How do you decide what’s your next topic for your blog?
Sometimes, you have great ideas and they just flow in. Maybe you’ve been asked a question repeatedly in forums and you decide to post the question in your blog and answer it so everyone can learn. Maybe you’re more likely to check out Facebook or other social media sites for ideas (be careful of the cute kitty videos that drag you down a rabbit hole!) Or maybe your idea generation strategy is more just jagoogala*.
My coach is always asking, “What if it were easy?”, so I find myself looking for ways to simplify tasks that need to be repeated again and again. To that end, I’ve found a few sites that can help you with idea generation. Within these sites, you can set or choose categories and interests which allows you to hone in on some hot topics that your audience might be most interested to hear about from you.
Here are some sites that might help you find content ideas;
Flipboard.com is a great magazine-like format to curate your passions. That’s what they call your interests. You choose from different topics and get a customized magazine of articles, videos, images and information to flip through. Setting up filters to show you content in your niche will give you lots of material to read to get ideas.
Ted.com/talks If you haven’t yet discovered Ted Talks, where have you been? Ted is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Started in 1984, it’s become a world-wide platform to spread ideas. Each talk is 18 minutes or less. The science guidelines for the organization clearly state that peer-reviewed research must be the basis for talks involving science and health information. Therefore, you can feel confident knowing that the information in these talks has been backed with appropriate research.
Feedly.com This site allows you to collate your research from internet sites, blogs, publications, and keywords to have one ‘go-to’ spot to crunch through a bunch of content.
Quora.com Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge through posing and answering questions. You can set your interest preferences for a broad range of categories and narrow them down to more specific interests. You could use one of the questions in Quora that appeals to your audience and answer it yourself on your blog.
Continuing on the “What if it were easy?” theme, here is how to get your blog post done consistently week after week.
Set aside a chunk of time in your schedule, set a timer, and look for ideas in the above sites by skimming articles. Bookmark the specific links for an idea or better yet copy it into an Evernote folder. Eventually, you will have a lot of ideas in one place and can even skip this step. Once you have a bank of ideas, go there first and pick one. Once your time is up for idea generation, choose one of your ideas and begin to write. Create your first draft without attempting to edit it–just write. Then save and walk away from it. The next day, edit the draft, create graphics and publish.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
And if you want even more quick and easy idea prompts for your next blog post, just request my list of ’50 Ideas to Jump-start Your Blog’. Enter your name and email below.
Happy writing.
*jagoogala: Urban dictionary word of the day meaning, “Just Google it.”