 We have a lot going on, but partly because I know tips that I'm going to share with you. So, you know, all of our blogs are different. So some people have blogs, maybe you work for a company and you're doing the blog for the company. Maybe you have your own blog. Maybe it's a blog that you monetize. Maybe it's a blog for your hobby, and you don't want to monetize it. But the one thing every successful blog has in common is that it publishes. And if you don't publish, you're not successful. So we want to make sure that you have never run out of ideas. So that is not an excuse for you, because you're almost going to have enough ideas. And as we go through this, keep in mind your own goals for your websites. Because some of these ideas may work for you, I hope so. And some may not, but that's okay. So just always keep your own ideas in mind. Now, before we get into how to find ideas, let's make sure that we conserve your writing, conserve your content. So one of the ways to make sure that you don't run out of ideas is don't overwrite. So maybe if you're running out of ideas, because your posts are too long, you might be writing more often than you should, or that kind of thing. So first of all, we'll talk about not overwriting. So people want posts that are short and easy to read and they can just get the information they want and get in and get out. And that's really not anything new. People have been talking about that in journalism for 30 years. And here's a post that I did a while back. Usually I write 500 to 1,000 words. This one was very short. It's about 200 words. And you can see it just got a big picture and it's got a little bit of content there. And that's all there is to it. It doesn't need, we're not in fifth grade anymore. When your teacher said you have to write 10 sentences or you need 100 words. There is no minimum amount of words or content that you have to have. You could have a picture with a caption. Or writing posts that are very long. It might be that you want to write in depth posts and that's okay. But maybe you're thinking, well I'm going to write 12 tips on how to save money. Well you could do that if that fits into your goals. But maybe you want to take that and focus it more. Because people want very focused content. So maybe you're going to do 3 tips on saving money in the supermarket. And 3 tips on saving money when you go on vacation. And then you have a couple different posts. And so you're not running out of ideas because you're focusing your content more. So some exceptions are, first with what you're writing about. So here is an article that I wrote that is very long. So it's really hard to find plants for shady gardens that have flowers on them. And a go-to flower for years and years was a plant called Impatiens. And people, it was cheap and everybody planted it. And then a disease started killing this plant off. So I had to tell people about what the disease was. How it affects your plant. And then give them alternatives for plants that were in shade. Because there are a lot of flowering plants that were in shade. And so this is very long. And I considered making 2 posts out of it. It's super long, lots of lists, lots and lots of pictures. And I thought, well, like always put yourself in your reader's shoes. So my readers do not want to wait until next week to find out what else they have to plant. They don't want to read two separate articles about it. They want all their options in one article. That's what I decided. So I made it very long. So always think about what does my reader want. So this article is almost 2,000 words. It has 11 photos. But I made it one long post because it was necessary for the content. So don't steer away from long articles. I'm not telling you to never write long articles. But don't think that you have to have a minimum word length for a post. So just say what you need and get out. Bring out of ideas for a blog, for blog posts, because you write too often. So how often should you post? Well, it depends on what your goals are and what your readers want. So maybe you want to keep in touch with your readers. Think about that. Maybe you, of course, would like to talk to them two or three times a day. That's what you would like. Well, how often do they want to hear from you? Maybe once a week. And how often, what's your capacity? How many blog posts can you write? Well, maybe you can write one a month. Okay, so then you look and you say, well, maybe I want to talk to them two or three times a week. They don't want to hear from me that often. And I can't. I don't have the capacity to do it that often anyway. So keep in mind those things to figure out how often you should be writing. And remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. It's more important to find a pace that you can keep up for months and years. Because if you say, yeah, I'm going to blog every week. And then you get busy or an emergency comes up and you miss one post. That makes it real easy to miss another one. And miss another one. And then guess what? You're not blogging anymore. So make sure you find a pace that works for you. So where do we find content over there? Well, so first of all, look at what's in the news. Just be aware of what's happening in the world around you wherever you get news in the world. But then also look at news in your field, whatever it is you're blogging about. So where do you find that kind of news? Might be other blogs in your field. So look to them. What are they talking about? Maybe those are the things I should be talking about as well. Maybe you read national blogs and you have a local blog. You can do a local angle on what the national blog is talking about. Maybe you need to read scientific journals to give information to your reader and get ideas. Trade publications. So you may not realize that pretty much every industry, every business, there is some kind of magazine written for that niche. So look and see what they're talking about. That could give you ideas. Okay. Get on new lists from public relations offices. They send out press releases. These are very nicely written documents. And they will have news in them and ideas. And it's all written up and they send it to you. And