Content is king. Yes, you didn’t hear it first here. But, you do know we tell the truth.  As you work on content for your online media, we thought we could help you out a little to stimulate some creative content or posts.

 

FAQs, Myths, Pitfalls

  • FAQ Post: Detail the Frequently Asked Questions for your company or products and answer them. 
  • Myths Post: Present the myths for your industry and write an article to debunk them.
  • Industry Secrets: Write about secrets that people don’t typically know about.
  • Common Misconceptions: Talk about a common confusing topics for beginners.
  • Beginner Advice: Write advice on topics that seem obvious but aren’t to real beginners.

Timely / News

  • Industry News (original): Break news or cover a hot topic in your industry in your own way (yes, the original press release).
  • Curated News: Assemble relevant industry news and include snippets or summaries on your site.
  • Weekly News Wrap: Do a weekly news wrap up relevant for your customers.
  • Trend: Write your own take on a popular trend or hot topic

Series or Regular Post

  • Weekly Series: Do a weekly series of posts.
  • Annual Post: Do an annual top 100 list or yearly wrap-up.
  • Weekly or Monthly Themes: Do themes for a given week or month.

Research / Reviews

  • Research Assessment: Highlight, summarize and write about the key findings of research relevant for your industry.
  • Best Practices Post: Compile a set of best practices for your industry.
  • Compare and Contrast: Compare and contrast your market to markets in other cities, nationally or other countries
  • Book or Video Review: Review an article, book, PDF, video, training program, or service.
  • Advice: Write about the current market environment and how that impacts people or what they should do.
  • Two Options: Compare two options – choices potential customers need to make.

Thought Leadership/Opinion Posts/ Inspiration

  • Future Trends: Discuss future trends or predictions.
  • Opinion Post: State your opinion on a topic and explain.
  • Industry Changes: What would you change about your industry? Post about that.
  • Industry History: How your industry has changed over time, key milestones.
  • Counter-point To Common Belief: Challenge a commonly held belief in your industry.

Stories, Metaphors

  • Story Post: Tell a story as part of the post that delivers a certain message or makes a certain point.
    • Talk about how you came to be involved with your industry.
    • Include a personal story in a post.
    • Write about something unique that you’ve done or are doing.
    • Company history.
    • Tell a story of a challenge and how you or your company overcame it.
  • Customer Case Study: A day in the life of a customer or your company.
  • Good or Bad Experience: Talk about a good or bad experience you recently had and what it means.
  • Analogy or Metaphor: Draw an analogy in a post or use a strong metaphor.

Niche Celebrities, Brands or Movies

  • Speaker or Keynote Highlights: Summarize and highlight key points for recent celebrity speaker relevant for your industry.
  • Celebrity Guide To… Make a connection between a famous person and your post (e.g. How would the Taylor Swift…).
  • Big Brand Examples: Use famous brands, products or marketing campaigns as good or bad examples of a practice.
  • Compiled Tips Post: Compile input from several knowledgeable industry sources – one sentence or paragraph per expert.
  • Interview Post: Interview an influencer or expert and document the interview or key points.

Customers / Clients

  • Case study post about a customer.
  • Answer Questions: Take reader questions and answer them.
  • Address Blog Post Comments: Write about a topic or question raised in the comments section of your blog.
  • Biggest Problems: Ask clients, Twitter followers or others about their biggest problem related to your industry.
  • Best Readers: Connect in some way with your best readers – e.g. thank them, interview them, have them write a guest post, etc…

Your company / products – use sparingly (people care a lot less about your products than you do…)

  • Company Differentiators: What makes your company different from the others?
  • Service Philosophy: What is your customer service philosophy?
  • Specials: Monthly specials, deals, promotions, etc.
  • New Project: Talk about a new project and invite input .
  • Company Involvement: Talk about a publication you contributed to or a project you or your company was part of.

Tips / How To / Why / Tutorial – written, audio, video

  • How To: How to build something, make something, buy something.
  • Detailed Tutorial: Write a tutorial on a very specific topic not usually covered in that detail.
  • Teach Via Your Experience: Teach people how you overcame a common hurdle.
  • 101: Do a “101” (like a fundamentals course in college) post or series of posts
  • Beginners/Advanced Tutorials: Do a beginner’s tutorial or advanced tutorial.
  • Break Down Complexity: Simplify a complicated topic. For example, take a technical topic and break it down or make it simple.
  • Why You Should… Why the readers should do something.
  • Curated or Compiled Tips: Assemble a variety of tips and compile them.
  • How To Start: How to get started in something.
  • Common Hurdles: How to overcome common hurdles.
  • What To Do When You… Common triggers for action – write about them and what to do.

