With some imagination and curiosity, you can find new angles for writing about familiar subjects.
Here are ten prompts to help you generate ideas, whether you’re reporting for media publications or creating content for a business enterprise blog.
- Psychology: What problems does the customer or user face? What are their “pain points,” fears and concerns, or goals? Can you speak to the life they envision for themselves?
- Inform: What do readers need to learn about this product or service? Do they need simple explanations, a glossary, or infographics that will help them to understand?
- Past: How did the event, product, or service arise? Who were the creators/inventors? Why did these individuals choose this approach?
- Present: What does this deliver right now? What’s being introduced and who will it benefit? What are the technical details?
- Future: How will this activity, product, technology, or service evolve and grow?
- The organization: Who are the leaders and what do they bring to this effort? What milestones has this organization achieved?
- Case studies: Can you capture and share the experiences of specific individuals? Describe success stories? Provide user testimonials?
- Marketplace: Where does this product, technology, or service fit in the competitive landscape?
- Personalities: Who are the people driving this effort? What does their story bring to the conversation?
- User questions: What are the frequently asked questions? Can your users contribute content?
When you post or blog using these prompts, you’ll also want to consider tone and format. For example, will the writing and presentation be conversational or technical? What about reading level or use of multimedia and infographics?
Finally, your content needs to be found by searchers. When you include popular terms (keywords) appropriately in text, image tags, page title, and other HTML tags, you’ll be using search engine optimization (SEO) best practices that help your site get noticed.
(c) 2016 Wendy Lyons Sunshine. All rights reserved.