they can also be sources of photos. So if you need a photo, some kind of image to go with it, they may be able to supply that as well. So if they don't include a photo, ask for one. So what kind of places will give you press releases? Well, first of all, companies. So if manufacturers, suppliers, so maybe if you do tech, maybe you want to guess what new gadgets are coming out. So you want the manufacturers to let you know what's coming up next. Maybe you can tell your readers about it. If you're a landscaper, maybe your suppliers have some information about their products, about their tiles or their country or things like that, that it will be interesting for your readers to know about. New products, of course. Non-profits can also be a source. So for me, with my magazine, the Botanical Gardens, the Buffalo Inn and Erie County Botanical Gardens, they send me press releases because they're always doing something. And that's a great source for me. Cornell Collaborative Extensions, they have gardening news and they have different cooperative extensions in different counties and they will send me news. Sometimes they'll send me whole stories. So groups that hold events that your readers might be interested in attending, check those out. And then even the government. So for me, the State Department of Environmental Conservation sends out press releases on new things that they're doing. Maybe they need volunteers, maybe there's a new bug that we have to be aware of or a new invasive plant when not to use fertilizer on your mom. So things like that. So look for government agencies that might affect what you're doing. Conferences or workshops. Don't just go look at tourists and sit back and relax. Take notes. So if it's something that you could possibly be writing about, something that your readers would be interested in knowing, take notes, take a picture. Maybe the person is a scientist or something and it's a big figure and your readers would be interested in hearing about this person, but maybe the talk is too technical. So you could go up afterwards and ask a question that your readers would be interested in knowing about. Like, oh, something is happening in Western New York, in our field, what do you think about that? And then you could write that answer and say, this distinguished person from our field came to Western New York and this is what he or she had to say about this problem that we are interested in. So if there's not an event coming up, find somebody you can interview for a company. You could interview an employee and write about an employee in your readers who would get to know somebody in your company. A customer testimony. So you interview a customer and they say, oh, here's how this company helped me and that's going to help other potential customers. If there's somebody in your field that you would like to interview but they don't live around here, pick up the phone and call them and you'd be surprised at how many people would be willing to give you a short interview. Now, make sure that you make a list of questions before you make that phone call and obviously you may want to contact them by email first to get permission to do the interview or get my email or text or whatever. So you're going to make up a list of questions. What do you want to ask the person so that you're not stumbling and make sure that you get your name spelled right and make sure that you get a title. Sometimes people will have multiple titles. You may have to pick one or two that are pertinent to the topic. For instance, a faculty member who may have a title as the faculty member of the university but then they also have a title with the center that they're working at and they have on a title. So get that information, get a couple quotes. You could ask the person for a photo of themselves or a photo of them doing whatever it is you're talking about. You have something in the field that would be great. Questions for readers. If a reader sends you a question, wow, it's great because this is something now you absolutely know what readers are interested in because one of them asked you. So this is if one reader is interested, probably another reader isn't. If you're not sure what people might want to read about, what about questions that people ask you all the time? If you work for a retail space, what questions do people ask you? Most could be a blog post, every single question. And then when that question comes up again, you can refer back to it. So it could be, what does this word mean? What is this technical term? What is this plant? Things like that. If you have more than one person in your group or you're not proud of your company, ask those folks for ideas. What do they think that our readers want to know? What kinds of questions do they get? And then upcoming events. So maybe you're going to be holding an event. Well, of course you're going to be. If you are holding an event, you're going to be sending out several, you're going to be doing several blog posts saying, hey, six months from now, we're doing an event. Hey, it's getting closer. Sign up, all those sorts of things. Maybe you're just going to be exhibiting at a trade show or something like that. Well, that's okay. Say, hey, come to the trade show. Say hi. Let them know that you're going to be there at an event. Maybe there is an event that your readers should be going to. Well, obviously you're going to tell them about that. Especially if you are going to be participating or speaking what people know, that positions you as something of an expert. And so you want that kind of prestige. You're going to get a lot of events that you want to tell your readers about. You may want to run a calendar. And what's nice about that is it keeps your website updated even more than if you just post once a week. You may be posting events more often than that. Okay, if you can help me out, I want to love you. So any kind of advice or tips that you can give to your readers, that's going to be great. If you can solve a problem for your readers, that's going to be stupendous. So there are some things that you probably know off the top of your head. Or maybe it's something that somebody else in the company knows and you can