The life of a web writer ain’t easy believe me! A little bird once told me writer’s block happens to the best of us and when it happens to me, I turn to, the big bird, Twitter for help.
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Creating an endless supply of content for one industry is tough. Content creators won’t be able to remain fresh and unique, if they’re bored and constantly spinning articles. More importantly, uninterested readers will start checking out the competition. If you write about old news, you’ll become old news.
Stay Fresh With Twitter
With nearly 400,000 million tweets being pumped through the Twittershere each day, there’s an abundance of idea sparking material out there, regardless of your industry. Yeah yeah yeah... we all know there’s a crap load of infomation on Twitter. But how do you find exactly what you are looking for?
For fun, let’s say we work for a candy company and we are looking for our next blog post idea. Here are a few ways to go about it:
1. Twitter Search
Like Google, Twitter can also be used for search. Yes, there’s a massive difference between the two; nonetheless, you have the ability to search user tweets by keywords and by hashtags.
If you search the terms “best candy ever” you’ll see results that include all the keywords you enter but it no specific order. See what I mean:
On the other hand, if you add a hashtag and eliminate the spaces you’ll see results that have all keywords in the same order you searched. This is what I mean:
Cool, you showed me how to search crap on Twitter... I want to generate content ideas.
When it comes to generating content ideas, it’s up to you to read in between the tweets. From the seven tweets above, here are the few ideas I came up with:
-
The Real Candy Crusher: A Game You Can Eat
-
The Best Candy in the World that you Can’t Have (About the candy you can’t buy in North America)
-
What Is the Most Popular Candy on Twitter
-
5 Bedtime Snacks That Won’t Give You Nightmares
- 10 Desserts Made With Twix
2. Find Out What's Trending On Twitter
( ^ Screencap from Trendsmap)
Relating Justin Bieber to the Candy Shop
Personally, I went to Google and typed in: "Justin Bieber's favourite candy". Did you know that the Biebs loves Sour Patch Kids, Air Heads and cotton candy ice cream?! Either did I, but this information opens a content door of opportunity.
- Justin Bieber's Favourite Candy to Eat On the #BelieveTour (Blog)
- Toronto Candy Shop Stocks Up On the Bieb's Fav Treats For #BelieveTour (Press Release)
3. Ask Your Audience:
Why not ask your audience for some content ideas. Here's a few ways to ask:
- "What do you wanna read about next? Sugar free cupcake recipe, low cal candy, or chocolate health benefits. Tweet us your pick!"
- "Tell us what you want us topics to cover in our blog. Best idea gets a 50 gift certificate!"
on
Twitter is probably the one social networking site that I utilize the most with my blog. However, I never thought to use Twitter when I’ve got writer’s block. It’s time to change that. Thanks for your how-to on generating post ideas using Twitter. With as much time as I spend on Twitter, I think this will be very helpful.
on
The first two options are worth a good shot for even newbies, whereas you need to have a good audience base for trying the 3rd one. Very informative article, Vanessa.
on
@Sreelal Yes I agree with your point on the third one; however, if you don’t have the audience base, maybe using focused hashtags could your questions in front of the right audience.