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This post is by Glee Josko of Creative Fashion

Have you ever experienced sitting in front of your computer and staring at your monitor for like an hour without knowing what to write? I had. This was especially true on my early days of blogging. And believe me, it can be frustrating. Having had to waste some precious time figuring out what to blog about, which time could have been used doing some other productive things, urged me to create a bank of blog posts. Before I would start scheming for what to write for the day, I check my bank first and choose topics that inspire me to work on that day.

A bank of fashion blog posts is a long list of topics and titles of articles for your blog. You can list all the topics either randomly in a vertical paper or in a document file, or you can be more organized by grouping together topics with the same categories in Excel. Whichever works best for you, here are 5 tips to help you grow your bank.

Use Statistics Tools
It´s amazing how much you can know about what your readers need and what they want to know from you through Statistics tools. You can track the search engine terms they commonly use to find your blog. Plenty of topics will come up potential for blog posts which you otherwise would never think of.

Site Stats for WordPress

There are a lot of statistics tools which are available for you to use on your blog. Most of these tools are not only for tracking numbers of visitors and page views; they also track entrance keywords to your blog. Make use of that information. If you have self-hosted wordpress blog or a wordpress.com blog, you have that ?Site Stat? tool at your disposal. I love this tool a lot because not only does it display the current pageviews of my blog at my dashboard daily, it also displays the Referrers, the Top Posts and Pages and the top Search Engine Terms for the day. I choose the top 5 keywords each day to fill my bank of posts.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a very platform friendly tool which can be installed in almost every blog. It has more features than Site Stats, it´s more detailed in providing statistical reports about your blog; it also has a top keyword searches list although very general. The top keywords are ranked not daily but within a particular period of time. Check out the top terms used by your readers to find your blog. The search terms listed in google analytics aren´t as up-to-date as of Site Stats but they´re good enough to bring you topics to write about.

Live Traffic Feed

This tool is a blogger blog favorite. I have this installed in my blogger blog too. It´s that vertical widget which can be customized that displays the flag of the country where your visitors reside, the pages viewed and the time of visit. At the bottom of that widget is the link to the ?real time view? which will bring you to another window. There you can see the keywords used by your readers to find your blog. Add them to your bank.

Explore Yahoo! Answers

I used to actively participate in Yahoo! Answers, posting my questions and answering others´ questions. When I was experiencing difficulty coming up with topics to blog about, I thought of checking out Yahoo Answers´ Fashion and Beauty category and lo, there were so many ideas for a blog post. Scan all the questions posted there and identify which ones you´re interested to write about and add them to your bank. Once you have created that post, go back to that Yahoo question and post your link as an answer. This will also direct some traffic to your blog.

Visit Fashion and Beauty Forums

Commenting on forums related to your niche with a link pointing to your blog is a common advice when it comes to improving your blog traffic. However, you can also use the same strategy in building your bank of blog posts. Visit as much fashion and beauty forums as you can and scan the top topics with the most responses. See if those are potential blog topics and if they interest you, add them to your bank. To look for those forums just type in google ?fashion forums? or ?beauty forums? and it will deliver tons of forum links for you to visit.

Get Inspirations from Printed Magazines

You´re bombarded with plenty of online magazines and fashion blogs, why would you go back to prints to get inspired? It´s simple, when you´re facing your monitor and you see that sea of fashion websites, you get overwhelmed. I found that enjoying a drink while reading a fashion magazine allows my mind to be more creative and relaxed. Reading fashion tips and seeing beautiful inspirations from hard prints can lead you to come up with related articles for your blog.

Regular Brainstorming

Our mind is the best source of fashion blog posts. And if you´re a fashion blogger, no matter what you do or wherever you are, your mind just brainstorms for ideas for your blog. If a good idea pops up, immediately write it down. You must have a notebook with you all the time where you can quickly scribble down the idea right on the moment it comes. If you don´t, you´re very likely to forget it later.

Brainstorming with friends is another fun way of coming up with ideas for your blog. We girls love to chat about fashion, style and beauty. If you would just be keen about those topics thrown on the table while you enjoy your tea, you´ll have at least a couple of great topics for blog posts.

Creating a bank of blog posts is a smart move for every fashion blogger. It´s where you can go when you´re not certain what to write about, and it also serves as a great tool in organizing your blog. If your bank is filled with topics in categories, you can even play with it by assigning one specific topic to talk about in your blog every week or month. You can easily do it because you have a backup list of articles under each topic.

There´s no more reason for you to spend an hour or more figuring out what to blog for the day. Maximize your time and be more productive by creating a bank of fashion blog posts.

How do you build your bank of blog posts? Where do you go for inspirations and what are your sources of blog topics?

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Glee Josko teaches women how to be creative and joyful fashionistas through her blog, Creative Fashion. She believes that gleeful fashionistas are creative and upbeat. Visit her blog for inventive styling tricks and practical lifestyle tips.

Image by Bhumika.B

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