Try a new blog—Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo

Sue Vincent writes and manages a hugely popular blog with a weekly #writephoto prompt. This is a particular type of blog, which every week gives readers a starter for creativity and a challenge to respond by creating something on their own blog. In Sue’s case, the starter, or prompt, is an evocative photo, often of a landscape, plus some relevant words of her own—maybe a poem, a story or a flash fiction piece.

• An example of a Thursday photo prompt
• And an example of a weekly round-up of responses (for a different photo)

Each week, at least 40 bloggers respond on their own blogs. They show the same starter photo and add a poem or other writing of their own. And their blog posts links back to the original #writephoto prompt.

Sue manages this flood of responses brilliantly.

• During the week she publishes several readers’ responses on her own blog.
• After a week she lists every participant and links to their blog post.
• She also offers an open invitation to readers to send her a guest blog post, so many other bloggers’ names feature on her blog. Of course she selects and curates the articles that people send in, so this guest blogger feature is at once very generous and well managed.

Making and managing a blog that gathers 19,502 followers ain’t easy! But Sue has mastered this format by:

• keeping it reliable and regular: every day a blog post, every Thursday a photo prompt and links to all who did the previous week’s prompt
• keeping focused on three types of content only: prompts, reposts and guest posts
• welcoming many other bloggers on the Daily Echo blog
• rewarding participants with links to their blog.

Which bloggers will enjoy a weekly writing prompt?

You probably will, if one of the following sounds like you …

•  you love writing but don’t have much time
•  you are looking for ideas and inspiration
•  you like writing classes and exercises
•  you just want to have fun writing, or
•  you want company and readers for your creative writing.

Go ahead, try a new blog!

There are dozens of other blogs where someone prompts you to write or photograph something specific.  Indeed, some bloggers meet a different challenge every day! I recommend Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo as a great place to start.

Have fun!