top tips

25 Ways to Use the Web to Find Content for Your Blog

As a blogger, you know that sometimes the hardest thing to do is come up with content for your blog. Finding ideas for your blog (especially if you want to post regularly) can often lead to you not blogging at all, because you start hitting the wall when it comes to what to blog about.

So I thought it might be useful to offer up 25 ways to use the web to find content for your blog. Here they are.

Blog Comments

1. Using a plug-in like CommentLuv allows your commenter to share their most recent post. I’ve seen blog titles that have intrigued me and clicked through to read, and given me an idea for a post of my own. We use CommentLuv on For Bloggers By Bloggers.

2. If you see a comment that really resonates and offers a great viewpoint, ask the poster if they’d like to guest for you and expand on the original comment.

3. Similar to above, if you see a comment you disagree with, expand your own view into a post and offer reasons why your viewpoint is different.

Other Blogs

4. As #1 points out, CommentLuv is great for sharing the most recent post of a blogger, but not every blog uses it. So click through the URL of someone’s comment and see what they’re writing about, to see if you can gather ideas from there.

5. Blogrolls. While some have called blogrolls out of date, many bloggers still use them to share what they’re reading. Visit the blogs of those your favourite blogger reads, and see what ideas you can get from them.

6. A lot of bloggers have category lists for Top 10 Tips and popular posts in their navigation menu. Have a look and see what’s there, and use them to build your own content from.

7. Speaking of popular posts, if a blogger has their most popular posts on display in their sidebar, click on a couple to read and see what made them popular. Then see how you can take inspiration from them.

Social Bookmarks

8. Delicious is a great resource for finding blog content. Just type your topic into the Delicious search bar and you’ll find a ton of results from people that have saved articles or blog posts about your chosen topic.

9. Stumbleupon is a cool browser add-on that lets you browse websites at random. You can land on some great content that will give you your own ideas for your blog.

10. While not as popular as it used to be, Digg still has some great shared posts and news on its site. Look at the most popular and see what take you can offer.

11. BizSugar is becoming more popular, as it concentrates on small business news. If your blog is in this niche, you can get some great ideas from here.

12. A mix of social bookmarking and community, Blog Engage is similar to Digg and BizSugar with its voting system, but it focuses a lot on just bloggers and is a great starting point for ideas.

Blog Resources

13. One of my favourite blog communities is Scribnia. You can find authors and bloggers based on niches, and this can really help you target content to get inspiration from.

14. Alltop offers a great collection of blogs in a veritable feast of topics – if you can’t find something to write about there, then I’m stuck!

15. Still viewed by many as the Blogger’s Bible, Technorati has more than 133 million blogs registered with them. Use the categories or top topics to find content you can get ideas from.

16. Google Blog Search offers up a huge resource of blogs on every topic under the sun. Much like Alltop and Technorati, use the topic search to find your interests.

17. Another resource from Google is their Trends platform. If you’re quick off the mark, you can write a blog post about a trending topic, optimize it for SEO, and (hopefully) be found by those looking at the trends for that moment.

18. Junta 42 offers some great tips on content marketing – check out their articles for ways to get ideas for your own blog.

Social Networks

19. If you’re on Twitter, one of the best ways to find content for your blog is to jump into the weekly #blogchat discussion. Great bloggers, great topics – what more do you need?

20. Sticking with Twitter, have a look at what’s trending at any time on that platform then see if you can get a post out about it (just don’t go all spammy with your hashtags when your post is ready). Trendsmap is a great resource for global trends.

21. And yet again with Twitter, Twitter Search is great for finding out what people are saying regarding the stuff you blog about – type in a keyword, and see if any conversations inspire you to expand on them in a blog post.

22. On Facebook there’s a great app called Networked Blogs, that shares content from Facebook users with blogs, and the Networked Blogs directory. You can get a widget with different blogs in it, and use this to build some ideas for your own content.

23. LinkedIn Groups are perfect for finding blog content. Look at the questions being asked on there and write a blog post as your answer.

24. Seen by many as a place for file and document sharing, Slideshare has great presentations that are just chock full of ideas for you to take away and build several blog posts from.

25. YouTube is more than just a video upload site – think about grabbing a tips video, for example, embedding it into a blog post and then riffing on what else could have been added to the video to make it a better resource.

Your Turn

As you can see, there are a ton of ideas that you can get from places you’re already using, but may not have thought of. These are just 25 – but there’s bound to be a ton more.

So how about you – what are some of the ways you find content for your blog? Share your tips in the comments!

image: hugovk

317 Ways to Succeed in Social Media

The great thing about social media (and blogs that talk about social media and how it can be used for personal, business, blogging, marketing and more) is that there’s a ton of information available on how it can benefit you.

Hopefully, over the space of the last two years or so, this blog has offered you some tips, advice, strategy, call it what you will, that has helped you understand this cool toolset we call social media.

Just in case you missed any of these posts, here are some specific ones collected into one quick bookmarking option. I hope you find them useful.

