Do you ever stare at your screen, wondering what to write about?
Wondering what your next newsletter should cover or what content you could put into your next book?
If you do, then this article is for you.
You have access to two near perfect research tools. The first is simple and obvious, and the second is a goldmine of content that we’ll focus on today.
The first is your inbox, what headlines have grabbed your attention recently?
Can you turn them into an article?
One of the articles I recently wrote was based on the headline of an email I wrote three years ago. Rarely a day goes by when I don’t receive an email that I think, “ohh, I’ll save that headline for later.”
That’s the obvious one out of the way, now it’s time to change things up.
The Hidden Goldmine of Article Ideas
The second research tool is a little more obscure but way better.
It’s Udemy, the course platform. I usually use it to research topics for my courses, but it works just as well for getting article ideas.
Look what happened when I typed in “Newsletter” earlier today:
There are almost 1,000 courses on newsletters; just looking at some of the titles will give you some ideas, but the real gold is revealed when you click on a course.
There, in the course descriptions and lesson descriptions, you’ll find a whole wealth of ideas.
How many articles could you get out of that one screenshot?
Or how about this description
Just that one course should give you enough ideas for content topics for weeks to come.
Keep It Simple
I say it often: Online Marketing doesn’t need to be difficult; a simple idea can make your marketing and content creation much easier.
So go search Udemy for ideas, compile a list and plan your content… make it easy on yourself.
This even works on Topics you know nothing about! Do you want to write an article about Electric Vehicle charging?
Here is a week’s worth of article ideas if you want to get into EV charging!
#1 Bestselling Author
According to Amazon, the book I conceived, wrote and published in two weeks is now a #1 Bestselling book in the Internet Marketing Niche.
I am not telling you this to brag (OK, maybe a little!) but to show you what’s possible if you have an idea and follow through.
I had never published a book on Kindle before, but for the past 72 hours, with a bit of promotion and a free offer, It got to #1. Not a bad way to launch a career as an author.
Here is the good bit… the book came from a newsletter I published a few weeks ago. It’s just a simple expansion with a lot more detail.
How many potential books have you already written?
Here is the original article. Check the sub-headline!
That’s it for this week. If you enjoyed this post, consider upgrading, and you can get access to courses and books and also annual access to my community of like-minded content creators (including my new 14 day “Write a Book Challenge” I Published this week)
I’m Mark Thompson and It’s a pleasure writing for you
These are 2 really nice ways to come up with content ideas. I know I have used them both many times to help myself. Focusing on your first one for a moment. To take that a step further, sometimes people will email you with questions, or with opinions or takes you disagree with. When that happens, I have taken what they have said and made it a centerpiece which I build my content around. For example, I'd start the content off by saying something like:
"I just received the craziest email today. Here's what they said..."
[then the original email or part of it would go here]
Then I would proceed to dismantle said opinion with my own opinion. The thing about this kind of content, is people usually receive an email like that and proceed to write back to the original sender. However, turning it into content is far more productive.
Great ways
Another interesting way I use that every time I learn something new or find something interesting I commit to create content around it
This might be an article and Notes or an email