Advice Network Founders Blog

Chris Garrett wrote a great article on Performancing.com entitled “10 Killer Post Ideas.” While Chris is focussed on blogging ideas, I’ve taken five of them that carry over into the genre of advice articles. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. How To:“How to” articles are extremely easy to come up with. Think of something that you know about and then explain how to do it. You can generate ideas for this kind of posting by explaining the things that you do that the common person may have no knowledge on – or, if you want, you could explain things that are a bit more complicated. Garrett states: “make sure you post with a clear benefit to the reader and you clearly target the correct audience.”
2. Lists: Garrett points out, “lists work. They are easy to skim and digest. They also help structure your writing to make writing them easier, the outline is already there.” Ideas may be tricky to come up with, but if you are able to put together a couple points then you should be able to brainstorm enough to fill out the list.
3. Interview: When you’re asking questions you either need to ask what the audience wants or be able to dig deep into a certain topic that is relatively unexplored. Of course, you should be interviewing somebody who has a particular insight on the topic. Garrett gives few pointers for preparation: do your research, prepare questions beforehand, send your questions to the interviewee in advance, interview is about the interviewee (not you), ask open-ended questions, interact in a conversational manner, and thank the interviewee for their time and ask if there is anything they would like to say or add.
4. Case Study: Stories always add a sense of depth that can be felt by both the writer and the reader. By telling your story, you are providing information that is always right. It’s right because it happened to you. You could write a story on “how to make a million dollars,” but it won’t be as good as an article on “how I made my first million dollars” – although you can’t go wrong with either.
5. Research Results: “Research is a good way of getting publicity and headlines. It always works best when it is your research and using the internet research is easy.” Dig where other people haven’t dug before and provide unique analysis that others haven’t already pointed out. If you do this, you’re bound to have some interesting articles!

Garrett points out that “some of the best posts are combinations of the above.” Whatever you do, just make sure to create articles that are unique and insightful, the rest will fall into place.

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