Originally Posted by
mobilepriceshop
Step 1: Pick your topic
This is the bit that can sometimes be the trickiest, because let's face it, ideas don't always appear when you want them to. Coming up with content ideas is a whole post in itself, but what's important is having a system.
One good idea is to keep a list of content ideas:
I keep a spreadsheet that I have bookmarked on my desktop. In it I have three columns -- column one is for titles, column three is for notes, and column two I use the to highlight certain posts:
NW: "needs work" for titles I like, but they're not right yet
GI: "good idea" for titles I think have good potential
GI!: "great idea" these are the titles I will write soon
I occasionally review my content ideas and try spinning the wording in my mind, occasionally combining ideas or flipping them around to see if I can improve them.
A few good ways to make an old idea fresh and new are:
Combine two seemingly unrelated ideas
Add a negative, so "How to" becomes "How not to"
Next steps; write a follow up to a post idea you haven't written yet!
I got this post idea because I had the title idea "how to brainstorm great content ideas" which felt like a bit of a tired subject. So I thought, "the next step is to write it" hence I decided on:
"How to write great content in X steps"
That didn't sound great either, but I had a few ideas that I could put into the post and I changed the title until I got the title I settled with (see top of this post!).
An important point about idea generation...
...is that you need to have your mind open to ideas. I don't sit down and decide to come up with an idea; I get most of my ideas whilst reading other people's blogs or while writing my own.
In fact, I came up with a title idea after I started this post!
Remember this:
Your chances of coming up with a truly new, unique content idea are pretty low in most niches. Innovation happens slowly, and it really is OK to take someone else's idea as long as you give it a new angle and add some new value.
This certainly isn't the first post about writing content, but it's unique because it's written from my point of view and my unique experiences.
Step 2: Researching your post
Right, so you have your title, now it's time to write it.
If you are sitting down to write because you know that you need to then there's a good chance it will come out sounding rubbish, so unless you actually feel inspired to write your post, go for a walk and come back later.
Ok, so you're ready to write?
The first thing to do is plan your post, and to do that you need to do some research into what is already out there and what has done well. I will use this post as an example:
So I might go and Google "how to write great content" because that's basically what my post is going to be about.
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