Blog Post Bingo is back!

The idea of Blog Post Bingo is to get out of your normal blogging routine and experiment with different kinds of content on your blog. We hope that it will help you get out of old habits and spice things up a bit!

Last year Blog Post Bingo! was my favourite BIP task. It was the most challenging, but forcing myself to change my blogging habits, brainstorm new ideas, and write totally new types of post helped to improve my blog. The posts I wrote quickly became the most visited on my site and I have since incorporated a lot of the post types into my every-day blogging routine. It is so easy to become stuck in a rut, writing only a few types of post; hopefully this task will change the way you blog forever!

While there are there are no definitive types of blog posts, there are some that can be the bread and butter of a successful blogger, and knowing some of these forms can help if you feel like you’re in a rut. These posts can give you some idea of what all the options are: 20 Types of Blog Posts, The 5 Types of Blog Posts that Experts Write, and All 13 Types of Blog Post.

The task (if you chose to accept it!) is to write one blog post for each of the 14 types below. The challenge will last for the whole of April, so you have a few days to think about it before the month of creative posting begins! Remember, the challenge starts April 1 and runs through April 30. Nothing posted before April 1 will count.

The 14 post types

1. A Link Post – share link (or series of links) your readers might find interesting
2. A Short Post – less than 200 words
3. A List Post – simple as it sounds, a list of some sort
4. An Opinion Post – take an event, news, or another blog post and share your opinion on it
5. A Poll Post – post a poll or ask your readers a specific question for feedback
6. A How-To Post – You’re an expert in something; big or small, share how to do it
7. A Long Post – more than 700 words
8. A Review Post – self-explanatory, I think
9. A Personal Post – something that’s going on in your life, related to your normal blog topic or not
10. A Resource Post – you know a lot about something, share the sites/books/tutorials you go to on that topic. This is similar to a link post, except these links should be related in some way and be useful for other people who want to know about the topic
11. An Interview or Guest Post – interview someone and post about it on your blog, solicit a guest post from someone else, or write a guest post yourself for another blog
12. A Profile or Case Study Post — both of these types of posts involve writing about a person or group in your niche; find out what they do, how they got there, or interesting stories then share with your readers (more details from ProBlogger)
13. A Post Contrasting Two Different Options – compare and contrast two similar items, let people know the pros and cons of each and ultimately decide which is the best.
14. A Collation Post – gather quotes or opinions on a subject and place them together in a post. Then use these opinions to draw conclusions on the topic.

Prizes

To act as an incentive Kim and I are giving two prizes for this task. We’d love to think that you will all complete the 14 post types, but know that is a massive challenge which will be very hard to achieve. That’s why we’re having two different prize levels:

• We will be giving a $15 book voucher (for a retailer of your choice) to the person who completes the most different posts types (in the event of a tie one of these winners will picked be at random to receive the voucher).
• We also know that just taking part is very important, so we will pick another $15 book voucher winner at random from everyone who completes more than five different post types.

Share Your Progress

Please share your progress by posting links for each of the post types you write in Mr Linky below. We’ll try to do some mid-month posts highlighting some of these entries.

We will create a new post with another Mr Linky towards the end of the month so you can let us know the total number of post types you achieved.

Have fun brainstorming and good luck!