Coming up with great content and ideas that are valuable to your audience can be quite challenging. Everyone including bloggers and professional writers struggle and get stuck at some point. However, this does not hinder them from creating great content regularly. It is vital to learn from other people in order to get the drive and motivation to move on. Therefore, you should not be afraid of trying out new and different ideas; what works and what doesn’t might just surprise you. Here are 12 ideas to find inspiration in creating content.
Curation
This mainly entails listing favourite posts from other websites and blogs. Pick a topic you’re interested in and collect ten posts or articles about that and write a quick summary on how they’re good reads.
Brainstorming
Ask your colleagues and friends for ideas. This can be from your online peers, offline friends, or even your blogger friends.
Ask your audience/readers
What would your audience like to read about? Successful market research will tell you exactly what your target audience is looking for. You can also ask questions or run surveys on forums, blogs or social media (Facebook and Twitter) in order to get valuable feedback. It also helps to keep tabs on what’s #trending in the Twittersphere and write your own take on that.
Interview inspiring people
Give your role model the spotlight they deserve. Interviewing someone inspiring allows you to connect with the best people in their field of expertise and feed your readers with wise words from someone with experience.
Related:
22 Ways to Create Compelling Content
Ask for guest posts
Besides allowing passionate and expert bloggers to share their ideas with your audience, this is an easy way of keeping your blog content interesting and fresh. You can also contact smaller bloggers and ask if they are interested in posting since this will also give them the exposure and publicity they need.
Create some case studies and reviews
You can create a best case study by simply picking a product, service or company and write about the things they are doing right, why you like them and what your audience can learn from them. On the other hand, you can write worst case studies by writing about exactly what you don’t like in terms of their shortcomings, why you dislike them and what your audience should learn from this example. You can also write a resourceful review about the latest apps, products or services.
Write about successes stories or failures that have great lessons to learn from
Share the lessons you have learnt from your endeavours. However, it is very important to avoid bragging. You can also write about your biggest challenges, what you did to overcome them and the lessons you have learnt.
Invigorate old articles
If you’re constantly getting good feedback on a popular yet old blog post, then it may be time to revisit it. You can compile your 5 most useful articles on a particular topic, add a few explanations and descriptions and share the content.
Take for example we went back and updated a previous post about consuming content like a boss. Sound Gecko, a great tool to listen to content where text is converted to speech closed. Other apps have surfaced and now Pocket, a great app for storing content to read later now reads the content to you. We updated the article.
Use name recognition
This entails merging two unrelated concepts into one post. This should be something that is relevant and interesting to your audience and something that is well known to them. This could be something from movies, music, television shows, comics, celebrities and top trends. Write about food in comic books or the best in music technology. The possibilities are endless.
Find out your triggers
Sometimes you need to break up the routine in order or creativity to start flowing. Therefore, you need to find your muse; this could be something exciting, relaxing or entertaining depending on your preferences. For instance, you can take a walk to help restart your brain or stimulate it by watching a play where the atmosphere is livelier than in a movie theatre. Moreover, you can enlarge your cultural horizons through new and real experiences which can stimulate creativity.
Infuse content with motion
Sharing a personal story can be quite tough. However, telling your own story helps you create a strong personal bond with your audience.
Recycle
Recycling is not just for saving the environment but saving your blog too. Use old posts to create something that is completely new and relevant with the help of the tips above. Understanding what it takes to create great content helps you discover that nothing is actually stopping you from turning your experiences, knowledge and discoveries into compelling posts.
What are your top tips on creating great content?
Interviewing someone inspiring allows you to connect with the best people in their field of expertise and feed your readers with wise words from someone with experience.
Quick Links
Rev.com – great way to transcribe audio from recordings or video of your interviews. Get the phone app and send the recordings direct from your mobile device to Rev to start transcribing straight away. $1 a minute is a great price too.