just get the information from them. Or you can interview somebody else. So put yourself in your reader's shoes. Okay, so you can also share information from other blog posts. But don't plagiarize them. You can just copy all of their material and put it in your blog post. But you can use a little bit of their blog. And so this is one of the master gardeners in Erie County used to put out a publication, a newsletter, and they would do it on paper and they would mail it on paper to people. And it was very expensive to produce. So they recently changed, and now they're posting those articles on their website. And so what they do is when those articles are posted on their website, they let me know and then I write a blog post and say, hey, there's new material. And here are the articles that you can see here. And whoops. And okay, so I give here, quoted somebody, the person who wrote this article. But I'm not putting a whole article here. But I'm using a little bit of the article here. And then I link back to the website. So you can do that. And then you can read the whole article here. So don't plagiarize people. But you can link to other websites. And you could do a post that said, hey, here are five other websites that you might be interested in, or five blogs that you might be interested in reading. That would be a good post in itself. You can do something with New Year's. No matter who you are and what your blog is about. So you can do something about the year interview. This was what happened in our field last year. And or you can do something next year. Here are the trends that we expect to see. Okay, so everybody can do something with New Year's. Thanksgiving, are you thankful for your readers? Tell them. I'd like to thank you for subscribing. I appreciate it. People like to be thankful. They like to feel appreciated. And then we've got lots and lots of Quasi holidays. How about National Popcorn Week? Okay, maybe that will help you. I had actually written something about National Popcorn Week for a different publication when we were very desperate. So there, when we were downstaffed, it was really hard. But we needed it. But you may have your list and list and lists of these Quasi holidays. Find something that works for you. Tax date. Okay, maybe that's not a holiday, but maybe that is important to what it is that you write about. And then holidays for you. Maybe the anniversary of your starting your blog. Or something like that. So some anniversary for you. A new pope is elected. Something like that. The president visits Buffalo. Or the gasoline prices go up. Or gasoline prices go down. Does this mean something to your industry, to your field? So watch for those, write about those. Seasons, the first day of spring. Or boy, you know, it's really hard for everybody to get to work because of the snow. So those kinds of things. Watch for those. There's something there that you can write about. And then interesting facts. Look for these. Or a plumber. You could say plumbing comes from the lead. Or from lead. Because lead was used in pipes. And then you can go off that and say, well, we don't use lead in pipes so more. We use PVC or whatever. So find an interesting quote. An interesting fact. So you may be able to just use the fact. And that could be your blog post. Or maybe it can be an inspiration and a starter and something that you can build on. And then you quote. You know, in something inspirational. Something funny. But it depends on what your website's about. So maybe your website is a little edgy. So maybe you want to start casting a quote from somebody. You know, something current. Whatever it is, look for those kinds of quotes. Announcements. So maybe you're going to be getting a talk. Or you're offering a new service. Or you're running a contest. So any of those things, you're going to definitely make an announcement to your readers. Maybe you've gotten an award. Okay. Now don't wait until you get the Pulitzer. Okay? Any award is okay. So I am a constant content all-star. So constant content gives out awards. If you have a high open rate. And I think also some of the criteria are like that I make sure that I delete emails of non-existence addresses. Things like that. So I love people though. I'm a constant content all-star. And it's because I have a high open rate. And thank you for subscribing and thank you for opening because you're great readers. I appreciate my readers. I don't tell them about well it's also because I delete non-existence addresses. You don't have to tell them that part. And people. So it doesn't have to be a stupendous award. Maybe you belong to a business group and it's small. And there's a business of the month. And in your terms, you get to be business of the month. Well don't tell them that everybody gets to be business of the month. You know, you can say hey, I was a business of the month. So anything like that, let people know about it. If you received a new certification, maybe the local paper or TV station did a story with you. Let people know. Thank you readers. Because if I didn't have subscribers, I wouldn't have any interest from advertisers. So I'm very thankful for my readers and I thank them because people like to feel appreciated. So I do this when I've added a new bunch of subscribers. Like if I have a table at an event and I've signed up a couple hundred subscribers, well I let people know. We don't thanks for signing up. And that makes me feel welcome. On its own, it could be a post on its own. Or it could be something that's in a blog post. A call to action is when you tell your reader so it might be please subscribe. Please tell your friends to subscribe. Please buy something. Please register for an event. Please sign this petition. Please like me on Facebook. So any of those things could be a call to action. So you may do a separate post telling, reminding people, hey, please tell your friends to subscribe to us. Or we're having a contest, so please tell them to subscribe to us. And that kind of thing. And even when it is in its own separate post, try to slide those in whenever you can. It's the bottom of an article to let people know what it is you want them to do. If you're going to write about a