof over their heads by overspending, there is plenty of scope to be provocative without flaming the manufacturers of luxury products, for example.

Someone recently described me as being a highly opinionated Type A personality. I was surprised, but then when I thought about it, I am. I’m strong willed, passionate, have many years of knowledge and experience (and still learning) in my areas of expertise and never afraid to state my opinion. I trust my intuition (not right 100% of the time) because most of it is based on experience.

On the other hand, I’m currently reading the great book The Click Moment by Frans Johansson and it is also reminding me that serendipity and random chance are often more powerful than structured planning and this can be applied to blogging as well.

Anyone can swim with the fishes in the same direction and become a little fin in an school, flowing this way and that in synchronized motion, and get lost in the crowd. That’s not good for a blog. You need to stand out, swim against the flow and assert your individualism, but use reaction to what is going on to challenge common thinking by sharing your differing opinions and reactions.

If you are the same as me, one of us is redundant.