Everybody is going through this from time to time. Either when you start blogging, or when you are on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and you want to update your status but you have no idea what to write about. I read a lot of posts on topics like Social Media, Online Marketing, Personal Branding or Online Identity and everybody mentions in a way or another that you have to create compelling content. But where you can find ideas for compelling content?
Here is my top ten places to find inspiration:
1. Google Alerts. I have setup a few alerts for what topics I write about. I have alerts for Social Media, Personal Branding and for my name. I use the alerts to tweet and if I find a good idea I write it down for the moments when I have no idea what to write.
2. LinkedIn Groups. I have joined several LinkedIn Groups on topics relating with Personal Branding, Social Media, Inbound Marketing. I get from these daily e-mails with the most active discussions which are a god source for inspiration.
3. LinkedIn Answers. Couple of times each week I search the LinkedIn answers section for the keywords I am interested. I get a lot of insights related to what people are interested to find out and how I can help others.
4. Inbound Marketing Scoops. A lot of the topics I am interested in, appear on the news section on the Inbound Marketing site.
5. Twitter. I search on Twitter for keywords related to my niche and get ideas for new posts or simply I just re-tweet those messages.
6. My Idea journal. I keep an idea journal where I write the title or just the idea of a new post when I get it. It is the only way I found for not forgetting them.
7. My blogs watch-list. In time I have built a list of the blogs I follow on regular basis. I look on the topics from their archives (they give me an idea on how needed is that piece of information).
8. My or Other blogs/sites comments. I found a couple of great ideas coming from the comments. And they end up being some great posts.
9. E-books, podcasts, videos and audiobooks. These are a great source of inspiration. I read/listen/watch a lot these days and I extract ideas for business or posts from them but I need to write them down immediately, otherwise I forget them and here comes point 6 above (my Idea Journal)
10. Things that I stumble upon daily. Like this post, it happens that I find solutions to my daily problems and then I write about them.
Do you have other sources of inspiration? Where do you find your ideas? Would you please leave a comment about that?
Photo by: dan paluska
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Adrian Chira, PersonalBrandGrader. PersonalBrandGrader said: 10 great places to find ideas for tweets and articles | Personal Brand Grader http://bit.ly/brGYaW [...]