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~Guest Post~
Dry spells are quite common when it comes to generating ideas for great blog posts. There are times when articles flow naturally, like a mountain river flows on a hot summer day. There are other days when your mind is racing so fast that all the good ideas just get lost in this endless current of rush and anxiety. It is possible to write posts out of the latter states of mind, of course, but doing so, as a rule, does not help you have great content. Posting nothing on your blog when the inspiration is not there does little for your marketing strategy. Generating ideas is all about connections, so why not tap the rich potential of social media to get them? Here’s how one can use this fuel to fill their empty thinking tank.
- Be inspired! Inspiration is the endless source that opens the doors of your perception to all the best ideas. These days, with the rich social media content readily available, it is easy to stay constantly inspired and spread the goodness further. You can quickly find inspirational pages and groups on facebook or subscribe to funny tweets, which can not only give you food for thought, but most importantly they will get you into the state of mind, which is right for generating awesome ideas.
- Look into another niche. Find top blogs and discussion groups, which are completely unrelated to your field. Doing so can give you a new perspective of common things and make the right connection. Just try it to see how it works!
- Visit Wikipedia! Believe it or not, but it can be a powerful idea generator. It has several sections, such as extracts from the featured article, “in the news…”, “did you know…”, “on this day” etc. If you have a music blog, for example, the “did you know” part might have some information about Tokelau music, which can be an interesting topic to write about in your blog.
- Let Youtube guide you. Let’s say you have a food blog and want to write something about mayonnaise, but don’t know what the topic can be. Just type in the keyword in the youtube search bar and watch new ideas appear instantly!
- Comments are important. Just scroll through some of the comments on your facebook page or the blog to see what others are saying. There might be some interesting thoughts there, which will surely give you an insight or two into what to write about.
- Aim for popularity. Find the recent hot topic through trending tweets, visit Digg to see what the internet is talking about. You can capitalize on these services by linking them to your niche. Diving in the popularity flow is likely to bring you more hits. For example, you have a health blog. When you visit Digg you see an article about how running does not help Americans lose weight. This can help you write a post about effective ways of losing weight or other benefits from running. Why not give it a shot?
- Connect with nature online. Connecting with nature is very likely to give you some great ideas for your posts. No matter how little time you have there is always a minute a two to look at pictures online. There are thousands of websites with beautiful pictures. You can even download them automatically on your desktop with wallpaper-changers.
Although it can be hard at times to come up with new creative ideas that are likely to attract more visitors, the task suddenly becomes easy with the help of social media sites. Just remember that no matter which way you are choosing to generate ideas it is always handy to have a pen and a piece of paper at hand – just in case an idea comes when you’re not expecting them.
Rob Greenberg works as a consultant at the http://www.plagiarismdetect.com/ plagiarism detection service.