petition that's important to your readers, tell them at least once somewhere in their article, please go to this website and sign it. Don't just give them the URL. Tell them, go and sign it. Again, just directing people will get a better response than merchandise. And you have lots of that. You shouldn't run out of blog ideas because you could have another item to write about every single time. Maybe you don't have merchandise. Maybe you offer services. So what can you do? Well, say here is one way that my service is going to make your life easier. Product reviews are obviously another way. You can always find another product to review. Okay, so tell stories. Now, whenever you have an anecdote, it doesn't have to be a funny anecdote. But some story, people really respond to stories. It's very, I think humans are hardwired for this. So if you had an interaction with a customer, you may want to write a story about that. For example, a customer had a problem. They came to you. You did this, this and this. It solved the problem, and now this is the result. There were three steps to that. People often, when they try to write these kind of stories, they'll say, oh, this person had a problem and they'll go on and on and on about the problem. And then, now they're millionaires and they skip the whole middle part. How did you help them? What was it that helped them? So don't forget the middle part. That's the most important part, is how you helped them. Not just how awful it was and how great it is now, but how you helped them. If you are telling a friend an interesting story, oh, you know what happened at work today, and you're telling a friend, maybe, think about it, maybe that could be a blog post. So consider that. Videos are not really a different idea for stories, but it's a different way of presenting content. And if you're not a writer or you don't like writing or it's intimidating to you, videos may be helpful to you. But quality does not have to be high. So look at YouTube. If it's not super shaky and you can hear people, then you're probably okay. People will tolerate pretty low quality if it has good information that they want. You have to get it all in one, like, film it completely, get it right in one take, there are lots of different ways to edit your editing applications, but it takes a lot of time and eats time up. So if you can do it in one take, that would be great. So if you wanted to interview somebody in your group, and you're just asking some questions back and forth, and you ask one question, and the guy just goes on and on, and, you know, he's said it well, and you do a lot of editing. So that may work well for you. It's good for interviews. It's super for how to. Because it's really hard to write. Well, take that straight thingy over here, and then you've got the round thingy over here. You know, it's really hard to describe how to do something. But if you have a video that says, look, I'm going to take this and this and do this, people can follow it. It's easier. You can do just audio, which of course is called a podcast, and there's going to be a talk on podcast later today. So those are some possibilities if you don't like writing. Once you have done, oops, once you've done a lot of these, you can start to reuse your own material, which is great. So I've done lots and lots of articles. And here's one that I posted in 2014, but I post one pretty much like this, pretty much every fall. So this one is about Weaves, and the first tip links back to something that I had already written about. So it's like, this was an article that I had done in the winter that said, well, if your plants are heaving out of the ground, it's probably because you didn't mulch them with leaves. You should have mulched them with leaves in and out. So that was one that links back to something I had already done. And then this next one also links back to something I had already done. Hey, you want to use another use of leaves and we're going to, this was a video that I had done. So once you have compiled a lot of articles, you can do a post that says here are five things to do in autumn or something like that. So it's great you can reuse your own material and every two years everything is new. And sometimes people need to be reminded every year because I had new readers all the time, people's gardens changed, people didn't read the article that I did four years ago. And even if they did read it, they don't remember it. So before I post my articles, I ask my sister to read them. And often she will say, oh yeah, I really like the information about such and such. And I said, Maxine, I used it last year and she doesn't even remember and she reads them very closely because she proves them wrong. So it's okay, people will not remember. Don't pay as much attention to your articles. If you think horrible, they would. So definitely refer back to information that you've already used. And so this, I think is really, really important is as you get ideas, put them into an editorial calendar. So what you're going to do, here's what I've got. So this is very messy. I think self-spread sheet would work well. So I just put in the left column my dates. It's actually a little bit less messy today because when I put this in my file, I wasn't sure what I was going to run this company to stay. So I put in things that I think I might run in there. And I have things for next autumn or for next year because I didn't get a chance to run them this year. So if you get an idea, oh gee, there was some Valentine's Day and some tie-in to my field. Boy, that was a really good article that I read today on February 14. I wish I had done something like that. Well, make sure you put it in your editorial calendar for next year and you can even write it ahead of time so that you have it in place. So this helps you schedule and know what's coming up. And if you can write some articles, some posts, or do videos that are not timely, that aren't associated with a holiday or a certain season, that can be run anytime. That's stupendous because if you get sick, if an emergency comes up, you have something all set and ready to go and you can just hit publish and boom, it's there. So if you can do that, that would