In How To Automate Your Blogging Tasks – Part 1 we discussed how to automate blogging tasks in wordpress like automating posting to Twitter, Facebook and Buzz about your latest blog post, how to schedule posts and back up your database. Now, let’s talk about we can automate your traffic generation activity.

In my Top 10 WordPress plugins post I have mentioned AddThis and Digg Digg plugins that help your readers to share your posts with others. Driving social traffic to your site is important, but at the same time it is also important to have your blog post bookmarked at some of these social sites, as Google loves these sites. If your link is bookmarked at one of these sites, there are good chances of Google picking them up quickly and listing them on search engine.

So, without waiting for others to bookmark your blog/blog post on social sites, how can we automate the process to drive traffic from social sites?

OnlyWire

This cool service helps us to automate the bookmark submission task to Social sites. It currently has 36 social sites where you can automate your content and bookmark distribution. Using it is very simple; you need to create an account with Onlywire. Once you have created an account, you need to put your login details for the social sites, this is one-time activity and that’s it you are done with the set-up.

To use their free service you will need to put a link (button) back to Onlywire on one of your sites. You need to download the software and install on your machine to carry out the submission process, it runs in background and you just have to enter captcha for 4-5 sites that need it. Otherwise the entire submission process is pretty much automated.

I had a WordPress plugin that used to automate the complete task, Onlywire Auto submitter plugin would automatically submit a bookmark about my latest blog post to my Onlywire account without lifting a finger and then I have to keep the Onlywire software open in background, which will do all the hard work. Unfortunately the plugin stopped working when I upgraded to WordPress 3.0, but I will let you know once the update is out, so that you can also automate bookmark submission directly from your WordPress.

So, this is just to Social sites. Now, let’s talk about other sources.

RSS Directories

I have specified following directories to ping every time I post on my blog:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

I have put this list in my Settings >> Writing  >> Update Services text area. So, WordPress would alert these popular RSS submission services that my blog is updated and they will in-turn let other blog directories know about the same.

Create content on Web 2.0 Sites

We have bookmarked our blog post on social sites, we have also informed RSS directories about the same, now how about using the same content to drive traffic from web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, Livejournal, Knol etc. You may be aware that these web 2.0 sites allow you to create your own content pages, where you can share content with the entire world, every site calls this page by different name, but purpose is the same.

I use Incansoft’s Web 2.0 Bot to submit my content to Web 2.0 sites. I use 2 part strategy that I will describing in my future blog post, so, I will post one part on Web 2.0 site and in the end I will provide link to my blog to read the Part 2.

Web 2.0 Bot has very clean and easy to use interface, you have to create your company profile and then create your account profile. If you already have accounts at the Web 2.0 sites then you can put in your login details, or Web 2.0 Bot can create accounts for you.

Then you can submit your content to the sites you select. A cool feature that I really like for Web 2.0 Bot is that it allows you to enter your content in Jet Spinner Syntax, that way your content submitted to different Web 2.0 sites will appear to be unique. This is much better than hand submission of your content to all web 2.0 sites.

There you are we have covered today a cool free service to automatically submit your content/bookmark to 36 social sites, we also covered the sites to put in your WordPress blog to ping to RSS directories and a cool software that allows us to submit semi-automate content submission to Web 2.0 sites.

I have covered automation of tasks in this 2 part series, I haven’t mentioned about Outsourcing all these tasks, as that’s a different ball game all together.

Hope you found the blog automation part 1 and part 2 useful. So, how do you automate your blogging tasks?

Call it writer’s block or call it exertion but all of us do face this situation when we have to deliver the content in form of blog post or article in our schedule time and we draw blank, we can’t think of anything to write about.

Does this happen with you? Let’s say you write a weekly blog post or article for your list members or your membership site and this week while you sit in front of computer you totally draw blank. Nothing to write about, you feel like you have exhausted all topics.

