How to Never Run Out of Article Ideas

posted by Sean Bossie, Full AccessTuesday, December 8th 2009 @ 11:33 AM (not yet rated) post viewed 348 times

We all know that 'Content is King' for our membership sites yet we often struggle to know what to start writing about-especially after you seemingly have exhausted all the initial topics you wrote about when you first created your membership site.

The following are 6 great ways to stimulate ideas and get you thinking of how to engage with your members and visitors:

1. Let the print world help you build your online world. Read the article titles of various magazine covers and get inspiration from the timely topics that the magazines are covering. Often they are chosen because they have been researched to be the current top interest area in that niche. Leverage that info on your membership site

2. Use a keyword suggestion tool (Wordtracker is considered the best) or the free Google Keyword Tool to research and brainstorm topics relevant to your keywords. You will be amazed how well this works!

3. Fill in the blanks below to get your creative ideas flowing:

3 Secret Tricks For___________________
10 Great Reasons Why________________
How To________in 4 Easy Steps
The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When________
6 Surefire Ways to__________________________
The WORST thing to do when_________________

4. Go Deeper. Look at your last 12 articles or blog posts where you examine each of the three *whatever* issues in greater depth.

5. Make an extensive list of the longtail keywords that people are typing into Google to reach your website. These keywords are usually 3-5 words long. Focus your articles and blog posts on those keywords and make sure to go through the list multiple times trying a different approach with a particular keyword each time. What will result is that you will end up with an extensive amount of content filled with your niche keywords directing readers to your site. SEO + New Content done at the same time.

6. Every day write 2 pages for a 60 page ebook on your niche. In one month you will be done and now you not only have a product you can sell or give away for free to build your list but you also have at least 20 'free' articles by simply re-posting your content from the ebook...and each article or blog post can have at the footer a link to download the full 60 page ebook (for a fee or in exchange for an email address).

Content is King on all websites and the way to "rule your kingdom" is to create a system so that you regularly build out your content with a strategy to attract new members and retain existing ones.

Remember, as the membership site owner you are the resident EXPERT. Leverage that expertise to your advantage by offering unique and valued content!

Comments

Glen Evans
Full Access

GlenEvans2 said on Tuesday, December 8th 2009 @ 12:10 PM:

Sean, good points. Thank you. I know for me, since time is in limited quantity, it is sometimes easier and faster to make a video using igroops excellent blogging platform. Since the video is downloadable, it can be sent to a transcription service and turned into an article. With both a video and an article, these can be used at many different web 2.0 sites to create backlinks to your site-which creates more traffic (which I think we can all use!), and placed on a webpage within your site.

Take care,

Glen Evans

Social Mark SEO

Sean Bossie
Full Access

SeanBossie said on Tuesday, December 8th 2009 @ 12:31 PM:

Great point Glen! Anytime we can leverage content in all the possible mediums it not only saves us time but reaches a different set of visitors who may prefer to read over watching or listening over reading.

The cost is actually very minimal as well...consider doing a full five minute video and the rate to have that transcribed into text can be as low as $7.50. Not bad at all...and it is quickly emailed back to you ready for a text editor.

I have used escriptionist in the past but I just checked and see that they are now called VerbaLink The rates are great at just $1.50/minute...No robots either--all typed by real human beings.