Just got this tip from a tweet by Problogger’s Darren Rowse about 45 ideas for blog posts by Adam Singer of Future Buzz. I like his third idea:  List the 101 essential people, sites, or posts in your niche.  I’m going to look more closely at the others.

The ideas might be helpful particularly for my friends who are new to blogging and even for veteran bloggers.

It’s called a link post. Have you ever had just link(s) that you wanted to share?  Probably.

Sharing links can be an easy way to pass around useful information to your community.

Here’s a useful post from Paul Chaney in his blog Conversational Media Marketing about how to do it.  In it, notice the link to Amy Gahran, one of the blogging pioneers, where she writes about seven different formats for blog posts.  Click it.  It’s worth the read.

I’ve helped lots of people start blogging.  Many have struggled with writing blog posts that are way too long to be read.  The content may be good and perhaps even great, but they will have a minimum number of readers because of length.

You have to ask yourself before you write if you want your post read.  Then if you do, you need to write short.  It’s a learned skill that won’t be perfected in one day or one week.

I invite you to scroll down on this blog and look in the right margin for the link category, How-to posts, where I’ve linked to helpful suggestions from other bloggers.

I just added a post from Copyblogger.com where Jim Estill explains why shorter is better and gives digestible tips on how to get there.  If you’re a blogger, then this blog is invaluable.  It’s worth bookmarking.