Bloggers have a distinct disadvantage.

When someone hires an expert in — oh, let’s say marketing — that expert can dispense the same information she did for the last client.

And the client before that one. And the one before that.

Not bloggers. Blogging is about breaking down everything you know into bite-sized chunks so that people can learn it all over a period of time. If they look back through the archives, they can often see the entire breadth of your knowledge.

Then one day, your well runs dry.

This is a scary moment for any blogger. It’s not like running out of inspiration or having writer’s block. This is when you’ve said it all. Your blog contains absolutely everything you know.

And let’s be fair — it’s a lot of knowledge. But you simply don’t have anything new to say.

What do you do?

Go get yourself some new knowledge

I’m always amazed by how few people continue to educate themselves on their topic after they’ve become an acknowledged expert in it.

Hey, everyone knows me as the number one guy on naked mole rats! Clearly, I know everything there is to know!

But as an old coach of mine used to say, you’ll never know everything there is to know in your field of expertise, and there’s always something new to learn. People make new discoveries and innovations every day. You have opinions about those innovations. You agree or disagree with them. You try them or manage to take them a step further.

Of course, if you don’t find out what those discoveries and innovations are, you don’t have anything to say about it. No wonder you’re stuck for posts.

Actively pursuing new knowledge about your area of expertise has a side benefit: it provides more value for your clients. You may find the inspiration for a new ebook or web course to help newcomers understand and benefit.

New knowledge could be the next big thing for your business — if you go out and find it.

Doctors are one of the few professions actually required to update their knowledge of their field of expertise continually. If a doctor doesn’t know the latest innovation in surgery, his next patient might die from the lack of that knowledge. That’s a huge incentive for the doctor to always be learning and for the patient — and the medical board — to insist on that continual education.

No one is going to force you to attend conferences or read books or take courses, but you’ll be much more respected as an expert if you continually update your knowledge. Your client’s life may not be on the line, but their business, their financial goals, and their happiness probably is — at least, their happiness with your products and services.

Where can you find new knowledge?

Well, you may not have heard about this gizmo called the internet, but it’s pretty handy for that sort of thing. It seems silly to mention using the internet to upgrade your knowledge on an online blog, but shocking numbers of people don’t use it for this particular purpose — even those who practically live online.

Libraries are an awesome (and free) resource for new knowledge too, and so is your local bookstore. Go pick up some new literature and get someone else’s perspective on what you do.

Magazines and trade journals, of course, are terrific for more recent innovations and information. Find ones that focus on your area of expertise and stay on the lookout for new ideas that sound interesting or innovative. Once an article grabs your attention, go do some independent research on that topic and find new resources to pursue.

Actively pursuing new knowledge won’t just make you a better businessperson — though that’s reason enough right there. It’ll also pretty much guarantee that you’ll never run out of blog topics ever again.

About the Author: For new knowledge that makes you a better businessperson — and that helps you hit the bullseye of success for your freelancing career, check out Men with Pens — or better yet, grab the RSS feed here.

If you run a service-based business, or work directly with clients or customers of any kind, you’ll find this interesting. Schelli talks about dealing with refunds, demanding or slow-paying clients, and the stress of raising prices. All of which relates back to us, and our mindset.

It’s a short post (a quick read) but will leave you with plenty to think about. I’ve often confessed at how many hurdles I overcame along the way, personal hurdles, to bring my business to where it is today. Everything from pricing, to dealing with the negatives to managing my business.

None of that came naturally for me. I went into business with no previous experience and no college education. And plenty of personal issues.

Looking back I can say that the one thing I wish I had done sooner was to get help. I don’t mean therapy, though that probably wouldn’t have hurt (lol). I mean getting a coach, getting involved with a mastermind group, or aligning myself with other successful people that I could learn from.

I would love to hear the one thing you took away from Shelli’s post.

For me it was being aligned with my objectives. I realize that sometimes my thoughts and feelings are not in line with my goals, and those goals are rarely met. It helps to know the “why” behind your goal, and to be 100% attached to that why.

I also loved the example of the horses getting spooked, and what that says about focus. The fact that they waste no time over the details, but rather get right back to work the minute they recognize the situation for what it is.

Like I said, it’s a quick read – but very powerful. As we head into the new year, and a new decade even, now is a good time to analyze where you are with your business – and what changes you would like to make. If you are not moving forward, and enjoying every minute of your business, now would be a good time to explore the reasons behind that. Is it your business – or is it you?

I know for a long time it was me. I can admit that.

What holds you back? What part of your business do you love, and which part do you dread dealing with? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Maybe we can get Schelli to weigh in on some of it with us.

Also, Schelli has just launched a scholarship essay contest for people interested in participating her my upcoming 10-month program. You could win a spot in her program just for entering! You can get details and enter at this link. The contest ends on January 11th, so you’ll want to enter soon if you’re interested!

Best,

Disclosure: this post was sponsored by The Next Highest Version of You

Bloggers spend a lot of time on their computers. They’re posting, reading, commenting on other blogs, sending Tweets, checking half a dozen social networking sites, and generally being web-geeky.

They find something interesting or random, and then clue in other people to that interesting or random thing.

This is how blog posts gain steam on Digg or go viral. This is how we find out about new YouTube videos. This is how we communicate now.

Except we don’t.

We were people before we were bloggers

Think about the blogs that you like the most. Like, to pick a totally random example, mine.

Do you like them because they told you something weird or peculiar that you didn’t know about before? Or do you like them because you enjoy what the post says? Because you like the way the article was written? Because you like the style of the author, the blog’s sense of humor, the way the blogger turns a phrase?

Great bloggers become great because they have a unique style and way of thinking. Here’s the kicker, though: They were that way before they ever became bloggers.

