Sorry I haven’t been as active here on My Multiple Incomes lately. I have been traveling and working on a new idea, and frankly, I’ve had a little trouble coming up with original content that you would find useful. I’m not about adding filler content just because…I want every article to be useful for something. As a result, I’d thought I’d share some advice I received about what to do when you’re struggling to come up with content for your website.
If you’re running short of post or content ideas, here are a few places you should look for ideas:
News: Go check out the major news sites: CNN, Yahoo! Finance, Money, etc. Looking at current events is a great way to get ideas about what to write about. You never know what kind of stories could trigger an idea. Just looking at Money today had a few interesting potential ideas for some of my sites: Apple Missed Earnings, IBM Missed Earnings, etc. There was an article about air fares rising. There was an article about China’s economy. All of these are great potential article ideas.
Social Media: Seeing what your friends are talking about on Facebook or Twitter is a great way to get ideas and write relevant content. Also, you can leverage your social media followers and ask them for ideas as well. I’ve found this to be very useful sometimes, and I know several big name bloggers that do this quite often.
Reddit: I’ve only really discovered Reddit in the past year or so, but it can be a highly amusing time waster. If you’re not familiar with it, people post content, and other comment and vote it up/down. It can be really helpful to see what’s trending, and what people are saying about it. This can lead to great content.
Newsletter: Asking your readers what they want to hear about is a great way to write relevant content. On all my newsletters, I have a couple of auto-responders setup to ask the readers what they want from the site. This is a great way to solicit feedback from your readers and also to connect. By emailing, then following up, and finally by writing content that your readers like, you will connect with your readers.
Forums: If you have a niche with a relevant forum, you can also look at what people are posting about. In finance, maybe it is a stock or sector. In the making money niche, it could be about a hot new trend, or a way to get more conversions. Who knows…but forums offer a lot of great idea making content.
Bottom line, if you’re stuck in a writers rut, which will inevitably happen if you write consistently for a long period of time, you do have resources available to you.
Readers, do you have any other resources you use when you hit a wall?
This post was written by
Robert is the founder and editor of My Multiple incomes, a personal finance site dedicated to highlighting how anyone can create multiple income streams and diversify their cash flow.
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[...] My Multiple Incomes: What To Do When You’re Out of Ideas [...]
Running out of ideas is a tough thing to do. You are not only trying to find a new topic, but the pressure to put stuff out doesn’t help either. These are great tips. I have found it is always helpful to read.
Great tips. In addition to these, I also read magazines. I find if I read an article and I have an opinion on the topic, I will often turn this expression of opinion into a post.
I just keep reading other blogs. It inspires me to work harder.
Spot on with the tips, we all go through writer’s rut so it’s good to have a long list of resource sites to refresh your ideas from!
Reading business periodicals or popular magazines always fills me with tons of ideas.
Sometimes I will scan titles to articles and if one catches my attention I will write about what I THINK the article is about. Normally it’s totally different than it’s actually about so it’s not copying or anything. but it’s a great way to get the juices flowing.
Agree with Charles in part. Reading other blogs will spark an idea, or a germ of an idea, which may eventuall turn into a full-blown blog post.
In the Personal Finance realm, keeping track of current news works out well. Think Bank of America
Running out of ideas could be very stressful as well. Just don’t give up.
I don’t go out looking for ideas in particular, but I do often get inspired while I’m doing other random things. Things like going out to eat with my family, overhearing a random snippet of conversation while waiting in line, watching a movie, driving down the street. Heh, basically I don’t have trouble coming up with ideas. Sometimes I don’t like any of the ideas, but that’s a different story. I just work through them anyway.
[...] at My Multiple Incomes Blog recently wrote an article about being out of writing ideas. “What To Do When You’re Out of Ideas” That’s what I’m experiencing a bit right now. There’s been quite a bit going on [...]