How To Update Your Blog When You Don't Have Time to Write

SUMMARY: A simple – and FREE -- way to update your Wordpress blog, Twitter timeline, and Facebook page using a social bookmarking service like Delicious or Diigo.

Many personal and company blogs fail not only because it’s hard to find something to write about, but it’s also difficult to find the time and the people to keep it up-to-date. Yet for some reason it’s easy for us to find time to share content with friends, family, coworkers, and even clients by emailing them links to interesting articles, videos, and games or even posting on Twitter or Facebook.

If you visit the Creative Department blog, Squeak of the Week, you’ll notice on the left, there are posts where we found the time and the energy to write. But in the center column, titled “Seeds of Inspiration,” you’ll see a bunch of short posts, which are essentially links to stuff we found interesting elsewhere on the web. If you click one of the links it will take you to that site.



For a company, this is a great way to show how you and your coworkers think. It shows what you enjoy and appreciate. And it keeps the content on your blog fresh, which Google likey. Journalist and fellow blogger, Jeff Jarvis, said, “Write what you know best, and link to the rest.” So I’m going to show you how to link to the rest by syndicating interesting content across the web using using a social bookmarking service like Delicious or Diigo.

Step 1 Grab Your Feed

At the Creative Department, we use Delicious, but you can use whatever social bookmarking site you like, as long as they provide RSS feeds for the stuff you bookmark. The reason you need an RSS feed is because it is the secret sauce to updating our blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page.

Let’s look at my Delicious account. On the right hand side you can see the public and private RSS feeds for my bookmarks. But I don’t want to share EVERYTHING on our blog, this is MY personal Delicious account.

Again, if you look at my Delicious page you’ll notice that a lot of my bookmarks are tagged with ‘cd’. I do this because THESE are links I want to share with the Creative Department audience. And on Delicious, every tag ALSO has an RSS feed. If you add a slash and the tag, ‘cd’, to my RSS feed, you get the feed for everything I’ve tagged for Creative Department. You can add whatever tag you want to your posts to differentiate them from your personal bookmarks.

Comments

[porcupinemamma]

Hi Seamusiv:0)
Thanks so much for posting your Instructable!!

I am a bit of a technophobe, with extremley limited computer skills, but the idea of writing a blog and generating money from advertising, is really appealing. I do like to research, write, and share fun, humorous and informative ideas with friends.
Ages ago, I wrote a column for a small town newspaper, with unexpected positive feedback. I was approached by the editor of the paper to write for the paper (I would not have had the confidence to have approached her) to write the weekly column. Can you suggest a very basic simplified site that might help me post a blog?
Thanks in advance for reading,
Lyn

[seamusiv]

Thanks for reading, Lyn. If you are new to blogging, I'd recommend checking out Tumblr or IM Creator, which are both FREE, dead simple, and don't require you have any technical knowledge.

[porcupinemamma]

Hey :0) Thanks so much for your help!
I'm one of your fans! :0) See near your avatar? I'm following you (sounds a little "stockerish" huh? lol)