Pictures/Graphics

  • Infographic: Create an infographic that graphically explains a complicated topic using pictures or graphics.
  • Pictures Post: Create a post that is mainly pictures related to your industry.
  • Single Picture Post: Post one striking picture that conveys an important message.
  • Charts & Graphics: Use tables, charts or other graphics to tell a story.

Fun/Humor

  • Game/Contest: Provide a game or run a contest for potential readers.
  • Animation or cartoon: Get you creative design on.
  • Funny Comparison: Compare your company to something famous, different or in the news (e.g. Why Writing in PR is like pole dancing).
  • Satire Post: Satirize a popular movie or commercial (e.g. 50 Shades of Grey satire).
  • Humor: Add humor to spice up a dry topic.
  • Quiz: Hold a quiz for your readers.
  • Quotes: Pull together quotes that inspire or relate to your industry.
  • Top 10: Rank 10 people in your industry along some criteria (positive is better than negative!)
  • Curate Funny Pictures or Video: Provide funny or interesting video or pictures (what, another cat video?).
  • Humorous post: Write a funny post or include a joke (not about cat’s. Please).
  • New Word: Create a new word and define it (Please, not a cat world).
  • Online fun resource: Highlight or include something fun, like a free online game (enough with the cat’s already).
  • Favorite Thing: Ask people what is one item, tool, gadget or productivity item they can’t live or work without (don’t say it!).

Interviews – Written, audio or video interviews

  • Influencer Interview: Interview famous people in your industry.
  • Customer Interview: Interview your customers.
  • Employee or Executive Interview: Interview people in your company.
  • Get Interviewed: Have someone interview you – preferably an industry influencer!

Polls/Surveys

  • Twitter Question: Ask a question on twitter related to your industry and write about the input.
  • Survey/Poll: Run a survey or poll - analyze and write about the results.

Events / Holidays

  • Live-blog an event: Create a blog post real-time for an event. There are also specialized live-blogging tools if you want it to appear online as you type.
  • Event/Holiday Posts: Write posts about upcoming holidays or events (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Super Bowl, World Cup).
  • Stages of Life: Write about stages of life or triggers – weddings, new babies, funerals, etc.
  • Events List: Document the events relevant to your audience – local events, conferences or webinars.
  • Event Takeaways: Write about the key lessons you took away from an event.

Short List

  • Short List Post: Write a short list post. Examples include:
    • “5 ways to..”
    • “7 Tips For…”
    • Ten things you can learn by watching…
    • 6 ways __________ can make you ___________

Tools

  • Tool Review: Detail a useful online tool that customers in your industry could use.
  • Ultimate Tools List: Develop the “ultimate list” for all of the best online tools for your industry.
  • Crowd Sourced Tools List Post: Ask your readers or ask on Twitter/Facebook for most useful tools or resources.
  • Tool of the Week (Month): Share a new tool or website each week that people will find useful.
  • Tool “How To: Do a “how to” post or video for a useful tool (or a particularly useful feature.

Comprehensive List (e.g. Ultimate List of …)

  • Ultimate List: Develop “an ultimate” list of resources for your customers or others in your industry to reference (what’s this post called?).
  • Top Blogs or Websites: List and describe the top websites or blogs related to your industry.
  • Comprehensive Guide To… Write a comprehensive guide to a topic including data, companies, trends, sales…
  • Best and Worst Lists: Like the “Best PR People of 2015″ type of post.
  • 20 Free resources: Find free things that your readers will love.
  • Curated Video: Post several relevant YouTube videos on your site for a particular topic or product.
  • Curated Articles: Provide a list of the top articles or blog posts in your industry or on a particular topic.
  • Resources: Ranked list of must read journals, magazines, books or videos to watch.

Ideas ListNegative (use with care!)

  • A Rant: Write a passionate post about a frustration – about something that is bothering you.
  • Satire: Write a satirical post about something.
  • Response Post: Disagree with someone else’s opinion.
  • Counterpoint: Do a counterpoint to someone or some trend in your industry.

Guest Post / User-Generated Content

  • Get Guest Posters: Identify fans, partners, industry influencers or others to guest post on your blog.
  • User-Generated Content: Create a contest or request readers to submit content (articles, pictures, video).
  • Collect Input: Ask other industry influencers the answer to a question and collect the answer from several people into one post.

Social Values Content

  • Charity: Write about a charitable event, contribution or volunteer effort.
  • Issues: Write about a current issue and how people can help.
  • Cause: Write about a particular cause you believe in. Find a way to help non-profits in your industry and write about it or use the blog to forward it.
  • Eco-friendly / Green: Talk about eco-friendly or green steps you’ve put in place.

What is you favorite type of content to read?

 

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