One of the most common excuses I hear from people on why their blog hasn’t been updated in weeks, months or even years is, “I don’t know what to write about.” Same is true for email newsletters and videos, but those seem to hid it better when the idea well runs dry.

Even though I have over 1,400 blog posts under my belt, I sometimes suffer from a lack of content creation ideas. To that end, and so that no one can ever again say, “I have nothing to write about,” I set out to create an exhaustive list of ideas, resources and tools for creating an endless supply of blog posts, email newsletters, YouTube videos, tweets, Facebook updates, and just about every other method of sharing content with your audience.

Of course, no list is “exhaustive,” especially one that includes Internet resources. So I included a call to action at the bottom of this post where you can share your best tips for content creation…just go ahead and leave a comment. Like the penny jar at the candy store, leave an idea, take five…it’s all good.

Now, let’s get started…

1. Google Alerts: Use this free tool to get blog posts, news stories, and even tweets about your targeted keywords delivered to your inbox every day. With just this one resource you’ll never run out of content again.

2. Tweet Beep: Think Google Alerts, for tweets.

3. Social Mention: A social search engine that measures sentiment, top keywords, and most active users for a given phrase. The results come from a wide variety of social media platforms AND include audio and video results as well.

4. OpenBook: Often hilarious, always unedited, this site is to show off how little privacy we have on Facebook. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it to see what your customers–or your customers’ customers–are saying.

5. Quora: Search this popular Q&A site for questions asked around your area of interest.

6. LinkedIn Answers: Choose an appropriate category and find great questions for blog posts, videos, emails, etc. Or, ask your own question and use the answers (with attribution) to create your own blog post.

7. LinkedIn Groups: Another source of questions on LinkedIn. Be sure to join local groups as well as groups that focus on your industry or your customers’ industries so you can hear your customers’ biggest concerns, problems and gripes.

8. Your emails: Never answer a good question from a customer or prospect again! Well, what I mean is: take that question, turn it into a Dear Abby style post, then send the person a note thanking them for their great question; it was so great that you felt other people could benefit from it, so you turned it into a blog post (and send them the link.) Figure, if one person asked you, how many hundreds or even thousands of people are asking the same question at Google?

9. Wikipedia: Search for your keywords and use the Contents section for inspiration.

10. Wikipedia Part Deux: For even more inspiration, dig into the See Also section of the page.

11. Wikipedia, Threepeat: Still searching for content? Dig even deeper into the References section.

12. Competitor’s FAQs: Go over to that section of your competitor’s website that no one else is visiting. Go through their FAQs and breathe new life into them. Each one is another blog post that can be read, shared, and linked to. Repeat.

13. Yahoo Answers: This is one of the web’s more popular Q&A sites.

14. Twitter Search: Search for phrases and hashtags that impact your industry or your customers’ industries to uncover new topics and questions that need answers.

15. WeFollow: This site helps you find influential people on Twitter in your industry. They’ll regularly be tweeting out inspiration for new content ideas, so be sure to follow them.

16. Google Suggested Search: You know those “suggested searches” that popup as you start to type? Those are other people’s questions that have already been asked, and probably will be again. Gold, people, pure gold.

17. Google’s Related Searches: Now just scroll down to the bottom of the page and find even more related searches that may not have started with the same phrase.

18. YouTube’s Suggested Search: Same idea as Google, but using the world’s second most popular search engine.

19. Google Insights: This tool gives you loads of information on historical search data, but you want to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find top searches and emerging trends.

20. “Keyword/Industry” + “Discussion Forum” Search: Chances are there are plenty of discussion forums for your topic. Check them out with this formatted search. (Note that I used Bing this time around just to show I don’t always rely on Google.)

21. Google Analytics: OK, back to Google for a moment. Review the keywords that drove traffic to your website. If you see some promising keywords, or especially themes of keywords, create more content there.

22. Get Seasonal: Tie your regular old content to a holiday or season. The 10 Scariest Questions to Be Asked in a Job Interview for Halloween, or How to Perform Spring Cleaning on Your Inbox.

23. WordTracker’s Keyword Questions: This is a great tool for uncovering questions that people have already asked at the search engines. Tip: use just one word if possible for best results.

24. SlideShare: This is the YouTube of PowerPoint presentations. Use the search box to find your topic. Depending on your category you can view the handouts for dozens or even hundreds of presentations. Think there might be a blog post or two in there somewhere?

25. Google Trends: This nifty little tool tells you what’s hot right now. See how you can leverage hot topics into your own content.

26. ÜberSuggest: This site will generate related keywords for your topic; just the thing you need to create content that people are already searching on.

27. Ask.com‘s Related Questions: See, it doesn’t always have to be about Google. Ask serves up related questions to your searches, perfect for Dear Abby style posts and videos.

28. Ask.com‘s Popular Q&A: Don’t accuse me of going back to the well too often. It’s not easy coming up with 50 of anything! Below the Related Questions are Popular Q&A; sometimes it mines the same territory, but not always.

29. Alltop.com: This popular site highlights a wide variety of high quality posts from around the web. Use their directory to find what people are writing about in your industry and get inspiration and ideas.

30. Ezine Articles: Just because Ezine Articles and other article distribution sites got hammered by the Panda update doesn’t mean that it can’t be a great resource for creating content for your niche. Just search on your keywords and see what topics have been covered. Chances are these people already did your homework for you. (Just make sure you’re using them for inspiration only.)

31. Search: “Blog Content Ideas” for [Your Industry]: Works for almost every niche. Rinse and repeat for “Email newsletter content ideas” and “Video content ideas” for your niche.

32. Your Tweets, Retweeted: Chances are, if your tweets are being retweeted they’ve got some value. Use popular retweets as fodder for your next blog or video.

33. Review a Book In Your Niche: You are regularly reading books in your niche, right? Because otherwise the world is passing you by. By reviewing a book you pay more attention while you’re reading (or listening) to it, plus it grabs a bigger hold in your mind when you’re writing your review, plus it’s great fodder for your blog, ezine or video!

34. Google+: Head over to Google+ and do a search on your keywords. You can find posts, people and circles all about your topic of interest and generate new content ideas on what people have already voted as interesting (by sharing or commenting.)

35. Amazon: Do a search on your topic and find books that have been written in your industry. Very often you can “Look Inside” and check out the table of contents…a great resource for new content ideas.

36. Amazon Take Two: Look for products in your industry. These products could be great for review posts (always a popular topic) or you can read through customer feedback for more ideas. This VoIP phone generates ideas around how to setup a VoIP phone, how to configure a VoIP phone with Google Voice, Telephony in the Small Business Office and more…

37. Invite a Guest Blogger: Why should you have to do all the heavy lifting? Loads of people want to reach your audience and are happy to create (hopefully) quality content on your blog to do so. You should include a call to action on your blog somewhere where you have a form where potential guest bloggers can pitch themselves.

38. StumbleUpon: This popular site allows people to vote up and down on sites within a category. In short, it’s a great way of finding amazing content to inspire you. Heck, you could even just create a 10 Most Amazing Sites About Craft Projects blog post.

39. Delicious: Although this site’s best days may be behind it, it’s still a great source of content ideas, with active users organizing the web for you.

40. Digg: OK, this site’s best days are definitely behind it, but again: it’s got an active user base that’s curating the web for you, bringing you inspiration for your topics.

41. Focus: If you’re writing on business topics, check out this website for conversations, questions & answers.

42. Focus Part Deux: After you search, check out the related question in the right column for more content suggestion goodness.

43. Hunch: While it may not work for every niche, you can gain inspiration and get new topics to write upon from their categories…everything from art & design to tech to men’s fashion.

44. eBay: Depending on your niche, you can find inspiration (and good deals) for topics at eBay. Drill down into specific categories or just search on some of your keywords.

45. Flickr: Do some searches within your niche and drill down through some tags to find inspiration on this photo sharing site.

46. Know Your Meme: This site tracks the hottest Internet memes–viral ideas–and becomes more useful the hipper your audience is. You can try and tie the hottest topics into your niche or search for specific phrases. Keep in mind that a lot of what’s hot on the Internet may not be safe for work.

47. Blog Comments: Review your own blog posts that garnered a lot of comments and spin some of those comments off into their own posts or articles.

48. Interview an Expert: Whether it’s a local expert, recent author, vendor, client or someone you follow on Twitter, interviewing a subject is an easy way to create valuable content. Added bonus: they’ll often promote the interview once it’s posted.

49. Life: Document what you see, what you hear, and what you do, especially as it pertains to your audience’s needs.

50. Fiverr: When you absolutely, positively can’t come up with another idea, just go to Fiverr and get help from someone else for a measly $5.

Whew! As exhaustive as this list was to create, I’m sure I’ve forgotten plenty of websites, resources and ideas for content creation.

If you’ve got’em, please share’em! Just leave your suggestions in the comments below.

Oh, and feel free to share and link to this growing resource of content creation ideas. Thanks!

Rich Brooks
Now It’s Time for a Nap

Like jetpacks and flying cars before it, RSS still doesn’t have the market share we were promised.

For those of you who don’t know what RSS is, it stands for Real Simple Syndication.

For those of you who have no frickin’ clue what that means, you just need to understand that every time you update your blog, it updates a document with the new post. People can subscribe to your RSS feed and get an updated version of your blog post in their newsreader.

Unfortunately, that’s still confusing to most people. That’s why I created a blog post and how-to video called How to Subscribe to an RSS Feed. Still, you don’t need a how-to video to subscribe to an email newsletter, a magazine or to turn on your TV. RSS is too complicated and esoteric for the average Internet user.

But one nice thing about RSS is that it is extremely flexible. A few years back, some companies started offering automatic RSS to email conversions. This way, people who weren’t geeky enough to understand RSS could still subscribe to your blog via email.

Even though not everyone gets RSS, everyone gets email newsletters.

However, the functionality of most RSS to Email tools is lacking. In fact, it almost universally sucks.

Here’s a list of what an RSS to Email tool needs to be world class:

• Easily convert RSS > email (duh!)
• Allow the blog owner to create branded templates for the emails sent to subscribers
• Allow the blog owner to determine when the emails will be sent out; weekly, daily, or immediately after each blog post (my preference would be the last, because of the following bullet point)
• Ability to create a unique subject line for each email pulled from the most recent blog post title (this is critical for open rates!!!)
• Ability for subscribers to override the default delivery schedule (some people just want weekly digest)
• Ability to track where the signup took place (this will improve my marketing efforts and ROI)
• Allow the blog owner to send out additional messages to the subscriber base that don’t appear in the blog (special offers, downloads, events, etc.)
• Allow the blog owner to offer an incentive to sign up, like an ebook or free consultation. (This is how we built our email list in Constant Contact. See this post on email bait for more info.)
• Ability to use the same system for an email newsletter as the email feed, and cross-promote

I’m not suggesting this should be a free service. I’d happily pay for it. In fact, in a perfect world, it would all be offered by Constant Contact, who we run our regular email newsletters through as part of my monthly service fees.

Because they don’t (yet, I hope) offer RSS > Email I just dropped $200/yr on AWeber, because they come closest to offering everything on the list above. I’ll be switching this blog’s feed from Feedburner to AWeber in the next few weeks…unless Constant Contact is reading this and wants to make me happy and keep all my business.

What did I leave off? What would you like to see in a world-class RSS to Email tool?

Rich Brooks
Blog Marketing, Served Your Way

If you’re interested in increasing your online visibility, then you need to create quality content that engages your audience. There are many channels that you can use to distribute this content: your website, your blog, an email newsletter, online videos, photo sharing sites, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, webinars, ebooks and more.

Many businesses struggle with how to create new content after they exhaust a few obvious topics. However, there are plenty of online tools that businesses can use to drill deeper, to find more long-tail search terms that they blog about or could create a webinar that would attract new business.

One of the tools that helps accomplish this–and is fun to play with as well–is Google’s Wonder Wheel. It’s a mashup of a mind mapping tool crossed with search results.

I created a short video of how to to use Wonder Wheel to create new content ideas for your own business.

You can watch the video below or check out How to Increase Your Online Visibility With Google’s Wonder Wheel on YouTube.

Rich Brooks
The wonder wheel goes round and round…

Dear Rich,

I’m a mental health professional and I have a website. I’ve been told that I should be building a list of contacts, but I don’t really see the point. Outside of my sessions I don’t really have anything to sell, so what’s the point of building a list of contacts that I’ll never do business with?

–Listless in Lisbon

Dear Listless (heh-heh),

While it’s true you may not have anything to sell to people now, that may change in the future. You’re probably a specialist in something–maybe dealing with children with ADHD, or adults with OCD, or helping repair relationships. Over times, your experience will grow, and so will your ability to help people.

But, you’re still only going to have 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week.

Imagine if you had a free download, such as 10 Tips for Helping Your Kids Manage Their ADHD, or 5 Surefire Ways to Stop OCD from Ruining Your Life, or 3 Strategies to Try Before Calling the Divorce Lawyer, and tied that to an email newsletter signup. Any one of those might be a valuable enough offer to get people to subscribe.

Then you publish a monthly ezine on your topic of choice, archiving each article on your website or blog (for SEO benefits, ‘natch.) Over time, you’re going to develop quite a list of interested people.

So, in two, five or ten years from now, when you’re ready to publish that book (or ebook, or put on that webinar, or develop that online course), you’ll have a ready list of opt-in, interested people who want to learn from you and buy from you, and who will likely share your good name with their networks.

Just be sure to include me in the acknowledgements.

If you’d like to learn more, but sure to check out this month’s flyte log article, List Building: How to Build a List of Contacts at Your Website.

Rich Brooks
Listing

Photo Credit: Bart Fields

I went to fill out the contact form on your website to say this:

I’ve just signed up for your email newsletter and read your web marketing articles…..

I just wanted to say that your confirmation email with the stuff about privacy and not liking green eggs and ham is the funniest and most human I’ve read in a long time….or actually it might be ever. [Emphasis mine, but you can just hear it, can't you? ]

Thank goodness some people still have a sense of humor.

We’re going to use you as a model to inject more humor in our business ……everyone is way too serious these days…….

Sandra Newton
Auckland Web Design Company – Essentee

So I ask you: why are you punishing yourself by not subscribing? Besides what USA Today calls the “greatest confirmation email of all time”* flyte log offers monthly articles that help you market your business online and stay ahead of your competition. Like today’s article, QR Code Marketing for Small Business, which answers all your questions about this new marketing method that is the intersection of physical media, mobile media and the Internet. It’s like the Aim toothpaste of marketing.

Look how easy I’m making it! I’ve even included the signup box right here! No excuses!

Rich Brooks
That Web Marketing Guy

*They said no such thing.

I have to ask: why?

Some of the articles talk about the benefits of QR codes, how they act as URL shorteners. I have to ask: who is retyping a link from an email newsletter into their browser’s address bar? Email newsletters are like any other web delivered information, in that they can include links like this one that doesn’t have to show the whole URL. Even if it did, it’s still a clickable link.

From a user standpoint, which is easier: clicking a link (as you’ve been trained to do), or reach into your pants pocket, pull out your smart phone, fire it up, launch your QR code scanner, wait for it to scan the code, and be (finally) taken to the web page in question?

Now, that’s not to say there’s no place for QR codes in email marketing. You may be trying to engage customers who are smart phone users and get them more engaged. (Remember those Columbia Record one penny deals? Getting people to take the extra step of taping a penny Columbia House provided increased conversion rates enough to more than offset the cost of “lost” pennies.)

You might also be trying to cash in on the novelty of QR codes, and in so, be branding your business as ahead of the curve. That novelty will soon wear off, however.

I’m excited about the possibility of QR codes in marketing and communication, but I feel they’re a tool that will work best in certain situations, for certain industries, and for certain audiences. This is a not a one-size-fits-all marketing solution, so don’t get swept up in the hype.

[Update: I just posted a new article on QR code marketing here.]

Rich Brooks
Email Marketer

2010 was a challenging year for a lot of businesses, but for those who “marketed through it” fared better than those who put their head in the sand and tried to wait it out.

Social media became legitimized for a lot of businesses who were attracted by the apparent low-cost…forget that it takes serious resources to write compelling blog posts, update your Facebook fan page, create videos, engage in LinkedIn Groups and tweet–just to name a few activities that successful social media marketers delved into in 2010.

We also saw more focus on mobile marketing, which will continue to grow in 2011, with mobile-friendly web sites, smart phone apps, location-based apps, and QR codes to name a few. I expect this will continue as well, as more people upgrade to smart phones…especially if there’s a Verizon iPhone released this year.

As always, I feel that the best approach is an integrated one, where your create a strong content strategy and deliver your message over multiple channels, that may include your web site, blog, online video, and social networking sites. Depending on your audience it might include podcasts, in-game advertising, traditional advertising, in-person networking events and more.

For all of you who take web marketing seriously, and get passionate about growing your business, here’s a quick roundup of the articles we published in flyte log, our email newsletter this year:

This year I’ll be teaching not one but two classes at the University of Southern Maine:

Web Marketing for Small Business
In this 4 week course you’ll learn how to build an effective web presence for your small business or non-profit. You’ll learn about search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, blogging, social media, e-commerce, traffic reports, and how to build a web site that generates leads and makes sales. (Please be aware, though: this is NOT an HTML course. You’re not learning how to build a web site, but rather how to make a web site that will build your business.)

4 Thursdays, September 30-October 28, 7-9 p.m.
$215 (8 contact hours/ 0.8 CEUs)
Abromson Center, 88 Bedford Street, USM Portland campus

I’m also teaching a brand new course this fall as well:

Social Media Marketing for Businesses (and the People That Run Them)
Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are certainly popular, but should they be important parts of your marketing strategy? In this two-class course, you’ll learn how these and other popular social media sites can increase the online visibility of your business, and put you in contact with new audiences.

You’ll learn how to setup and optimize profiles on the most popular, influential sites, how to connect with people in the social media sphere, and how to measure your success. You’ll learn the do’s and don’ts of social media, how to build an audience, and how to listen to what people are saying about you and your business.

We’ll talk about social networking, blogging, online video and all the tools your company needs to master this new arena of marketing.

2 Wednesdays, November 10 and 17, 7-9 p.m.
$115 (4 contact hours/ 0.4 CEUs)
USM Library Computer Lab

Hope to see you there!

Rich Brooks
You Can Call Me “Teach”

Photo credit: Lee Nachtigal

NutshellMail rocks.

I could stop my review at this point, but you’d probably want some more information before trying out NutshellMail for yourself.

Setting Up NutshellMail

Setup is free and easy. Just visit the NutshellMail web site and click on “Create an Account” in the upper right corner.

From there you’ll be taken to a page where you enter in your email, create a password, and choose which of your social media accounts you want to receive updates from.

Currently NutshellMail supports Facebook, Twitter, MySpace & LinkedIn.

For networks that allow multiple accounts (Twitter & MySpace) you can enter multiple accounts. For Facebook, you can get your personal activity, as well as activity from your pages.

Once you’ve set this all up I recommend going with the default settings at first; once you receive a few emails from Nutshell you’ll be able to tweak your account to maximize its effectiveness for you.

Customizing NutshellMail for Maximum Efficiency

What I may like best about Nutshell is how easy it is to customize the emails you receive. By default, Nutshell will craft an email of all your online activity three times a day, 7 days a week. However, it’s easy enough to have it deliver 1, 2 or 24 times a day. Or not on the weekends. Or only on the weekends. Maybe you just want a daily digest delivered at noon so you can see what’s going on while you eat lunch at your desk.

(BTW, eating lunch at your desk every day is the leading cause of job dissatisfaction, so go out to eat or chat up someone new in the lunchroom. Like that cutie from accounting.)

Customizing Twitter

As you use Nutshell more, you’ll also want to tweak what messages get delivered in your email. For example, for each Twitter account you’ll get information on:

• New Followers (20 max)
• New Quitters (20 max)
• Latest Direct messages (20 max)
• Latest @replies (20 max)
• Latest tweets (20 max)

Now, since I have two monitors and one of them is dedicated exclusively to TweetDeck–except, you know, when I have to do work–seeing my most recent 20 DMs, replies and tweets is redundant. However, getting a list of my most recent quitters is pure gold, and let’s me see how many people were just following me for the follow back.

The downside of that is seeing some legitimate people quit you, but life goes on.

As you can see from this screen capture you have the option to one-click follow new followers (assuming you’re not already following them.) Likewise, if you’re following any of your latest quitters there’s a one-click option to unfollow them back. You can also change the customization from any Nutshell email by clicking on the “Customize” link in most sections.

You can further customize your Twitter section by including saved searches that you want to follow (like the name of your business, your personal name, industry terms, or the names of American Idol contestants.

Nutshellmail also gives you a digest of any or all of your Twitter lists, and again this is completely customizable: include or exclude the latest tweets from any of your Twitter lists, or change the maximum items per email.

Customizing Facebook

You have even more control of customizing the information you get from Facebook, but a lot of it is based on how you have your Facebook account set up.

For example, because I already get so many emails from Facebook, I chose not to include messages from my Inbox, notices of me being tagged in photos, friend requests, etc.

Alternatively, maybe it makes more sense to flip that: stop those messages from Facebook and instead filter them through NutshellMail. I certainly love getting the email updates about friend’s birthdays…a lifelong weakness of mine.

You can further customize your account by selecting which groups of friends you want to see updates from. This, of course, only works if you have been putting your friends into groups at Facebook.

And although Nutshell offers some filters, it doesn’t filter out Farmville updates. (Damn, you, Farmville!) However, my friend and Social Media FTW co-founder Jaica Kinsman just taught me last night how to filter those pesky Farmville (or Mafia Wars, or whatever) posts out of your feed. But that’s a subject for my next blog post.

Another thing that Nutshell offers that Facebook doesn’t (to the best of my understanding) is that it will send updates from your pages. One of the shortcomings of a Facebook business page is that someone can leave a comment and you don’t know until you visit your page again. If they comment on an older thread you may not even see it. NutshellMail allows you to get updates from all your favorite Facebook business pages, whether you admin them or not.

Customizing LinkedIn

There’s not as much customization for LinkedIn, but that may have to do more with LI’s API than anything else. You can get updates on new recommendations, profile updates and other items you’re interested in. Since I don’t use LinkedIn as a way of staying in touch with people on a daily basis (like I do with Twitter and Facebook), I tend to ignore the LinkedIn section, but your mileage may vary.

Customizing MySpace

I’m guessing there’s customization on MySpace, too, but since I never use this for business you’re on your own. If you do use NutshellMail for MySpace updates feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.

What’s Missing

Sometimes what’s missing, or purposefully left out, is more important that what was put in. What’s nice about Nutshell is the ease-of-use, no matter your level of expertise. That being said, somethings I don’t believe you can do in Nutshell:

• Subscribe to a blog’s RSS feed (a list of new blog titles and perhaps a snippet of text would be helpful)
• Respond to posts, tweets and updates (although you’re usually just a click away)
• Integrate other social media sites (blip.fm, plaxo, etc. NutshellMail feels particularly American since many of the popular non-US social networking sites aren’t included.)

NutshellMail: In Conclusion

Whether you’re just starting with social media networking and feeling overwhelmed, or you’re a power user looking to maximize your efficiency to stay on top of all of your networks, NutshellMail can be customized to serve your needs.

I’ve only been using it for a couple of weeks and already I can’t image working without it.

Rich Brooks
Social Media Consultant

They feel that businesses that end up on page one of Google results must be practitioners of the mystic arts, or companies that generate leads through Twitter and Facebook must have some powerful voodoo.

Put away your totems, scrying mirrors and eyes of newt. (Actually, hold on to those eyes of newt; they go great in arugula salads.) There’s no magic to increasing your online visibility; it’s all science, and it’s a formula that anyone can learn, repeat and improve on.

In this month’s flyte log, our cleverly-named monthly email newsletter, we discuss The Visibility Formula: How Web Marketing Builds Your Business. In the article we talk about:

• Search engine optimization, both on-page and off-page techniques
• Social media marketing
• The power of blogging
• Email marketing
• Webinars, and
• Measuring and improving on your results.

If you’ve been struggling with how to increase your online visibility, drive more qualified leads to your site and convert that traffic into business, check out The Visibility Formula…and then give flyte a call.

Rich Brooks
Droppin’ Science

Photo Credit: Amy Loves Yah