Part of my job as a blogging mentor and writer of blogs for business clients is to come up with fantastic ideas from nowhere. There’s the easy ones – what does a company do, what is their USP, what are the benefits of using X business? Then there are the numerous awareness and ‘international day of…’ days that can sometimes be a good fit.
The hardest type of blog (to my mind) is the one in response to the news. This could be international news, local news or industry news; when Brexit happened, I spent a LOT of time writing about UKCA standards, tax implications and the effects on import and export. News related items often have to be written at short notice, be extremely well researched and posted as quickly as possible to capitalise on the things that people are already reading and have in their minds.
I recently launched a daily email service that takes one or more items of news and relates it to different businesses, giving sample blog titles and ideas – 5 every day. It’s a labour of love, because it’s free, it shows my thought processes when reading the news and it has to be written from scratch every day – no pre-written emails scheduled in an email system that goes out without me thinking about it here!
In the last 3 days, I’ve talked about delays at Dover, energy websites crashing, and Will Smith resigning from the Academy. Not much blogging fodder in that unless you’re a ferry company, a web hosting business or Will Smith, right? Wrong.
Here are the 15 blog titles that have gone out to subscribers so far:
- Avoid the rush by planning ahead; lessons learned from #nationalmeterreadingday
- Worried about rising energy prices? The best fuel saving tips I found on Twitter
- Bad mood? How thinking before Tweeting can avoid a bad reputation.
- X ways to bring down costs in your SME
- How to give your website more power and avoid low energy crashes
- Don’t let interruptions spoil your business plans – here’s how we can help!
- Plan ahead to avoid being stuck in the lay-by
- Avoid the Easter Holiday tantrums with 5 easy distraction techniques
- Heading towards a staff exodus? How to avoid the perfect storm.
- How to avoid the boredom if you’re stuck in Dover this Easter
- 5 high impact advertising campaigns people just can’t forget.
- 10 reasons we say no to new clients
- Don’t be Will Smith – keep your cool in any situation
- Include this clause in your contracts to avoid an early exit
- Don’t get mad; be like Lidl and Aldi and get equal
A blog post that is inspired by or relates to a news item doesn’t always need to reference that news item – use the news that you read to spark off ideas. I’ve had emails from readers that have thought of blogging ideas that wouldn’t have crossed their minds before:
Unfortunately you’ve missed the boat on April’s intake of subscribers, but you can subscribe early for May below!
