Why create original content?
Original content is content that’s unique to you.
It’s typically either something that’s fresh and different, or that offers fresh insight or a new angle on a much-covered topic.
On an internet that’s overloaded with mediocrity and sameness, original content can help you stand out and start making a name for yourself.
Original content can often also be shareable.
Why create shareable content?
Shareable content is the kind of content people want to share with others.
It usually satisfies one or more of the following criteria:
- It’s authoritative and offers original ideas and insights
- It goes above and beyond what’s already out there
- It’s an original and credible source of information
- It’s especially useful, interesting or amusing
- It provides something uniquely valuable.
This is the kind of content people will link to. That might be as a direct share, or as a citation link to show the source of information.
And, when people link to your content, that means you get backlinks.
When a website has a lot of backlinks — specifically backlinks it hasn’t paid for — it shows people value its content. And if people are linking to it, that tells Google it’s valuable, too.
Websites that Google sees as valuable will typically have higher page and domain authority scores and a higher page rank.
30 Original and/or shareable blog post ideas
12 Blog post ideas using your first-hand experience
These blog post ideas are all based on your own experiences. Whether they’re experiences you’ve learnt from in the past, a realtime experience you’re going through now, or experiments you’re trying so your readers don’t have to.
1. Try a new habit or routine for a month
Gurus and influencers are always preaching about their habits and routines.
It could be a business tip, a healthy habit, a new approach or something else.
But does it really work?
You can be the person who tries it to find out. And you can write about how it worked out for you on your blog.
A simple format for the post might be something like this:
- Outline the experiment, who suggested it and why you’ve chosen to do it
- Talk about how you feel before you start. Are you nervous, excited, sceptical?
- Document the experiment day by day and talk about:
- What you did and how you felt about it
- Any observations or changes you’ve had
- What went right/wrong
- Sum up your experience:
- How do you feel now the experiment is over?
- What did you learn?
- Is it something you want to continue?
- Is it something you’d recommend to others?
You can include video and photographs to support your story.
2. Trial a new productivity tool
Take a free trial of a productivity tool — or several tools — then write about your experiences and results.
Explain what each tool is, how you’re meant to use it and what it’s supposed to do for your business.
Take your readers through the trial step by step, showing how it works and how you integrated it into your process. Then review it and say whether you’d recommend it and why.
3. Experiment with your social media
Challenge yourself to do something different with your social media and write about the results you get.
You might decide to:
- Write a sales post every day
- Vary your content over five days with video, carousel, plain text post, photo post and poll
- Write a post in five installments — one on each day of the week
- Engage with your network and aim to comment on 10 posts each day
- Pose an interesting question and write about your responses.
4. Keep a diary or journal for a month
Keep a diary of your business activities for a week or a month and write about the experience.
You can use your diary to record things like:
- How you structured your day
- What you did or worked on
- Little wins and positive outcomes
- Struggles or difficulties you had.
You could write the diary over a specific period in time. For example, on the run up to a trade show or event.
When you read the diary back at the end of the challenge, how do you feel? Was it a positive experience? Did you learn anything? Did you find room for improvement? Is keeping a diary something you want to continue and would you recommend it to others?
5. Push yourself out of your comfort zone
People have a strange fascination with seeing people doing things that make them uncomfortable. Just look at the popularity of programmes like ‘I’m a Celebrity’.
For the best experiment, you need to choose something you’re not naturally good at or that you suspect you won’t enjoy. And it should be something your audience can learn from and apply to their own situation.
For example, it could be your first experience of:
- Cold pitching, which is always scary
- Making and posting videos
- Trying local networking groups
- Going without something you think you rely on too much.
You can use your blog post to document the process and talk about what happened behind the scenes.
6. Discuss a change
Write about a change you’ve made in your business and the impact it’s made.
It could be something like introducing a new service, cutting a redundant service, or conducting a pricing review.
You might include a discussion of:
- What prompted the change and why you made it
- How you went about implementing it
- What difference it’s made
- Anything you’ve learned
- Whether it was worthwhile
- What you would do differently, if you could.
7. Take some personality tests
If you’re a one-person business, a personality test can be a fun way for your prospects to find out a bit more about you and the way you work.
In your blog post, you can talk about:
- The tests you took
- What each one said about you
- How accurate you think each test was
- What you’ve learned from the experience
- Any changes you plan to make going forward as a result.
Include the links to the tests you took and encourage your readers to take them too, so they can share their results in the comments.
8. Experiment with your blog
Show your blog some love and make a commitment to posting new articles regularly over a set period of time. Promote these blogs to your social media followers, email subscribers and website visitors.
During this period, record what happens to your website’s:
- Visitor numbers
- Engagement
- Google rankings
- Conversions.
Your blog post should discuss:
- What you wrote about in your posts
- Who you were targeting with each one
- What you hoped the outcome would be
- How you promoted the posts
- What engagement you got
- How the regular blogging affected your website’s performance.
9. Tell a story
Everyone loves a good story — and there’s added value if there’s a key takeaway, like a moral or lesson.
True stories are particularly inspiring, unique to you, and can offer real-world learning experiences.
Make your titles more intriguing by adding something unexpected.
For example:
- What three years in accounting taught me about creativity
- How an impromptu fishing trip landed me my biggest sale
- Why my near-death experience was the best thing that ever happened to me
- How a cheese sandwich changed my mind about starting a business.
10. Write a review post
People always find review posts valuable.
A review post can help your readers understand if something will work for them, if it’s the best option available to them and if it will be worth the money.
For example, you might review:
- A product or set of products
- A tool or set of tools
- A business books
- An application.
