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In my opinion, the most challenging part of creating web content isn’t creating quality content. The most difficult part is to be constantly creating new content. Once you’ve come up with a content idea, it’s relatively easy to run with the idea and stuff your content with useful information.
But, oh, the brain drain that is coming up with yet another new idea!
I use two tools from Google every single day to help me come up with new content ideas.
1. Google Alerts
Google Alerts are updates that get emailed to you. They contain the most recent and relevant Google results for your choice of keywords. Alerts monitor web pages, news sites and blogs, looking for the query strings that you’re monitoring.
For example, I write for a hotel blog. I have a Google Alert set up for “vacations, travel, hotels”. I get an email once a day with links to recent news stories and blog posts from all around the travel industry.
You can also set up Google Alerts to contact you “as it happens”. I write for a celebrity gossip site (don’t you judge me!), so I have one Google Alert set up to email me every single time someone mentions “Angelina Jolie” or “Brad Pitt” on the Internet. Sure, I get a lot of information that I don’t end up using, but I’m also one of the first person to hear (and then write about) when Brangelina takes a family outing.
You can be as specific or as broad as you’d like when you’re setting up Google Alerts. The more narrow your search term, the less email you’ll have to wade through when you go looking for your next content idea.
2. Google Reader
Blogs are an excellent source for recent industry news. There are blogs covering every topic imaginable, including the ones that are most relevant to your business. But keeping up with the overload of information can be daunting. Google Reader is a feedburner with some organizational settings that will make it easier to manage the blog chatter.
When you find a new blog that talks about your industry, add the RSS feed to your Google Reader account. This is how you use any feedreader. What I like most about Google Reader is that it lets you organize all of your feeds into subfolders. I have a folder in my Google Reader called “Celebrity”, and it’s the first place I go in the morning if I need a content idea for the celebrity gossip site. I have another folder for “travel”.
If my content plate is full, I simply mark the appropriate folder as read, knowing it will be full of fresh content the next time I need it.
If you aren’t a freelance writer covering a bizarre range of topics every day, you may not see the need for organizing your feeds. Actually, you’ll have the luxury of being more specific. I’d recommend setting up one folder specifically to monitor the blogs of your competitors. Set up another to monitor what critics of your company or industry are saying. Set up yet another folder to keep track of blogs by industry analysts and experts so you can stay on the cutting edge of your business.
There is a never ending supply of content ideas out there. Using these two Google tools can help you filter through all of those ideas and make sure you have fresh information at your fingertips when you need it.
Britt Reints is a freelance writer living in Orlando. She’s naming her next child Google.
Image courtesy of www.fuelyourwriting.com
Tags: creating content, writing tips