Dave Navarro over at The Launch Coach? He was a pretty great dude before blogging was even invented. He was funny. He was helpful. He had kind of an attitude, in a good way. He was all the things we love him for today as a blogger.

But he wasn’t blogging. Not his fault; blogging didn’t exist back then.

If you want to become a better blogger, you need to have a style and a voice of your own — and you can’t find that sitting at your computer desk. Not enough of a voice, anyway, to make you really great.

You’re not going to develop your blogging awesomeness by re-posting what other people have written or riffing off thoughts they’ve had, or setting up endless list posts pointing to someone else’s content.

Those things are fine once in awhile, but they’re not enough to build a great blog.

Forget blogging for a while (but keep it in the back of your mind)

To become better bloggers, we need to get out in the world.

Start conversations with more people. Find the kind of jokes you like to tell. Listen to the rhythm of your voice as you speak. Pay attention to the way people react when you talk. Notice how they seem more interested when you speak in a certain way or when you discuss certain topics.

Pay attention to what attracts your interest. Does color catch your eye? Do you peek around street corners to find out who’s playing that music? Do you slow down to eavesdrop on people who seem to be having interesting conversations? Do you help people on the bus or pick up things they’ve dropped? Do you go talk to storeowners or to the others standing in line with you?

This is how you’ll find a style of your own, a personality that makes up who you are as a blogger.

Find some activities or events around the subjects you like to blog about. Naomi at Ittybiz wrote a great series about marketing and branding campaigns she noticed while walking around town.

Why? Because she’s into marketing and branding. That’s what she blogs about. It was interesting. It made her interesting.

And she wrote these posts from her own unique perspective using her own voice. There are a couple of really spiffy posts that she would never have written if she hadn’t been thinking of her blog posts as she bought paint from the hardware store.

That’s how you can be a better blogger. You find new things to write about just by getting away from the computer so you can explore the world.

So walk away from that keyboard (after you comment on this post, of course). Get outside. Go interact with a real, live, flesh-and-blood person. Communicate with that person. Observe. Watch. And come back when you’ve found out what sort of blogger you really are.

Then write a blog post that rocks that person’s socks off.

About the Author: James Chartrand is rockin’ socks off over at Men with Pens, thanks to a unique voice and plenty of time away from the computer. Check out his blog, then go get some fresh air and sun.

The other day, we published a headline that failed.

It happens to everyone, even those of us who consider headline writing to be a primary skill.

In this post, I’ll show you one way to avoid a headline fail when using one of the more powerful headline formats.

I’m talking about the “question” headline.

How to Effectively Use a Question Headline

As I said, the question headline is very powerful. When used properly, it creates an almost irresistible draw to prospective readers, no matter how busy they are.

Occasionally I’ll hear someone say that a journalism professor or writing coach told them never to use a question – whether in the headline or otherwise. This is terrible advice, because it’s only half correct.

The true rule is that you should never use a question that the prospective reader can answer with a yes or no. If you ask that type of question, you’ve just failed… because you gave people a reason not to read your content.

The proper way to use a question headline is to ask a question that your readers can’t answer. In that sense, your question (like all good headlines) becomes a compelling promise to the reader that they’re about to discover something they didn’t know before, if only they keep reading.

Let’s look at examples of the right way and the wrong way to use a question, thanks to my own headline fail from earlier in the week.

How We Screwed Up a Question Headline

You know a lot of different people contribute to Copyblogger. And it’s probably no surprise that we assist with editing content from our guests in order to make it as engaging as possible.

One thing we do more often than not is tweak or rewrite the post titles (headlines). This works out to everyone’s benefit, since the stronger the headline, the more traffic to the post and more exposure to that specific writer.

So a couple days ago, we ran a post about backing up your claims with proof by Sherice Jacob. It’s a really solid post, so if you didn’t read it, you really should.

The original title of the post didn’t work as well as we thought it should, so Sonia rewrote it. After that, Sonia queues the post in WordPress for my final approval and publishing.

I look at the headline, read the post, and think, “This looks good.” The headline had a provocative edge to it, which should have helped the post spread rather nicely.

Except it didn’t.

An easy way to gauge the response to a post in real-time is on Twitter. The number of retweets and clicks on the link (via bit.ly) will give you a general picture of how well a piece of content is doing relative to how things usually go day-to-day.

It quickly became clear that Sherice’s post was under-performing, and I couldn’t figure out why. And then it hit me.

A Failed Question Headline (And the Fix)

Here is the headline we published:

Are Your Readers Calling You a Liar?

Do you see the problem?

Taken literally, the answer to this question for most people is simply “no.” As ornery as blog comments can get, it’s likely most people have never been flat-out called a liar by a reader.

But because the content of the post makes it clear that you might not know if people are doubting whether or not you’re telling the truth, the headline wasn’t even a good match for the post. The real killer, however, was the ability to answer the question with a “no.”

Total headline fail.

Later in the day after discussing it with Sonia, we changed the post title to this:

Do Your Readers Secretly Think You’re a Liar?

Do you see why this is much better?

The question can’t be answered, because you have no way of knowing what your readers are thinking unless they tell you. And the use of the word “secretly” adds an additional compelling element that makes it clear we’re talking about something your readers aren’t telling you.

Learn from My Mistake

Even though the title was changed, most of the damage had been done. The email had already gone out, the post had been tweeted, and I have no idea if the title ever updated freshly in feed readers.

So it’s important to look for potential headline fails before you hit publish. Which is what I usually do, but everyone has off days.

And hey… it gave me something to write about for today. Hopefully you find some value in learning from my fail.

Because from now on, I’m covering up all my mistakes.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.