Blog Tip 22. Mine your other Communications – A couple of months ago I stumbled upon a podcast that really impacted the way in which I thought about creating content. It was an interview with online entrepreneur James Maduk by Michael Pollock.
James has created many online resources and in the interview he spoke about many things (some of which I didn’t completely connect with but other parts that were excellent). The main message that come out of it for me was the idea of not just creating content when you sit down to create content but to look at ways of creating content of different kinds while you did other things.
He used the example of answering questions from others in email. Instead of responding to questions via email (which can be a lengthy process) and at the end hitting send and forgetting about it – James suggests capturing the content of that email and using it in some way that is bigger than the email itself. For bloggers this might simply be using it fully (or part of it) as a post on your blog. For James it meant using it as some other digital asset – potentially an e-book or sellable article.
James talked about doing the same thing with phone-calls and conversations by recording them and turning them into a podcast – ie mining your other communications to use in your online entrepreneurial activities.
The beauty of this approach is that you end using time more effectively as you kill two birds with one stone by answering the email and also writing a post for your blog. It’s also good because your blog post emerges out of a real life need that someone has that has prompted them to contact you in the first place.
Of course you’ll want to pick and choose the times when this is appropriate. Your readers won’t want to have an insight into every email you send and you’ll need to get permission of the other person if you record a conversation or are revealing any information about them.
Read more of the Bloggers Block Series
One way visitors communicate is through Google Search. You can look at phrases people use to land on your site. Most web statistics tools provide this. It gives a fair idea of what they are looking for. You might not have blogged about the information they are looking for but it might be related to what you normally post. Then you can blog about it.
When I think of an idea, I google the phrase and then save it as a bookmark.
When I need something to write about, I visit my “ideas” folder and pick something.