Let’s see 9 things that you can write about in such a situation:

1) Your thoughts/views about latest news

Everyone is interested in knowing other person’s thoughts or views about the latest event or latest news item. It can be about election, it can be about movie, it can be about a celebrity controversy or it can be about Twitter or Yahoo or Google getting hacked. What do you have to say about it? If you are well informed and you have read about the news piece, rather than just reporting the same to your readers, you can add your view/take/perspective to the same. This will give them information in addition to what is publicly reported.

2) About Your Personal Life

Have you watched the movie Marley & Me, Owen Wilson who plays John Grogan in the movie, becomes popular columnist by writing about his personal life, people really enjoy reading it. In the online world also, your readers want to know about your personality, your family; this is to make sure that you are real human being and not a machine. So, if you don’t have anything to write about, once in a while you can write a personal update, your son/daughter’s graduation day, your wife delivering a baby girl, pictures of your travel to the Bahamas etc. Don’t over do it, but if you do it in right mix, people will know more about your personality and they will feel more connected.

3) What You Use and Like

All of us have our favorites, if someone asks us to talk about them we will keep going for hours. If someone asks me about movies or about FRIENDS, I can keep talking for hours. Similarly, if you don’t have anything to write about them share some of the cool resources you have been using, won’t take much time and thinking for you to list them down and will give your readers a unique perspective. Let’s say putting together Top 10 News Sites in your niche or Top 10 Plugins you use for Firfox or 5 Software that empowers your Windows 7 Laptop or 2 Cool Gadgets that allowed you to cut down your communication cost etc. Think about what you use and what you like about those things and typing will come naturally!

4) Unique twist on what someone else has written

Copying someone’s writing blindly is one thing and reading it, analyzing it or dissecting it is another thing. Everyone has his/her thoughts on different things, it can be about how things work, it can be about new strategies to implement or it can be about future of an industry etc. When someone writes an article or blog post s/he is expressing his point of view. Now, if you don’t have anything to write about, but you do remember having a unique twist which can take the strategy described in the blog post or article to the next level, then you should give credit to the original writer and build up your thoughts on the same and express your unique twist. If your twist is good, your readers will only remember you and forget the original writer! J

5) Expand on your thoughts shared earlier

Reusability is the key in writing. We shouldn’t repeat our knowledge again and again, but if we can reuse it in some manner it’s always a good tactic. There will be multiple thoughts or ideas around a topic that we write about, but it may happen that while we were writing an article only a part of it struck to us, or let’s say some new technology or strategies have enhanced the tactic we shared earlier or you had briefly touched upon the strategy when you shared it with your readers, then you can always expand the same add more meat to it and share it as a full fledged blog post with your readers. You may shared top 5 software you use, where may you put just one paragraph about Audacity or Camtasia but at a later date you can expand on the same to write a detailed tutorial.

6) Create bulleted list of your thoughts

Converse to the previous idea, in this one, you have expressed your thoughts on different aspects of copywriting or product creation or blogging in full length blog posts or articles, how about reusing them to create a blog post that lists different aspects of copywriting in bulleted list. Since you already have the content you have to put only the intro and summary and select the content you want to put for each bullet point.

7) Your Impression on Trends

All of us actively or passively, what’s happening around us, many a times we tell our kids, “In our time, we didn’t have mobile or internet” or “when you grow I don’t know if you guys will email each other to join on the lunch table, even though everyone is in the same house!”. These are some of the observations about trend, you can write about the trends that you have observed in the topic of your expertise and where do you see it going.

Your Business goal

If you have set up a goal to achieve over the period of next year or 3 years or 5 years, you can share it with them. This will help in two manners, making it public, creates that motivation for you to achieve, since you have publicly announced it and the other advantage is people will feel motivated looking at your goals. In fact they would want to know how you are doing on your goals; you may find some like minded people who will help you achieve your goals.

9) Time Management or Productivity Tips

All of us have our personal short cuts to achieve our goals or do various tasks. Everyone wants to know about short cuts so that they can accomplish more in the give time frame. You can share some cool things you do that helps you to be more productive or allows you to manage your time effectively.

So, there you are with 9 things to write about when you are drawing blank and don’t know what to write about.

What do you do? Which is your favorite tip?