How to Get Ideas for Internet Articles

2006-07-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

Writing articles on the Internet is one of the best ways to promote your practice and products. But what do you write about?
I wrote hundreds of articles for the Internet last year. This year I plan to double the output. I write in two areas: Internet marketing and personal development. I write to promote my own practice, but I also offer an article-writing service, and I ghost write, so ideas is what I do, and they have to flow. Last year I was asked to write articles about mufflers, animal communicators, a special kind of insulation, palm trees, how to present on a cruise

How do you come up with ideas?

1. See this for what it really is personal and professional development and life skills.

What you are doing is developing your emotional intelligence. One of the EQ competencies is creativity. Generating topic articles requires creativity, but and this is far more important to your Real Life so does problem solving. You have to be able to generate options and alternatives. So develop your emotional intelligence take courses, work with an EQ coach. Work on developing your creativity. Then a lot more than your articles will benefit!

2. Be curious!

Anything youre doing for another and more fun reason turns out better. I happen to be a very curious person. I get on a search engine and chase rabbits. I read a phrase I dont understand and I go look it up. Happened just the other day. I was researching another topic and ran across the phrase anodyne therapy. I stopped right there and went and looked into that and came up with about 10 new article topics.

This is NOT what your teacher told you to do. Your teacher told you to focus and stay on task. Youre a grown-up now. The way you become creative is to become curious.

3. Listen to personal anecdotes.

People like to read about other people more than anything else. If you listen to people with that in mind, youll have all the material you can possibly use. Im lucky in that respect because I talk to clients all day long. They feed me material. They give me proof and concrete examples of everything I talk about in an article. They give me metaphors!

4. Not in a pipeline? Create your own.

By that I mean, call up someone and interview them. When you read an interesting article, call the person who wrote it, interview them, and turn that into an article.

5. Whatever you just learned, turn around and teach that. Write an article about it.

People are entering the Internet for the first time every day, and theres a long continuum of knowledge. If you just discovered article syndicates, there are a million people out there whove never heard of one.

6. Think topical and work 6-8 weeks ahead.

January 1, you should be thinking about Valentines Day and tax time, whatever your field. There are web publishers looking for relevant articles. If your field is organizational coaching, tell people how to have an organized Valentines Day, or how to organize their taxes. If your field is Internet marketing, tell people how to make use of events and holidays. Im writing this on January 16th. Right now Im through with Valentines Day and Super Bowl and thinking about spring. (Yes, I used Super Bowl in various ways, actually.)

7. Think cross-categories.

One of my specialties is emotional intelligence. As you can see Ive just applied it to article content, for which it is eminently applicable. I have also written the following: articles on How to Have an Emotionally Intelligent Valentines Day; How to Manage in an Emotionally Intelligent Way, for the business audience; Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, for parents; and an ebook titled How to Write for the Internet Using Your Emotional Intelligence, just to name a few.

8. Your time is the scarcest commodity. Take every topic and chew it to the bone.

When you read a landmark book, for instance, and come across a new idea, write a book review. Then write an article about the ideas in the book relating it to management, personal life, marketing, sales, self help, family life every way its applicable. There are sites dedicated to all these topics. Then write a Top Ten. Then write a Business Top 7. Then go and review the book on amazon.com (yes, Ive gotten clients that way). Then write tinies for the ap-shorts yahoo group. Then extract quotes from it and submit them to coachville. Milk it for all its worth. The serendipity if youre in a professional field such as coaching, is that by the end you are going to KNOW that topic, and your clients will benefit.

9. Go where your people go and find out what theyre interested in.

If your target market is working moms, continually cruise those sites and see what topics are current.

10. No matter how tired the subject, you have something new to say about it because its coming from you.

11. When youre stuck, look right under your nose.

What problem are YOU dealing with right now? For instance, the plague of my life right now is Im a coach and I cant find a headset that works. Now surely there are 10,000 coaches out there struggling with that same problem who would like me to research that topic for them and help them out. Excuse me, I gotta run. Ive got an article to write!

12. Hypnagogic time.

Thats a big $5 word there. Its the time just before you drift off to sleep. Tell your brain youd like to have some article ideas. Maybe in the shower the next morning, or later that day something will pop into your mind as if by magic when actually its because you invited it to! Remember to keep it positive, i.e., When I wake up tomorrow Ill have lots of great ideas for articles. USE your brain; thats what its there for.

13. Lucky number13 - if you dont love what youre doing, dont do it.