By Frank Barry

Twitter: http://twitter.com/franswaa

Grant shared some thoughts on his blog recently that inspired this post: “If there is one pattern I hate to see it is the new blogger who starts off with a huge bang and all kinds of enthusiasm and it drops off. They post to their blog and do all those things they need to do to have a successful blog. But for some reason it just stops. Even the “seasoned” blogger runs into a brick wall from time to time and for some reason they have “lost it”.”

We all face this at times, right? Blogger or any other profession – we start to loose steam, become discouraged, get distracted and end up uninspired. If the above describes you in any way I’ve got 6 tips for you. They aren’t going to blow your mind or help you become a rocket scientist, but they should give you a few things to think about. Let’s get started.

1) Read

I go to Borders a lot to look for books that will help me continue thinking, learning and growing. Why you ask? Well, because reading is one of the best ways to stimulate your mind. That’s a fact. So, pick up a book that inspires you to write (Heard about Trust Agents?). Find a blog post that makes you think differently. Read the newspaper to get ideas and information on current topics. Scan a magazine of your liking to help you think of post topics and titles. Read read read.

Here are five blogs that might help you out: Chris Brogan, Darren Rose, Beth Kanter, Louis Gray and Seth Godin

You should also spend some time on Twitter. The 140 character “tweets” may or may not inspire you, but you will find a lot of useful information. See Why Twitter Matters for more thoughts on this topic.

2) Stop Looking at Stats

We are all guilty of checking our Google Analytics stats daily. I do it, you do it, we all do it. The problem is just looking at stats to see if things are moving up is useless. Doing this just fills the ego up and wastes time. Resist.

3) Look at Your Stats

I know, why am I contradicting my self? Well, stats are important. You can learn a lot from evaluating them. My one tip here is simple. Look at your stats to see when you’ve had spikes in traffic over the past year. Then go figure out what posts caused the traffic spikes. From there re-read those posts to see if you can find any patters. Are you talking about a specific topic or related area that your readers find interesting? Did you format your post in a specific way? Were you providing valuable “how to” type information that helped your readers solve a problem? You see my point? Go see what you did that drove that traffic and learn from it.

4) Comment on Other Blogs

How does kicking your blog in the butt happen by contributing to other blogs? Simple. Think inspiration. By reading other peoples blogs (Grant’s got a good one here) and taking the time to thoughtfully comment you are achieving two things. You’re reading (see point one above) and your thinking about it deep enough to comment on it. This is bound to get your mind moving and will likely inspire you to write good content for your blog. It’s also good karma and helpful to the other bloggers you’re supporting. That good nature will come back to you.

5) Set Aside Time to Think

Life can be busy. We get distracted by all kinds of things. Without taking time out to think, getting away from work and stopping all the “doing” we’ll never come up with the great idea. Quiet time always helps to clear the mind.

6) Focus on Writing Content

Each of the above items is focused on helping you produce quality content for your blog. We’ve all heard the term “content is king”. This is still the case in 2009. Producing content that somehow makes people want to read it is critical to growing a blog and continuing to bring readers back. Do the things outlined about with the goal of inspiring your self to come up with fresh content for your blog. Each and every day you should be writing down ideas, thinking of topics and jottings down possible post titles. Do this and even when you’re in a rut you’ll have resources to help you get out of it.

Photo Credit: Hoggheff

I know you’ve faced the “I need to kick my blog in the butt” feeling before. What tips can you share from your experience? Let us know in the comments below.