My current blog posts are coming from my 2011 editorial calendar for this blog. It’s a fancy way of saying that I am planning beforehand by thinking about what I will be blogging month by month.
It’s not complicated. It’s super easy.
You take a piece of paper and write each month and then think about twelve monthly themes. For instance, this month’s theme is blogging (the themes are also for my eZine and Facebook page) and this means everything I write about this month for all those mediums will be on blogging and creating great content.
How to get blog ideas from monthly themes?
1. Read. Say I have my theme—blogging—and I want to offer more than just a 30,000-foot view of it and I want to drill down further so that I give authentic and interesting content that hasn’t really been covered by a lot of other people before. To read, I get a pile of blogging books from the library (my month’s topic). You would do the same, only you would get a pile of books on your subject (from African weddings to railroad engineers) whatever your subject matter may be.
2. Cut thin slices. Don’t slice large wedges of your topic and only write one blog post; slice the subject as thinly as you can and from that monthly topic create multiple blog posts. Take one aspect at a time and don’t be tempted to start on a new subject until you’ve moved onto a new blog post.
3. Think about one person in your core audience as you write. What are they most likely to be asking questions about? What are they thinking about on a continual basis about your subject? What keeps them up at night, tossing and turning on their pillows? What makes their heartbeat quicken with panic and what can you give them to solve their anxiety?
From these three activities, you are likely to come up with more ideas than you could ever possibly use for twelve months’ worth of blogging (trust me, I often have this dilemma). Why? Because you are learning and learning creates excitement. When you are teaching others, you retain 90% of what you are learning.
This is why John Ruskin wrote, “I write books to teach myself what I don’t know.”
As bloggers, why can’t we do the same?
{ 1 trackback }