Feb 14 2013

15 Quick Fire Content Creation Ideas to Help You Battle Writers Block

We have all sat and stared at that open blank Word Doc or Blog Editor, fingers hovering over the keyboard but no ideas to fuel their movement. We know we should blog regularly for the sake of continuity and search but what do you do when the inspiration well runs dry? These 15 points are here to serve as a bit of a muse for battling that dreaded writers block!

1. Put your heads together: So you have been writing about a similar subject for a number of months and every week you feel as though you must have finally exhausted every avenue of possibility! Try grabbing your colleagues (family or friends even) and have a bit of a group brainstorm. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is all you need!

2. See what is already going down a treat: If you are anything like us you will have a number of ‘go to’ blogs and websites for industry news and information. Spend some time browsing through the content on these kinds of sites to see if there are any hot trends that you could put your own spin on. Read through the comments after the posts too. What kind of comments are readers making or questions are they asking? Perhaps you could write a post in response to these.

3. Watch (or read) the news: Create a piece of content based on something that is happening in the world. In the news this month has been the inauguration, India V England Cricket and Google’s reported rise in profits. Can you leverage the popularity of these topics; perhaps discuss how it will affect your particular audience?

4. Aspire to be Parky: Why not do an interview with an industry leader, fellow blogger or even a client? Michael Parkinson eat your heart out….we’ll see!

5. Review a book: I recently read ‘Making Ideas Happen’ by Scott Belsky over at 99u. It was a fantastic read and is now being passed around the office as required reading. What work related books are you reading and could you write a review for your next piece of content?

6. Compile a case study: This was our problem, this is what we did and these were the results. Throw in some nice graphs and boom!

7. It’s all about the presentation: Deciding to present your post in a different way can sometimes spark off new ideas and creativity. Perhaps consider doing a video blog or infographic?

8. Use stats, facts and figures. Whether you’re writing about health, education, business or whatever it is likely that there will be various studies on your subject which are updated regularly. Head over to the National Office of Statistics website and see what reports they have published recently. They tend to be quite heavy going and so if you can break it down in to understandable and manageable data for your readers you are surely on to a winner!

9. Be hospitable. You guessed it would be coming – consider accepting a guest post. You could go a step further and actually ask someone that you trust and respect to write a post for you.

10. Be resourceful. Creating resources is a great for really engaging your audience and showcasing your expertise. Consider writing a collection of posts that make up a great guide on your website.

11. Turn your hand to curation. No doubt there is a lot of material about your subject already published on the World Wide Web. Pick a theme and then go about finding some of the best articles on the internet about it. Put them all together in one post and your readers will have a handy hub of useful info and the guys whose posts you reference will love it too!

12. Inject some personality. Are you going to a business event (networking, exhibition, product launch etc.) where you could take some pictures and turn them into a post? Perhaps you have taken delivery of some new products, are having a staff day out or have a really awesome workspace…take some pictures and make your blog more human!

13. Check out checklists. Use your industry know how to create some kind of checklist that is useful to your readers. For us this could be ‘A Small Business Owners Basic SEO Checklist’ or a ‘Website Health Checklist’ and so on.

14. Stir things up. Most people shy away from very opinionated pieces or anything that could be considered as controversial. However, sometimes it can really help to create a buzz around your content. Remember you can still share an opinion without being aggressive or hostile!

15. Round it up. What about doing a weekly news round up? Particularly useful in fast passed industries!

Vicky is a project manager for Inbound Web Design, an inbound agency based in the UK. Her two favourite things to write about are content marketing and design. In her spare time she loves arts & crafts and going horse-riding on a horse called Scooby!

Image Credit: 1.

3 Responses to “15 Quick Fire Content Creation Ideas to Help You Battle Writers Block”

  1. DNN Development says:
    February 15, 2013 at 1:31 am

    Great blog, very informative and very interesting. Thank you so much for imparting your knowledge on this subject to us.

  2. prottroy says:
    February 16, 2013 at 4:57 am

    Very good blog site

  3. Outlook Studios says:
    February 16, 2013 at 4:05 pm

    This was a good read. I agree I’ve found myself with wondering what to talk about. Definitely going to try some techniques for future writing assignments.