How Many Articles Can I Peruse in a Workday?

And Can I Finish This Blog Post Before My Fiance Goes to Bed?

It seriously freaks me out when my fiance goes to bed before me. I have no idea why. He's just going to the next room and won't even completely close the day because the cat needs to be able to go in and out. But, I can't stand the notion of him asleep before me, with all of the lights out in the rest of the apartment. It's too much. I don't like it. When he shuts the light off by desk and I hear that 'click,' I start winding down as quickly as possible (not the right way to wind down, I know) so I can go to bed as soon as I can. It just feels late when he goes to bed before me and it feels like a sign I just shouldn't be up too much longer or else bad things will happen.

Anyway... Articles!

So, my first step to hustling is to get a record outside of our app and CMS of every article that we cover. We easily cover 400 stories a day: 20 to 30 stories per vertical plus another 100 or so for top news. No, I'm not going to read all 400 of those articles each day. That's not possible. But, a Google Sheet for each vertical with an easy glance at that day's 20 or 30 stories is much more digestible. With an easy glance of the source link and the description, I can pick out a couple of stories that look extra interesting or that look like they may have excellent facts, quotes or statistics that would make great social media content.

To build social media communities and, ultimately, fuel growth and get installs, our channels needs to present more online than what we're doing now. Our Twitter handles need to offer more than the lede sentence and the link to the update. The main handle needs to do more than tweet a lede and the original source link with the author tagged. All of that content is great, but because it's not much different from what's offered in the apps, there's little value in both downloading the app(s) and in following us on social media. Sure, someone may miss the story on the app and then catch on Twitter, or vice versa, but even that's kind of a poor value proposition. A major factor in making social media work for you is to have content tailored to the platform, where even though we're sharing the same story across Facebook, Twitter on our app, it should not look identical across the three platforms.

Separate Content for Our Newsletter

With the stories in a Google Sheet, I can avoid looking at the updates directly to have a fresh interpretation of the articles. A fresh interpretation is needed for our upcoming newsletter, although I do not know exactly the contents of this newsletter. I sent a survey to our mailing list since we haven't emailed them in over a year (hey, it wasn't my list to begin with, so I didn't have any idea who was on this list or why they were there). This survey asked how often they'd like the newsletter, what they would like it in and why they signed up in the first place. From the responses I've received, it's looking like this will be a weekly email that features summaries of our top stories. To be able to put such a newsletter together, I need to know everything we've covered for the week and then decide our top drones story, our top video games and a couple of our top breaking stories etc.

Getting this done shouldn't be a problem. The next step now is learning first-hand how many articles I can peruse in a given amount of time. Today, I'm going to give myself one hour and see how many articles I can get through. The day afterward, I may do 90 minutes or two hours, depending on my schedule and how well today goes. The goal is to see if this is a viable solution to a) finding great social media content in the stories we already cover and b) useful in finding ideas to cover for the upcoming newsletter.

If it doesn't work, then I'm not sure what I would do. At the moment, I need to be able to do this on my own.

46 Article Ideas You Can Use for Your Blog Right Now

Maintaining a blog or online publication isn't easy, and one of the toughest aspects of maintenance is coming up with things to write about! Even if you're preparing an editorial calendar for the next month, or even the next few months, the ideas aren't always flowing. If you need a little help, or if you need something to write about right now, then consider one of the 46 article ideas below. Surely, you can find something here that's compelling to do and to share with your audience.

