1. Your Social Media Feeds
If you’re mainly following specific people (i.e. influencers and competitors in your industry) and not just random people and your friends, then your feeds could be a serious goldmine for ideas. Participating in the existing conversations could spark more ideas (Would that be considered Idea Inception?).
What are they saying?
What are they predicting?
What are they sharing?
Recall that some of the reasons we share things on social media are to inform, inspire, educate – we find the content to be valuable and want to share with our networks.
Surely you must have an opinion on it.
2. The Intelligent Conversations You Have With Other People
Fellow business owners, leads and clients, whether it is in person over coffee/lunch or virtually. There have been countless times where I have said out loud during the conversation, that would be a great blog post topic! Really. Sometimes the idea will just come out of nowhere.Different people lead to different conversations.
3. Medium
It’s an online publishing platform (an alternative to starting your own blog) that has been around for awhile but hasn’t reached the point of saturation yet. You can find and follow many interesting people on Medium.
4. Facebook Groups
This is where I’m noticing conversations happening. People ask questions, ask for recommendations on Facebook, ask for advice. There are a ridiculous amount of Facebook Groups out there. I clean house here and there just because the out of sight, out of mind works best. So just like with social media feeds, I would hope that some of the Facebook Groups you follow are where you would find valuable business advice or find your potential clients.
5. Other business blogs in your industry
What are they writing about? Perhaps you should be writing about these things as well and educating your followers about them.
6. Quora
I feel this platform doesn’t get enough credit and is not as widely known. It’s similar to Reddit, but I think the quality of questions is better and the topics are geared to people who genuinely want to learn or get advice from an industry expert. Although I have seen some not so intelligent questions being asked.
While there are many generic questions i.e. such as how to start a blog, how to grow my blog, etc. I have come across questions and been asked questions that are more thought-provoking. This is especially useful if you are looking for that answer to your super specific question and Google just doesn’t cut it. You can also request certain people to answer your question if you are looking for their opinion in particular.
7. LinkedInGroups
While you may not experience the same level of conversation and engagement compared to Facebook Groups, I would suggest poking your head in every once in awhile to see what people are posting over there. You can’t really predict where ideas will come from. So it’s best to keep an open mind and have many options available.
8. Newsletters
Look through some of the newsletters you subscribe to. Sometimes the newsletter contains different information that isn’t found on the blog. Is there anything that could be pulled from them and used for a blog post? What about the newsletters you send out?
9. Podcasts
Another great reservoir for content. Sometimes just listening to OTHER peoples’ conversations can give you an A-HA moment – i.e. I never thought about it that way before.
10. Industry Events and Conferences
The previous blog post is the final interview in a Social Media Series, we chatted about Social Media Camp, a Canadian Social Media Conference that I attended this past May for the first time. There was a lot of valuable information and insight. The same was for Social Media Week LA. I made the effort to chat with people more before the conference and during the breaks.
So with respect to new content that should be able to fill up some spaces with blog post ideas in your content calendar for the next few months.
Karen Swyszcz has over 6+ years of blogging experience and has written content on the blog for brands such as SupperWorks, Camp Tech and Meridian Credit Union. She is also the instructor at Sheridan College for the Blogging For Fun and Profit Course and Effective Strategies For Social Media Course.”
