Sometimes, no matter how strict and disciplined our posting schedules are, there are events that will forcibly push us out of our rhythm, such as family tragedies and emergency out-of-town trips (to places without good Net access, to boot). The longer the event, the more work gets piled up, and the greater the disorientation upon our return. That said, count me as one disoriented blogger. (I have been one for the past two weeks!)

In response to this problem of mine, I cooked up a list of activities which helped me ease myself back into the numerous problogging tasks on hand. Hope these can help future bloggers who’ll unexpectedly get yanked out of “the flow”.

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Tired of sifting through your RSS feed subscriptions for a blog post inspiration? Looking for new ways to dish out content that’s unique on the Net? You can try these offline sources (feel free to list more in the comments!):

Newspapers – Not every article of the print newspaper appears in the online version. When you quote text from a print article and build a blog post around it, you can end up with original, and even linkbait, content. Of course, do some research first with the search engines. This ‘technique’ works well with:

1) National issues (an example: my old The Philippines’ ICT Ranking: Dismal post), which when marketed well (social voting, comments on your countrymen’s blogs, emails) can generate good attention and traffic – after all, national issues are always mixed with an iota of honor, pride, and patriotism; and

2) Niche topics buried deep in the paper’s subsections, with tech, health, and the arts as some examples. Niche newspaper sections = niche blogs. If I had a cactus blog, I’d be a very happy man right now, as the daily broadsheet I subscribe to has a cactus section (for some reason).

Magazines – Magazines are perfect for niche blog content as they almost always revolve around one field of interest only. Be it about mathematics or Dungeons & Dragons, a magazine article can talk about something that your blog’s readers might be interested in. A magazine article turned blog post can be seen in action right here in Performancing.

Books – We’re not talking about book reviews here. I believe this is best used with nonfiction books, though writing a political blog post about a chapter in Tolkien’s fantasy saga isn’t out of the question, too ;-) In nonfic books, what the author states as fact or as his viewpoint/opinion can get your blogging gears rolling, especially if you strongly disagree with it. Remember, it doesn’t matter if the book is old or new – a book is an eternal, tangible piece of the height of human discourse and creativity.

Events – Product launches, blog awards/meet-ups, expos, you name it, it can be blogged. These events often have press/media kits and souvenir programs, and they’ll be handy reference guides when you write a blog post. Of course, the info found in these kits/souvenirs might also be found online, and that’s why your personal experiences and self-taken photos count! One example is Ia’s post about the recent Adobe CS3 Launch in Manila.

Not entirely.

In my previous posts, I’ve mentioned from time to time my disdain for blogs (and ‘probloggers’) relying almost exclusively on free content from article directories. (Disclosure: I own an article directory.) Two reasons why I think public domain articles do more harm than good for our blogs:

• Free articles circulate widely on the Net, which means you’re not alone in using them. The duplicate content might merit you a penalty in the search engines, especially Google.
• It speaks ill of the blog owner if he can’t produce original entries with his own tone/voice.

However, when used judiciously (and infrequently), free articles can get you out of a rut, provide you with keyword-rich content, and can be another way to showcase your expertise in your industry. Here’s what you can do with free articles on your blogs:

• Combine the strongest/most interesting points from different related articles. You’ll be relying on quoted text here, injected with your own opinions.
• React to the article. Found the author’s points misleading or downright erroneous? Correct him in your blog. Found the article to be the most info-packed content written in 400 words you’ve seen in a while? Praise and suggest it to your readers.
• Discuss the article in the context of a previous blog post. This won’t be hard, especially if you’ve been writing tons of posts on your blog and your topic is a popular article category (e.g. internet marketing, pet care, travel destinations).
• Compare and contrast the article’s points with those of a blog post from an established blogger in your industry. Not only will you attract the attention of your fellow (and quite famous) blogger, this type of blog post might turn out to be good linkbait.
• Add images. What better way to visually spice up a blog post than by inserting an image? Since you’ll be using free articles, it won’t hurt to use free image resources, as well. (See my related Perf post, Images: Another Problogging Ace Up Your Sleeve)

Finally, if you don’t know your way yet around the article directory scene, let me point you to several great sites. EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com are good places to start, and I’ve been submitting articles to them for nearly a year already. You can also visit ArticleCrux.com, which I own and carefully maintain.

That said, the list above can’t build you a problogging career. You’ll still need to start where all good probloggers started – with highly original and helpful content.