Any business trying to keep up with the competition online today needs to be consistently generating relevant and original content for their website or blog. For those who have been in the game for a while it, can often become challenging to continually find new and interesting subjects to talk about. This is especially true for small businesses who probably only have one industry of focus. There are only so many different ways that a particular, often niche, subject can be broken down to create new articles.
It has become a common practice online for content to be constantly rehashed and published with new language and under a new title. Bigger blogs get their news from slightly smaller blogs who get their news from even smaller blogs and so on. This cycle is great for quickly generating content, but the key to standing out online is to be different.
Maybe the secret to creating fresh content lies in unplugging for a minute. The next time you are at a loss for a topic, take a step back and think about your blog (or other content stream) as a long book. Each blog post could potentially be seen as a chapter in what could be a never ending story about your particular industry.
Take a quick trip to the local bookstore or library and… GASP! Open a book! After finding a few books about your industry, open one book to the table of contents. Voilà! You have just found an ordered and organized list of potential topics to write about. Obviously, depending on the age of the book and the specificity of the chapters, there will still be some research and actual writing to be done on your part. No matter how quickly your industry is changing, there are always underlying fundamental principles and new angles. You are now armed with a slew of possible topics and titles for content, which is half the battle in overcoming writer’s block.
