[2024-06-12] 10 ideas for a blog and more
When I first started blogging, more than 15 years ago, I read a book by Margaret Mason called No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. I chose 10 of the best ideas from the book and wrote a Café Jen post about them.
I decided to dust off my top ten favourites to inspire me for future Jenesis posts and to inspire anyone who regularly creates content for others. Perhaps you're a blogger, or you maintain a page for a Facebook group, or you're looking for potential topics for an oral history interview.
Here are the top 10 ideas I picked up from Mason's book. Perhaps they will inspire your next blog post or creative writing project.
- Share your favourites. You could write about your favourite books, expressions or hangouts. Your favourites may become a new favourite for someone else.
- Make it easy for others. Share the small habits you've adopted to make your life run more smoothly.
- Share your expertise. This could be expertise acquired through your job, your hobbies or your life (for example, what you've learned about caring for an older family member).
- Tell your readers about charities or volunteer organizations you support. Doing so can benefit the organizations as well as your readers.
- Become an expert. The difference between "Share your expertise" and "Become an expert" is that in the former case, you're already a pro and in the latter case, you set out to gain and share expertise in a new domain. Your discovery of something new may prompt others to follow suit.
- Interview someone you admire. This is a great idea for a work-related blog. I used to interview my boss, who was an entertaining storyteller, and publish a condensed version of our Q&A. These posts were among my most popular.
- Tell the story of your neighbourhood. Marketing expert Seth Godin calls this owning your zip code. Mason suggests you write a series of stories about what it's like to live in your neighbourhood or town.
- Reveal your likes (or your dislikes). This could be in the form of a list or a single item.
- Give others a tour. Provide an insider's perspective on a place you know well. It could be your city, your regional office, or your immediate neighbourhood.
- Make a list for the future. Your list could be books to read, recipes to try, places to visit. Chances are some of your readers have done what you want to do or have the same item on their to-do list. You could share advice or motivate each other to check something off the list.
In line with telling a story about your neighbourhood, today I noticed a new bench that's been installed at Rice Lake, the pond beside the Bruce Pit dog park in Ottawa's west end. The bench is located just south of the little bridge where Chris and I often stop to look out over the pond. In addition to photos of the bench and view, I share a photo of Chris and me. We'll stay a little longer next time.
