How to Find Content Ideas Quickly
As a Ghostwriter and Content Creation Trainer, I am often asked by corporate writing teams, “How do you come up with relevant ideas so easily and quickly?”
The most important thing in becoming a regular blogger is that you develop a writing habit. In my experience, that’s hard to do unless you make it fun. Getting creative is supposed to be fun, after all.
Think back … when you were a kid playing with raw stuff like mud, slime and sand, you were having fun, right? Well, that’s what it should feel like at the ‘creative ideas’ stage of the game. Experiment with different rituals, e.g., playing low tempo music, writing in the same venue, setting the time of day for writing, arranging your desk and so on.
The best way to save the ideas that pop into your head throughout the day, though, is still the good old-fashioned notebook. Here’s how to use it.
KEEP A WRITING NOTEBOOK
Buy a notebook that’s big enough to scribble down ideas as they come to you during the day – one that appeals to you and that you can fit in your bag, but nothing too small or tiddly. I carry around different coloured Post It notes in pockets and whatever bag or laptop case I’m using. By carrying those around, I can scribble down odd words and phrases that come to me randomly and then stick them into a large ‘ideas notebook’ later. They make it easier to arrange ideas, too, as they can be moved around, grouped together by theme, character, setting, plot and so on.
And in case you’re thinking, “I just want to start blogging for my business. That stuff has nothing to do with me”, then think again. I’m talking to YOU! Creative Writing skills have every bit as much to do with the success of your business blogging as the winning novel of the Man Booker Prize.
Get used to jotting down snippets of anything you see or hear that infiltrates your consciousness at first; later, you’ll filter out the less interesting ones automatically and note those that really provoke your imagination. After a week of being a sleuth, you’ll be amazed at how much more alive and aware you feel to everything that’s going on around you. Eckhard Tolle talks about “The Power of Now” ... you’re about to tap into it as a writer!
Set a regular day to transfer the notes each week to your computer. This is very important, as you’ll expand a little on each idea as you type them up. If you leave it for longer than a week you’re likely to forget the ideas or lose the notes.
Sort through the notes, choose five of them (or more if you’re a naturally fast writer) and expand on the ideas into blog headlines and loose structures. Spend no more than ten minutes on each at this stage – this is first draft stuff and is supposed to be woolly. Your subconscious mind will carry on refining them over the next few days before you return to polish them up. Let ‘em stew!
