This post is more catered towards my fellow WoW blogging colleagues who suffer from "Lack-of-Idea" syndrome. Spice up your blogging! Be interesting!
The Gear List Post
Everyone wants to know what kind of gear to strive for. But people are too inherently lazy to do the research themselves. Be a good Samaritan and create a list! More often then not, you already have a general idea of what to go for so you may as well share it. When you’re creating your list, try to apply it for something (IE, what is this list going to help me do?). I wrote my Holy Priest gearlist in mind as the easiest and cost effective (in terms of time) gear to acquire to punt you into Karazhan as soon as possible.
Examples:
Part Time Druid – Fresh 70 Resto Druid: Gear Cheat Sheet
World of Matticus – Gearing Your 70 Holy Priest: My Recommendations
The Rant Post
It’s no secret that blogs are an excellent platform in getting stuff off their chest. Used correctly, it can. The trick is to do it without swearing or insulting (much). A calmly thought out and delivered rant will have a much more powerful effect then a rant that’s literally full of air and no substance. If you’re going to rant about something, drive the point home. Be obvious about why it sucks. Feed your anger and unleash it!
Examples:
Resto4Life – Bornakk: Druids Not to be "Big Green Blogs"
Lady Jess – No Desire to Play… Why?
The Link Love Post
For every blog that goes down, new blogs spring up. It’s impossible to keep track of them all. In fact, I daresay there are more blogs out there then grains of sand in the Sahara desert. Most of my blog fishing comes from a critical examination of comments, inbound links, and other blogs. A big thank you to you, the curious and exploratory blogger, for finding new blogs! The typical link love post involves a (surprise surprise) link to said new blog as well as a post that they like. In case you’ve stumbled upon a plethora of kick-ass blogs, you can go for the list approach.
Bonus points if you can do it in a sonnet.
Examples:
Kestrel’s Aerie – Blogroll Addition: Warcraft and Other Hooha (Batgrl)
Resto4life – Community Spotlight: April 24
The Strategy Guide Post
Guide posts are excellent bread and butter references. The guide can be anything from killing a boss, completing a certain quest, or levelling a profession. Do a quick look around to see what’s covered. If your idea is already taken, try to improve upon the one that you read or approach it from a different perspective.
Examples:
Too Many Annas – Resto Shaman vs. Tidewalker – A Healing Guide
Banana Shoulders – A Guide to Daily Quests V: Shattered Sun
The Addon Review Post
Different UI’s suit different people. Not everyone has the time or the energy to sift through entire addon databases to find out what’s cool and what’s not. The popularity of addons spread via word of mouth. Why not contribute to it?
Examples:
Girl Meets WoW – 6 Mods and Macros to Help You Win in Battlegrounds
Healer LFG – Essential Addons
The Question and Answer Post
Every now and then, bloggers receive an email asking for help or for their opinion on a topic. Go ahead and feature a reader email of the week or two, then open it up for your readers to chime in.
Examples:
Blessing of Kings – Ask Coriel: Pursuit of Justice for a Tank?
The General List Post
Lists are fun to do and they can be used for any topic. A majority of my posts are lists because I have fun writing them. Topics could be anything from 35 Ways to Skin a Tauren to 47 Really Shiny Epics or 14 Up and Coming Bloggers to Watch.
Examples:
Healer LFG – 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Raid
Part Time Druid – Resto Druid: 5 Things You Should Know
The Diary Post
This is the most common type of post which details what the blogger has done recently on WoW. Ranges anywhere from guild affairs to the orgasmic "We Killed This Boss" post.
Examples:
Honor’s Code – Finish Up the Week
Mama Druid – Selenyx Has Been Busy
The How-to Post
These posts are designed to help walk people through the process of doing something. They’re often fairly detailed and have cool step-by-step screenshots of the different stages of your goal.
Examples:
Petaholics Anonymous – Syncing Your WoW Stuff Across Multiple Computers
Pugnacious Priest – How to Make a Quick and Dirty Guild website Banner
Obviously, this is by no means an exhaustive list. Feel free to add your own!
hey nice post I’ve been reading your blog for a while and it inspired me to create my own. You caught my attention when you posted on wowinsider about priests so I did a bit of digging and found your blog.
I’m also a holy priest (called mattous) and am a guild/raid leader so the similarities are quite incredible. I won’t be adding to the blog for about another month because I’m trying to finish my degree but just wanted to say hi and say that this post will help me get started when I get round to doing some blogging! And yea the name of my blog is currently world of mattous (how original) but if I can think of anything better I’ll change it I’m just not feeling very creative! keep up the good work!
Matt, I loved this post; this is one of your best ever. It’s very insightful and the examples are great. So my question is this: Can a WoW blogger break out of the cliches and if so, how?
GD: Yeah, it’s quite easy. All you gotta do is *not* do what everyone else does. But that’s going to be hard because the reason these posts are “traditional” is because they work! You gotta do something unique and completely think outside the box.
You really should have linked to this post as one of your examples in the General List Post section. That would have been elegant.
Rohan: But that would be cheating!
Woot! Free plugs! I think Matt has already found me out as a lister. For Monday…Top 5 Reasons I Like Lists.
I like this post. Many others can do different things to spice up their blog posts or new ideas and topics.
I know I don’t suffer from lack of ideas. I suffer most from lack of time to do blog posts. Since I’ve been at this a while, I blog in my own way and true to the caption at the top of my blog “The Life and Times…..” of my character, experience, misadventure, and perspectives of things. Sometimes its things I’ve found that make things easier or other things.
I spend Allot of times reading blogs, links, researching and when I find things related or interesting to Tanking, my class or interesting helpfull bits I link them to my blog. More so that I myself can find it later as well as anyone else.
No one has to copy another blogger style, just find one that works for them as well as with different ideas, topics and insights. If its good, funny, informative or with perspective, I’m sure someone will find it eventually.
However a nice post Matt. Sorry my post is a bit late, but like said I’m often busy and playing catchup at times.
Still working on being a better blogger (lot’s of b’s.. whoops!) and your posts are always helpful. Keep up the great work!
You know, I don’t think we’ve had any of those at Flinthammer Hall (it’s not really our style), but that said, it’d sure be fun to try stories that do all of those.
Oh, I forgot. What about the “Guild Drama” post?
Game Dame: Yeaaaaaah, that’s there too. I was thinking about doing a Part 2 at some point in the future unless someone beats me to it =).