Gilroy Was Here

Once upon a time, approximately 45 seconds ago, I was having difficulty coming up with an idea for my next blog article. I have a list of titles saved as place holders in Google Docs but couldn’t seem to put thoughts together with the titles.

I decided to challenge myself and let one of my followers on twitter come up with an idea for me. I sent out a tweet asking anyone that was listening to send me a single word in a return tweet, promising that this word would be in the title of my next article.

The first entry in today’s contest was “pickle”. I thought - “how appropriate!”. Here I was in a pickle of my own searching for ideas and this happy twitterer helped me form an article on a list of ideas for curing writers block.

1. Ask your friends for ideas. ( Thanks @angelchrys!)
2. Search other blogs for ideas. This 18 year old SEO expert has some pretty good ideas. Don’t forget to give your inspiration a little credit.
3. Ask your kids. Right now if I asked my 5 year old I’d probably be writing an article about elephants or monkeys. That’s ok but be sure you don’t stray far from your blogs theme, if you have one.
4. Read over old posts for follow-up opportunities. My most popular article over the past month has been the one I wrote on 6 Things Regular People Aren’t Doing on the Internet. I’ve thought of flipping that around and summarizing the services I think most users are comfortable with and why.
5. Check out what’s popular on Digg or Reddit. You don’t want to copy somebody else’s idea, but on today’s Internet your personal opinion can be one of the few unique things you have left. Find popular news stories and write something from your exclusive view-point.

Pretty quick list for tonight, you know how I love lists. Besides I’m a little tired and I’m going to need my rest. The remainder of the entries in tonight’s twitter blog article idea contest? - “capernoited”, “jambalaya” and “diaphanous”. I know… I know… I asked for it.