1. Live blog what's happening at a conference, event, or trade show.
2. Attended a webinar, conference, event or trade show recently? Share what you’ve learned.
3. Instead of recapping the conference or webinar, review it! What would you have wished to learn? What could they have done better?
4. Did you just hold your own event? Do a recap.
5. Will you be holding an event? Do a post about it and why people should come.
6. Do a roundup of niche-related news articles that your readers may have missed.
7. Write a follow-up to one of your most popular blog posts.
8. Respond to comments made on a previous blog post.
9. Write a counterpoint to a post from another blog.
10. Agree with a post from another blog.
11. Ask another niche blogger to do guest post.
12. Ask another niche blogger if you can reprint one of his/her posts. Make sure to write your own introduction and give credit to the blogger.
13. Look at what your competitors are blogging about, and write your own post on something they’ve done.
14. Take a current event and show what your niche can learn from it.
15. Take a seemingly unrelated current event and show what it means to your industry.
16. Find a recent news article on your industry and add your own angle.
17. Compare your niche to something from pop culture, like a TV show or a new dance craze.
18. Counter a prevailing niche trend or perspective.
19. Affirm a prevailing niche trend or perspective.
20. Bust a myth or two about your niche/product/service.
21. Confirm a rumor or fact about your niche/product/service.
22. Make a prediction on an emerging trend, or on something else happening in your niche.
23. Define some niche lingo or key terms.
24. Are there any new research findings or statistics related to your niche? Write a post on why that new something is important.
25. Present the history or some little known facts about your niche.
26. Outline a solution to a big niche problem.
27. Or, just rant about that problem. That’s okay too.
28. Ask several niche leaders about an issue related to your niche. Post the responses.
29. Create a beginner’s post to your niche (think of it as a very quick 101!)
30. Conduct some research on something related to your niche and share your findings.
31. Create a “recipe of success” for your niche.
32. Create a “5 Pillars” or a “10 Commandments” for your niche.
33. Answer a frequently asked question related to your niche.
34. Make a list of the 10 best other niche blogs or news sites.
35. Make a list of the biggest lessons you’ve learned in your niche.
36. Compile a list of the best apps for your niche.
37. Make a list of your favorite quotes related to your niche.
38. Make a pros/cons list of something in your niche.
39. Review a book related to your niche.
40. Ask your readers what they’d like you to write about.
41. Write about the best idea(s) suggested.
42. Conduct a poll.
43. Post the results to that poll.
44. If there’s a movie about or involving your niche, write about what it gets right or wrong.
45. Ask for reader submissions (can be posts, pics, or vids).
46. Share the best ones!

6 Unusual Places to Find Business Blog Ideas

Coming up with good business blog ideas is a constant battle. You have to do it all the time, and some days it may feel like you've said the same thing for the past five posts. You need something new to write about, but is also needs to be a topic that aligns with a keyword you are trying to rank for while providing value to your potential customers. It's not always easy to find a business blog idea that meets all of those requirements. But, no one said you have to come up with these ideas from the top of your head or from a keyword list! You can easily stumble upon great business blog ideas by looking in the right places. Here are six unusual places to find business blog ideas:

1. Competitors - Are your competitors blogging? If so, what are they blogging about? If they are blogging about something that you can blog about, then do so and do it better. Take a different angle, or use a different argument, or expound upon their ideas with a longer article.
2. Customer Questions - Are there questions that customers ask regularly, or maybe issues that take a lot of time to explain? Why not save everyone some time and answer each questions with a blog post? This way, customers have a chance to find the answers on their own, saving your time to answer questions that are unique to each customer. It also means you get to work with people that more likely to buy, instead of still researching solutions for their problem.
3. Potential Customer Protests - Has a lead given this reason, or that reason, for not wanting or needing your products/services? Is it brand new reason you've never heard before? Whatever it may be, argue against it in a blog post! Follow it up with a post on how to convince a boss or a spouse (whether you're B2B or B2C) to use your product or service.
4. LinkedIn Answers/Quora - This is an excellent way to find business blog ideas as well as to get a backlink or two. Scroll through Quora or LinkedIn Answers for questions that relate to your blog. Pick one (or several) to answer, and then post the link to the blog post on the site.  Easy topic with an audience for it, ready to go.
5. Keyword Tools - There are two keyword tools that we use to come up with ideas: Ubersuggest and Soolve. These two sites find keywords that are related to whatever you typed in, so it's incredibly helpful in expanding your own keyword list as well as with coming up with a blog post idea that targets a good keyword.
6. Have You Looked at Your Own Blog? - Your own blog is full of ideas, even if it is full of published articles? Are there comments to posts that asked questions or generated a lot of buzz? Consider those ideas to pursue. Was there an article that was incredibly popular? Write a follow up. It's also close to the end of the year, where roundups of your most popular posts or posts about certain topics are easy to publish during the holiday season.

Are there any other places that you use to find business blog ideas when you're stuck in a rut? If so, let us know in the comments below!