How To Find Content Ideas For Blogs

How To Find Content Ideas For Blogs

Use these 10 steps for how to find content ideas for your blogs:

1. Wherever you are, look around you and list the most significant inanimate objects, people and animals you can see
2. Adjust the items in your list into alphabetical order
3. Take the first item in the newly ordered list and think about analogies of that item
4. Create the thread of a story around the analogies
5. Take some images of the item: close-ups; at a distance in context; from different camera positions (high, low and quirky angle)
6. Add details around the thread of your story
7. Make the final analogy a ‘call to action’ to inspire the reader to do something
8. Publish the article and signpost to it from your social media accounts
9. Monitor comments, feedback, likes and shares
10. Repeat with other items on your list and adjust the details according to reader feedback and reactions

I am regularly asked how I am able to write so many articles for clients, myself and for my business. Typically when there isn’t an immediately obvious subject to write about (and let’s face it, everyone has writers’ block from time to time) we have to get creative for our content ideas.

Analogies are a great way of stimulating new content ideas for blogs.

For example, from where I am writing this blog now, I can see a chair. To most people it’s just a chair, but for new content ideas, add in the trick of analogies and it becomes the subject of a blog… here’s how my thought process might go…

In business, we need to regularly pause and take stock of our performance. This may be weekly, monthly or quarterly, depending upon the industry in which we operate. So think for a moment of a chair. The humble chair is a great analogy for taking stock in business. It encourages us to settle into a period of relaxation, away from the energy-burning day to day activities of running a business. The legs of the chair are what ground us; pillars of strength that support us (or our business). So in our business, what essential pillars do we have that we must continually nurture? These are elements of our business that we simply cannot do without. Our pillars may include our People or our Products. Often these are things that give us competitive advantage, our core competencies if you like.

Think of the back of the chair, the support of our body is like the support of the systems, processes and operations we perform every day. The support of the back of the chair reminds us that no matter challenging the going may become, there is a fundamental structure that is more important than a tough day at the office.

Then to the seat of the chair. Perhaps the analogy is to think about the cushion of cashflow, another key ingredient in the successful business. Too often businesses chase revenue and profit, new customers and growth but forget about the essential cushion of cashflow, the lifeblood of every organisation. How would your chair feel if you had no cushion?

Then to the arms of the chair and where we put our arms and hands. With the arms we are literally twiddling our thumbs but with carefully crafted structure and balance in our business we can have at our fingertips all of the performance data and insights, analytics and customer relationship management information we need to identify opportunities and to make continuous improvements.

So there we are. The humble chair and the analogies that come from it, can give us valuable insights and reminders that in themselves can form new content ideas for a blog or thoughtful insight.

So take the next step, look around you and see what analogies you can create for content ideas for your stories, articles and blogs.