Coming up with content ideas is one of the hardest things that can happen to a blogger, most especially when people expect you to deliver daily. Over the past months I have come up with some ideas but it is still excruciating focusing on a niche as opposed to free writing.
Free writing is pretty much like free styling in hiphop and this comes easy when your blog doesn’t have a niche but if you have one, content ideas have to be squeezed out between a rock and a hard place.
In this post I am not giving you a manual on how to find content inspiration but rather on finding your free styling spirit in your niche.
Free styling is the best way a writer can find their voice and have it etched in a readers mind simply by the tone of voice they use when communicating and the style of their sentence construction and punctuation.
If you check out all my blog posts after reading this, you’ll realize they are all freestyles that have been carved out to fit my niche…that is exactly the kind of content creation style that will help you blog daily and have no worries of running dry.
But before we head into it I want you to always remember this…in free style writing;
You have to understand that content is within and without, it’s fluid and not static: In other words content isn’t something you look for but rather something that looks for you. All you have to do is open your mind, open your heart and close out the noise and listen intently—there you’ll find it.
As a writer or blogger content is always looking for you subliminally, you just have to stop looking for it so that it can find you. When I go to bed content ideas come to me in form of dreams or just through deep thought and meditation.
Content ideas are everywhere you are, at the street corner on that newspaper headline, on that book a hawker just tried selling to you, in that misfortune that happened to a loved one or to you, in that new song playing on radio or TV, in that movie you’ve watched and series you have followed for years, in that YouTube video you’ve been revering about and that Facebook post of a friend that sparked your imagination. In the comment section of a blog you vehemently follow and the things that we take for granted on earth like the sun and moon.
Content ideas are everywhere. Content is merely an opinion of a blogger and not really something that should be so scary and espoused in some metaphoric style. You as a blogger are content…content is supposed to be fluid.
So back to the question how do I come up with content ideas?
Scenario 1
It’s a sunny afternoon and I am walking down Ben Kiwanuka street, I try dodging the sun and start walking slowly in the shadows of the buildings and down on the pavement lays this black polyethene with books and magazines displayed for passerby’s to buy and then I see it…so what the bastard broke your heart? I smile to myself and say,So what the bastard fired you this morning, content idea in check… smiles and rushes back home to blog about it…hahaha. Now I didn’t need to buy the book, all I needed was a working title and my imagination to take me on a journey through my opinions and alas my opinion became one of the most loved ideas on the topic on my blog.
Scenario two
It is the beginning of 2015 and everyone seems to be discussing sex tapes and whose sex tape was better than the others. Meanwhile the sex tape actresses are being victimized for the love of having sex on a tape and some demoted at work because they have deflected from societies moral campus.
I feel bad about it mainly because I am a woman and I want to be heard, I want my frustrations with this society scale of judgment to be ruled out, in that I want the world to know my stand and my opinion about the matter…as we all know by now, opinions do make for a great blogger and out I come with To the girl in the sex tape , I can firmly say, I was heard and I will be heard several years from now through my opinion on that matter.
So every time you are buzzed for story ideas always remember you have an opinion just make sure it fits your niche as you can see all my opinions end up talking about career.
Scenario 3
So I am at home 6:30am deep in meditation and asking myself questions about life, career and unemployment. I then nimbly inquire what I would have wanted to be told about unemployment before I became unemployed.
I then start writing what I would have wanted to be told during my time as an unemployed young person and the story The saddest thing about unemployment happened to me. So always remember blogging isn’t only about finding content ideas but also asking yourself questions and looking for answers to those questions and turn them into blog content ideas.
Scenario 4
Oh for the love of YouTube and tinkering, I must admit YouTube has the best blog titles I have ever seen. The titles are not shy; they are bold and out for your blood and when you click on them, you’ll feel them coming after your gut with their voices.
Story titles like Forget self employment give me a job were born from there, the slut, the spinster you make the perfect woman and I transformed the title to fit what I wanted to talk about The slut, the feminist and the spinster you make the perfect woman
But you have to highly keep in mind that in writing it is acceptable to steal titles and redefine them or keep them in their raw format but you can’t steal the body or what the first person was talking about with that title, that is plagiarism so keep that in mind as you’ll check the titles I used on YouTube and realize I took a totally different direction when I was using these title ideas.
Scenario 5
I love hiphop and music in general but what really intrigues me is how a musician is able to tell the saddest story or the happiest story in just 5mins or 6 minutes—what is even more intriguing is when the musician or rapper is called Eminem, John Legend, Maurice Kirya, Edward Sharpe, Esther Nabasa and Natasha Bedingfield.
Every sentence or line of lyric means a thousand things let me give you a live example on how I used a lyric line as a story title.
In this song Natasha says release your inner ambition before heading into the chorus of unwritten, I pulled the line of Release your inner ambition and wrote a story around one line. For Eminem I have borrowed from one song like ten stories but the most profound was why you should never want to be me when you grow up Aturinda and from stronger by Kelly Clarkson, I twisted the lyric line what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger to If it doesn’t kill you make money out of it
I have written those and so many stories out of music lyrics and beats, something that is so accessible to all of you.
Scenario 6
We all love to watch a good movie here and there but profound scripts make for great blog content ideas. Like this movie called R.I.P.D, the first line into the movie was Hey! You think you’ve had a bad day at work?, It intrigued me so much, in that I decided to use it as a story title and I built my own bad days at work scenario around the title.
I have also written a story about 5 inspirational movie dialogues that will change your life…all these and more from movies.
Scenario 7
That moment when the bible proves to be the source of content ideas…yes!! That moment happened to me and I was able to chime out Taking bribes at work will give you leprosy and Why does God Hire Amateurs? and Why Jesus became one of us
These are just a few examples on how I get content ideas but I really want to leave you a quote whose premise I follow by Gary Vaynerchuk that says;
If you want to improve a particular industry, you have to look at a completely different industry that is succeeding and borrow from it to innovate in your industry.
That is pretty much what I do, hopefully one day this Industry will grow to greater heights in Uganda and we shall all be proud we fought on the same front.
Love
N.sarah