Note: Each link opens in a new window, so you probably don’t want to open all at once.

Social Media

Blogging

Twitter

Facebook

Online Goodness

And as an added bonus, here’s a chat I had with the awesome David Siteman Garland yesterday over at his Rise to the Top show, where we talk about (amongst other things) social media “success”.

Enjoy!

(For more resources like these as they’re published, why don’t you subscribe to the blog? Choose your preferred method – email or RSS – from the options at the top of the sidebar to the right.)

This post contains a video If you can’t see it properly in your feed, you can view it directly here.

image: Leo Reynolds

10 Things Your Parents Told You That Still Apply to Social Media

This is a guest post by my friend Iggy Pintado. Iggy is the Director of Marketing, Sustainability & Innovation at UXC Connect . He is also a professional speaker and author of the book,?Connection Generation. You can find Iggy on Twitter at @IggyPintado. This blog post was inspired by a conversation between Iggy and his daughter Rachel on a recent road trip.

1.?How would you like it if someone did that to you?

The old adage of “do-to-others-as-you-would-have-done-to-you” is as much a religious commandment as it is social media principle numero uno.

2. Are you going out looking like that?

Make sure your profile – posts, photos, videos, etc. – reflect who you are and how you want to be perceived online.

3. If you can’t say anything good about someone, don’t say it all.

Be nice to people and try to be positive. That’s all.

4. Don’t play with fire.

If you know someone or something isn’t good, don’t engage – you’ll just get burned.

5. If you go cross-eyed and the wind changes, it’ll be permanent.

Unlike this advice, whatever you DO post online, stays online. You may think it doesn’t but the truth is – it does.

6. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

Keep it clean. Don?t use words your mother finds offensive. Watch the words you use – people are listening and judging.

7. Everything in moderation.

Careful with over-sharing and potential spamming. Also, watch that you don’t spend too much time online that it consumes you.

8. Think before you speak.

Watch what you say. If angry, count to ten first before responding. If really angry, sleep on it and answer after a good night’s rest.

9.?Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

You may want to try more than one social media platform. Don’t just blog, Facebook and Tweet. Use Linkedin for business connections.

10. Go clean your room!

Make sure your social media presences are updated. It’s worth posting regularly on your blog and updating your Facebook profile.

Which one’s your favorite? Can you think of any more? All comments welcome!

10 Fun Twitter Apps You May Not Have Heard Of

As the new Twitter continues to role out across the network, it’s clear that the micro-blogging platform intends to be here for the long-term.

Its initial use as a short message system has evolved into a truly multi-faceted and game-changing platform. Business, cause marketing, non-profits, customer service, lead generation and more – Twitter really does have something for everyone.

A lot of blogs (mine included) often concentrate on the best ways to use Twitter for business, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But wouldn’t it be cool to mix it up with a bit of fun too?

With that in mind, here are 10 fun apps for Twitter that you might not have heard of but are definitely worth checking out.

SecretTweet. Founded in April 2008, SecretTweet allows you to tweet your darkest secrets (or those of your friends) for Twitter to comment on. There’s? a mix of the funny and bizarre on the site, though there can also be sad ones as well.
Twitter Tussle. A cute little cartoon site, Twitter Tussle answers which topics are more popular on Twitter by having two cartoon Twitter birds duke it out on-screen.
ASKch. A great healthcare resource, ASKch (currently in beta) from Change:Healthcare allows you to send a question about healthcare costs and options in your neighbourhood, and receive an automated response and information link within 60 seconds.
Mombo. A fun and useful service, Mombo collates tweets about movies and formulates them into a review and overview of how good (or bad) that movie is according to Twitter.
BollyTweet. Like Bollywood movies? Got an iPhone? BollyTweet allows you to connect and chat with your favourite Bollywood stars. And in great Bollywood fashion, you can shake your iPhone to get the latest tweets.
Twitter for Busy People. Need to know at a glance what your Twitter friends are up to? Twitter for Busy People collates their images into sections (Last Hour, Last Day, More Than a Day Ago) and lets you hover over them for the latest update.
CheapTweet. Almost like a Digg for deals, CheapTweet collates all the best retail offers being tweeted, and allows folks to vote on the best ones so you can save the most.
Twitgift. The idea behind Twitgift is simply awesome. Want to send a gift to a Twitter friend? Choose a gift and send a tweet to them, and if they accept it gets mailed out to them. You don’t even need to know their address, Twitgift takes care of this.
Twistori. A very cool visualization project, Twistori gathers tweets about six main topics – Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Feel, Wish – and runs a colourful stream with tweets about that topic.
HootCourse. An interesting idea, HootCourse takes educational tweets and builds online classes around them. Virtual classrooms are created and students and teaches can meet to hold informal classes, complete with teaching materials and formats.

So there you have it. These are ten Twitter apps that might add a bit of fun to your tweeting and help mix things up a little when you want to get away from the serious stuff.

How about you – any Twitter apps you’ve found worth sharing? The comments are yours.

Image: Twitter Tussle