My friend Sophie (aka “Sanity”) is working on putting up her own blog. She’s asking other bloggers for input on where they get their ideas from in. She’s getting some excellent feedback from various bloggers, such as:
I have looked at keyword phrases coming up in my server logs for my own website and this has helped me to plan content for the next 17 working days.
Discussion: Blogging. Where do you get your ideas?
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Kim,
Have you had a look at http://www.hittail.com?
It’s a neat little bit of analytics that identifies the “Long Tail” searches for you. I use it on my blog and find it very useful for suggesting new content.
Peter
It’s in BETA and free…thanks for the suggestion
To some extent your particular topic and audience will determine where post ideas will come from.
Most of my ideas come from being as informed as I can about my topic. I read a lot and keep a running list of post ideas. I don’t use them all, but they do come in handy when I’m struggling to decide what to write about.
I spend a good amount of time in forums where my readers are likely to be and look for questions in the threads that are repeated. If I see the same question a few times I figure the answer is ripe for a blog post.
Admitedly I’ll borrow ideas already present in the blogsphere and will sometimes create a quick post pointing to someone else’s article.
The longer I’ve been blogging, though the easier it seems to recognize what might make a good post.
“If I see the same question a few times I figure the answer is ripe for a blog post.”
You reminded me, Steven, of something I was noticing about myself. I, too, will get ideas from forums because you can gauge interest from there. Where I used to turn that hint into an article, now I’m more inclined to post in my blog. It’s a briefer, less formal and time consuming way of doing things. However, I wondered, is it the better choice?
I found this great place that gives out 50 places for finding stories:
newscollege.ca/p18.htm
Besides that, when I plan a blog, to make sure it’ll have content beyond week 1, I plan for “shorts” and “in-depths.”
For example, for my Site Flip blog (siteflip.blogspot.com), about buying and selling sites, I have pillar articles planned on appraisals, negotiating the purchase, developing a monetization plan etc. Those are in-depth pieces, which function as link-bait and to get returning visitors. These articles tend to provide a value to readers beyond the time they’re written.
For shorts, news, industry happenings, forum posts, and generaly everyday stuff seems sufficient.
As always, problogger also has some good info, including notably his recent maintaining momentum series. That man is a blogging machine..
Hope that helps
Bookworm SEO
Montreal SEO at Cityseo.blogspot.com
Did you hear about the threats that Citigroup’s Sean Smith made at the recent SEO conference? What is Sean trying to cover up? Did anyone tape record the session?
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/004353.html
I’ve also thought sometimes about whether to use ideas I’ve found through a forum as a blog post or an article. It’s a hard choice sometimes.
I tend to write some long responses in forums (and on blog comments apparently) and after awhile I thought why am I giving all this content away. I still enjoy contributing to forums and my posts aren’t any shorter, but I figured it was time to make use of some of what I was saying there on my own site.
I think with most topics you can get a lot more than one forum or blog post or even article out of them and I’ve been thinking a good approach might be to rewrite what I say on a forum as a blog post and then rework it a little more as an article.
All three mediums are somewhat different in their language and there are some things I wouldn’t say in an article that I’d have no problem adding to a blog post or vice versa.
Years ago I was reading a book about freelance magazine writing and one of the suggestions was to build many articles out of the same research you would do for one topic. I’m trying to think now of all my writing in that way. And trying to get more than one written piece from a given topic if I can.