Sometimes it’s not the writing that has you bogged down, but it’s conducting your article marketing research that has you stumped. Where do you get ideas from? How do you know what to write about? Here are six fail proof methods to give you plenty of fodder for your article marketing brainstorming sessions – and I’ll give you good examples for them.
Spy on competitors.
There’s a difference between spying and plagiarizing. You can go to dozens of article directories and see what topics your competitors are writing about. So let’s pretend your niche is dog food, okay?
You could take a peak at some article directories and see that people are writing about the danger of fillers in dry dog food, homemade versus commercial dog food, and how to stop your dogs from being aggressive over their food (to name a few). Simmer over the ideas and write your own slant – don’t even click through to read your competitor’s articles if you might be tempted to steal their ideas.
Go to Yahoo Answers.
Type in your keyword and Yahoo Answers will spit out a bunch of article titles and ideas for you. When I type in “dog food” I instantly have several ideas, including: how much dog food should you feed your dog, how to tell if your dog’s food has been poisoned, and what type of dog food is good for dogs with sensitive scratching issues.
Take a peak in forums.
Forums are a wealth of information and ideas. If I type in “dog forum” to Google, I can click on a forum and find a section for my topic, dog food. I then see many article ideas, such as: “can I feed my dog raw eggs?” “what do I feed a dog with diarrhea?” and “what’s the best cancer fighting food for my two adult dogs?”
Pick up a trade or consumer magazine.
You don’t have to buy a hard copy of a magazine. You can do it online. Type in “dog magazine” and then go to articles and nutrition sections. There, I see many ideas, including: “what people food is safe for dogs to eat?” “how to make meatballs for your dog” and “how to put your dog on a diet with the right dog food.”
Buy a Dummies Guide.
Dummies Guides or Idiots Guides are a whole library of well organized information and ideas. You can even search online at Amazon for the book and look inside the cover to see the table of contents. In it, it gives you ideas like these: “basic nutritional requirements for dogs” “do you have to buy food from your veterinarian?” and “how to treat your dog with biscuits and chews.”
Watch the news.
Most news channels now put their live content online, so that means you can go to Google and type in something like, “Fox news dog food” and get results for this topic that were on their site. Using this tactics, I find ideas about “dog food recalls, and “how to make your own dog food.”
Ideas are all around you – you just have to dig around and look for them. Make a list for future articles, if you can’t use them all right away, or outsource them to someone else to write for you so they can be put to use instantly.