Recipe for an Ezine: Ingredient #4b: Where to Find Ideas for Content

After you have clearly defined who your targeted readers are, the purpose of your ezine, and have a clear and compelling title for the ezine and the email subject line, you are ready to develop your content writing skills.

Where do you find consistently valuable and interesting ideas to write about? Writing online has never been easier, because powerful search engine directories make your research fast and thorough. Here are a few ideas on where to find ezine ideas for content:

1. Burning desires: what rocks your boat, gets you steamed up, or energizes you?
2. What are your readers’ pain points?
3. What are others talking/writing about?
4. Any good resources you’ve found that can help readers?
5. Use Google Alerts for key topics
6. Interview experts
7. Review a book you’re reading
8. Common questions your clients ask you
9. Emails clients send you; include both positive and negative ones
10. Share a big mistake you’ve made and how others can avoid it
11. Share a personal story and then relate it to your readers’ and clients’ situations
12. Definitions of words or terms
13. Run a poll and report on results (good list builder)
14. Run a contest (also a good list builder)

What are other content ideas? I like to think of growing “content antennae:” by being aware and sensitive to my environment, I can pick up ideas for writing every few minutes. However, you need a clear, receptive state of mind to do this.