Having Trouble Knowing What To Write About? Try A Cuckoo Blog.

One of the most common problems I come across is people saying they don’t know what to write about. Well, here is a very simple idea that will mean you’ve always got a starting point for a blog or social media post.

Borrow some material from somebody else. Now I know we’re always told to be original, but nearly all ideas are created by building on something else. So as a cuckoo borrows a nest for its egg, try borrowing a subject and use it for your own blog.

Someone I know runs a company getting people to exercise and move more and she’s just written a blog on the subject of ‘exercise snacking’. It’s a new trend in doing micro exercise sessions of a few minutes at a go, throughout the day.

Is the topic original? No.

Is her blog original? Yes.

She has taken a subject and written her angle on it. After all, that’s what newspapers have to do every day. If there is a big news story, they will all write about it, but what makes each story different is the angle they take on it.

Now the angle you take on a subject is where the hard work comes in. You have to find more information about a subject than anyone else, as good investigative reporters do. Or you have to look at a subject from a completely different angle from everyone else.

But this blog isn’t about finding an angle. Hopefully, if you are passionate about the subject you are writing about, this will come naturally. This blog is about finding your subject. And my top tip for this is, ‘Google Alerts’. Basically, you set up an alert on whatever subject you are interested in and then you will get emails on a daily or weekly basis, with links to the tops stories being written on this subject.

And you don’t have to stop at borrowing the subject for your blog. If someone writes something really incisive, quote them in your blog. If they’ve got some great stats from a research project, use those.

And of course, as well as this, keep a notebook to write down any little ideas or observations you have on your subject of interest. All of these could become blogs.

So the next time you see a great article about something you’re interested in, don’t think it’s now off-limits for you to write about. Think of it as the metaphorical nest for your cuckoo blog to hatch in.