Do you struggle to come up with ideas for articles?
If you are like most business owners and entrepreneurs you know that getting free editorial cover in magazines and on websites is good for business, but coming up with the ideas for the articles can be tough, especially if you provide articles on a regular basis. That nasty blank screen can be soul destroying.
So if you are drawing a blank, here are a few suggestions that might help to get those creative juices flowing –
Describe how you do things? We tend to think that no one will be interested in what we do but the reality is the exact opposite. We are actually intrigued by how other people do business especially if we can learn from them.
What are the top 5 things you have learnt in your business? This is a good general article that lets your personality shine through and shows that you are an “experienced veteran”.
What are you getting asked about today? This is generally information that your customers or clients are asking you about. If a number of people are asking the same questions there must be a reason. Most importantly, what are you telling them?
What is selling? We like to know what products or services are in demand and ideally why? During the GFC I read an interesting article about a huge surge in the sale of floor safe’s in Germany as people felt their money was more secure in a vault under the floorboards than in a bank. This is interesting reading and easy to write about.
What trends are you noticing in your business and in your industry? These always make good reading.
How has your business changed in recent months/years or decades?
What strange things are happening? The weird and the quirky always get attention. Are their new innovations or products that are evolving to meet demands? Or are you trying something completely new and innovative?
What would you do differently next time? This is a reflective piece and it can be for a business that has reached a certain level of success. It is about pondering how they got there, what alternative paths and outcomes there could have been or perhaps how they would have handled a particular situation differently next time.
Now, if you need some more inspiration still – here are some of my tricks of the trade, and I supply about 30 articles a month either in print or electronic format –
I go to my library and flick through books to find relevant topics to talk about or write about.
I do the same with current magazines, to see what other people are writing about or more appropriately, what people want to read.
Whenever I get an idea for an article I add it to a list called, strangely enough, “article ideas”. Some weeks I might had a pile of ideas, other times it might be a drought and hopefully I have enough ideas stacked up to get me through. I generally organise ideas by category – for example, small business, presenting, entrepreneurialism, self development, inspirational stories and so on.
I tend to pick a monthly theme for all of my media articles. This helps me stay on track during the month and I write articles and do interviews around the central theme.
I always keep a record of every interview and article that I do – this is a list of hundreds of ideas and topics that might be relevant for new interviews, but most importantly it helps me to keep track of what I have already said.
I surf the net – and get great ideas from forums, web portal sites and even news sites.
As public relations becomes more important as a means of building brand profile, and the opportunity to provide articles for publications and blogs increases, the better able we are at writing articles the more exposure we can expect. By providing articles you also become known as as an expert in your field and that help to raise your credibility.
My advice is to get cracking and write as many articles as you can. The more you write the better you get at it (hopefully).
Until next time,
Andrew
SNAKE CAUGHT IN A CRAB POT – This really has nothing to do with my BUSINESS BULLETS but it is kinda cool. Check out this python that managed to get itself caught in a crab pot in our shed on the weekend – thank goodness for snake wrangler Dave – PYTHON IN A POT
SPEAKERS BOOTCAMP JUNE 9th – bookings are flowing in for my next Professional Presenters Bootcamp event – if you are ready to take the plunge book online now – BOOK HERE
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