A longer post might offer a comparison of several similar items and talk about the good and bad points of each one.
You could score each item based on a set of helpful criteria, then give a total score for each one.
11. Try out a hack
A hack is an easy, highly effective and/or time-saving way to achieve something. And there are people all over the internet recommending them.
For this post, you’ll need to find a hack that relates to your business or industry, try it out, then write about the results.
To give you an idea, some of the most popular hacks are based around things like:
- Cleaning
- Saving money
- Storage and organisation
- Sustainability and reducing waste.
If there are several hacks for achieving the same result, you could try them all and compare the results to see which is most effective and time-saving.
12. Do your own research
Original research is often sought out, cited and shared widely.
And it if answers important questions about your industry, market or prospects, it will be incredibly valuable.
Your research can be as simple as creating a survey, sharing it widely online, collecting the responses and publishing the results. Or it could go deeper with more in-depth interviews.
When you publish your post, promote it widely, be sure to get the SEO right and make it easy to share.
8 Explainer blog post ideas
People need all kinds of things explaining to them — and explainer posts do just that.
They’re most often in video form, but there’s no reason they can’t be text-based if they have visuals to support them. Adding visuals like photos, charts, diagrams and tables can help to make the content more digestible and get its points across more quickly and easily.
This kind of content often helps to build authority and trustworthiness.
1. Describe how something works
People like to understand how things work. Especially if it’s something complex, or outside their area of expertise, and it’s explained simply in a way they can understand.
Examples of things you could explain include:
- Products
- Services
- Processes
- Applications.
These could be things relating to your business, but will have wider appeal if they relate to your industry as a whole.
2. Translate something complex into plain English
In every industry, there are leaders and there are followers. And the followers typically refer to the leaders when they need to understand something new or unfamiliar to them.
That might be:
- Rules
- Guidelines
- Procedures
- Regulations
- Legislation.
You can take the lead by breaking down these complex topics into plain English that reads easily and makes good sense.
These kinds of posts are incredibly shareable and will demonstrate your authority as an industry leader.
3. Discuss a new concept
Change is happening all around us, all the time and it’s hard for most people to keep up.
When people hear a new idea being talked about, they’ll want to learn more about what it is, what problems it will solve, why it matters and what the implications are.
And, as an industry expert, you can use your authority to explain it to them.
Examples of things you might discuss include new:
- Initiatives
- Visions
- Ideologies
- Theories
- Proposals.
The idea is to educate your audience and help them understand the concept in a way that will make sense to them.
4. Explain your industry terminology
If someone is having dealings with a new industry for the first time, they’ll need to understand the terminology being used and what it all means.
And you can make it easy for them with a glossary that explains each term and what it means.
You could list your terms in one alphabetical list, or split them into categories.
I did this here with my Copywriting Jargon Buster.
5. Show a technique
Every industry has its own processes and techniques. And people are often interested to understand how something is done or how a certain effect is achieved.
In a blog post like this, you can show them.
Create a step-by-step guide that describes each step of your technique and use photos to illustrate the process visually.
For example, if you’re a photographer, you might show a professional touch-up technique you use. And it might be helpful to an amateur who wants to learn.
But it doesn’t have to be a technique your readers can replicate, it can just be to help them understand.
6. Talk readers through your hiring process
There are talented people trying to get jobs in your industry. But they’re failing because they don’t have the insider knowledge of how your recruitment process works.
You can explain it by going through each stage of the process and describing what you’re looking for from candidates at that point.
The idea isn’t to give candidates all the answers, because you want them to show their ingenuity. But you can tell them what you expect to see and answer some of their questions.
For example:
- You can make your application stand out by including _____
- In the phone interview you should demonstrate _____
- In the answer to this question, we want to see _____
7. Give a step-by-step tutorial
People like to be empowered to do things for themselves — and your explainer blog can show them how, with a step-by-step tutorial.
Your tutorial will guide them through all the steps to achieve a set outcome.
For example, it could be a process designed to:
- Deliver a worthwhile improvement
- Fault-find and troubleshoot
- Improve the efficiency of something
- Assemble something or get it set up.
8. Explain something most prospects don’t understand
Perhaps you’re tired of always answering the same questions from your prospects.
Or you’re spending endless time correcting their common misunderstandings and wrongful assumptions.
Maybe prospects keep coming to you having had the same bad advice from other companies. And you’re sick of having to explain why it’s bad over and over again.
Wouldn’t it be good if there were a myth-busting piece of content that explained it all simply and set the record straight?
If there isn’t a piece of content like that, you should create one. Then you (and everyone else who’s tired of repeating themselves) can just direct your prospects to that instead and carry on with your day.
10 Curator blog post ideas
Curator content brings together information or insights from multiple sources into one handy and shareable post.
1. Ask your network for their insights
Your social network can be a goldmine of insight and information — if you can leverage it well.
In this instance, valuable curated content comes from having access to the right industry experts and asking them a question your readers will want to know the answer to.
Blog posts might be along the lines of:
- How to make it as a [job title]: advice from 10 [industry] experts
- 10 Industry experts share their #1 tip for _____
- Make your event spectacular with tips from 10 renowned event planners
- Beat impostor syndrome for good: 10 experts show you how
- 10 Experts give their tips for writing proposals quickly and easily.
2. Put together a buyer’s guide
A buyer’s guide is a post that compares and contrasts several similar products or services. This is incredibly useful for buyers and will help them decide which product is best for them.
If you were to create a buyer’s guide for your own product, for example, you would compare and contrast it with similar products from your competitors.
Your guide might compare things like:
- Prices
- Benefits
- Features
- