As any blogger or copywriter will tell you, keeping your content fresh and interesting isn’t easy sometimes. Blog posts have an incredibly short life. At least they should, as the idea is to keep a fresh throughput of interesting content. Whatever the nature or the quality a post, whether it’s an inspired piece de resistance or simply a throwaway observation, as a blogger you need to continually be on the lookout for new information to share or comment on and for innovative concepts and approaches to discussions within your particular field. One fertile source of blog content is to simply take the ideas of others and review them, add your own opinion and your own take to create an interesting new piece.
Take Michelle Bowles’ 5 Tips for Writing Fresh and Unique Copy for the Web posted on the Online Marketing Blog as an example. It’s an excellent article full of ideas on how to energise your thinking and your writing. In point 3, Michelle illustrates perfectly the concept of telling someone else’s story. You don’t always have to rely on your own brilliant thoughts. She advises, ‘an easy way to create unique copy for the web when you’ve run out of ideas is to borrow someone else’s,’ she continues, ‘Contact an influential or interesting figure in your industry, and base an article or post around him or her.’
Great blogging advice. Alternatively, take a post or even a comment that resonates with you, read into its merits and its strengths – or even the contentious elements within it – and use this as the basis of your own work. Revolve your work around other people’s, all the time adding your individual perspective, your unique voice.