be stupendous. And so I hope that this has helped you think of some ways that you might find new articles and new ideas for your blog posts. So does anybody have questions or ideas on how do we get out of a couple of years' lives or if they're willing to reply? I can with that. That's a very good question. Nothing might be on the website of WordCamp, I'll find out. So the same website you use to register and dole a couple of days on the slides for all of the questions we'll be on there? Yeah, typically that'd be at a question we ask more organizers, but that's better for me, so I'll make sure I send them to you. I have another question. Do you have a blog post and everything? Do you have a safe place or a good place for your copyright or something that you will place? Okay, so where do we get images is the question. Okay, first of all, I take a lot of my own photos. So as soon as I take that photo, I own the copyright to that photo. I don't have to send it to Washington or anything to get copyright. I own the copyright to that. And therefore you have to assume that any photo you see on the internet somebody else owns the copyright to that. So do not rank like they just take their photos. So where do you get photos? It depends on what you're looking for. So if you want just, you know, kind of random things. Unsplash is very good. It's unsplash. U-N-S-P-L-A-S-H. And there are some others. Some people say it picks a beat, but I'm not sure I trust them because if you read they'll say, oh yes, you can use this and you don't have to pay us or anything like that. But then in their information it seems like they sort of shrug your shoulders and say, well but if people have uploaded photos to us that they really didn't own the copyright to. And they really didn't they weren't supposed to and you use it, oh too bad for you. That's how it feels to me. So I'm not too sure. But unsplash is pretty good about it. And there's another story idea which is recover, but if you have a bunch of photos you can write a story or an article based on your photo. Yeah, so just a bunch of photos can be a story. And a lot of the articles that I'm doing now, I used to have a lot of text with them. But now because I go out to gardens and I take pictures of the gardens and there's this plant and that plant in the overview and the back deck. Of course the pictures can tell the story. So I don't need, I have five pictures and I don't need as much copy because you're looking at the pictures I don't need to explain it to you. So yeah, you could just do, you know, here's five pictures that show something. But do not just take them from somebody else's website like, and I guess I'm very vehement about this because my photos get stolen a lot and I don't appreciate it. So don't just do that. The other thing is if you're looking for a specific picture there might be websites that can help you. For instance there's one called BugGord B-U-G-W-O-O-D. But it's pictures of bugs and plants and plant diseases so if you needed a specific not just a tree but you needed a certain variety of maple tree, you could find it there and that is free. Okay, but you have to get permission and all that kind of thing. Then there are things like again in my field ball, horticultural or proven winners. So that if I wanted a picture not just of some kind of a plant but a very specific variety of a certain plant I could go to those and they have a photo library. But I can only use those if I'm talking about that specific plant I can't just use it and say oh here's a pretty picture of a garden I have to be talking about that one. Wikimedia so W-I-K-I-N-B-D-I-A so there are some photos there that you can use and again you know because it's creative comments and you don't have to pay them. Of course there are places where you can find photos that you do pay for and it may be worth it to pay depending on what it is you're looking for or what you need. And just take a photo yourself if you can. If you take a photo yourself you're good. Two tools that I especially have a blog that I sort of calendar up two tools that are very helpful are Google Trends they'll tell you the different you just put a search term in trends.google.com Google.com. But you can search in that and it'll tell you when topics are popular associated search terms so maybe you're not searching the right thing and then I said Google Alerts that are emailed right in the box for various subjects and I'm not going to be doing a story on minimalism. I'll set up a Google Alert for minimalism and I can tell it to send me stories as they appear in search or we can digest or what have you I'm not going to say that one I'm going to put my story in there. Did everybody draw that? Okay, yeah. Okay, so when I started my website so the way I started my website was I didn't, I had a job and then the Great Recession came along and I didn't have a job. So I said I'm going to have to make my own job. So Seth Godin, who is my idol and he's originally from Buffalo and if you don't follow his blog you should. S-E-T-H-G-O-D-I-N he is doing, he does lots of stuff and he's brilliant and he always says follow your passion so I played gardening so I figured well I'll start something about gardening and he said but by the niche, you need to find it and I said well, Western New York so I'm writing for gardeners in Western New York and so over the years I'm finding so who are they? They tend to be middle-aged people but I also looked for those 30-somethings who just got in their own house and now they have to do something with the landscape and of course I want to get those readers because they're going to be reading longer than the 50-somethings, you know um S-Well that's only because the 50-somethings are moving to Florida S-Yes and they and they move to a smaller place and they, you know, they have they'll still read even if all they do is container gardening I said it's real gardening and it has a name it's called container gardening and I have a table and a plantation every year so I interact with people gardeners come to that and so I get to know them that way I don't know if it answers your question S-Um, yeah S-And I appreciate all the extra comments that was really helpful