In The News

It didn't take me long to realize that current events could provide rather good blog fodder for a couple of my blogs.  Only certain types of blogs lend themselves well to this type of blog fodder with the most apparent one being a personal blog where any topic is fair game.  I also find that current events come in handy on my Canadian blog where I can blog about current Canadian events or other topics of interest in the news.  Current events are not as useful to certain niche blogs like food or gardening blogs but from time to time there may be a bit of useful blog fodder like the Ontario pesticide ban that was a perfect topic for my gardening blog.  Using current events as blog fodder can be a bit tricky at times.  The reason being is the news breaks, interest peaks then that news is quickly replaced by the next breaking news.  So as blog fodder current events can be very transient.  The second reason is certain current events (eg. OJ Simpson, Tiger Woods, Princess Di, Charlie Sheen, 9/11 and etc.) are covered so extensively over an extended period of time the general public becomes saturated and loses interest.  As a result blogging about these types of current events may get a lot less traffic than expected.  Some current events though have staying power.  Those are the ones that will bring good, consistent traffic to your blog.  The problem is hitting one of these really is a fluke.

One good example of this is the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) that went into effect July 1, 2010 in Ontario and Quebec.  The whole issue was and continues to be a hot bed.  I made a couple of posts on my personal and Canadian blogs.  That single topic continues to bring in regular daily traffic.  Still it was a fluke that it happened that way.  The bottom line is if you use current events as blog fodder don't expect miracles but enjoy the extra traffic if and when you hit that fluke topic that keeps readers coming to your blog.

Garden Gnome
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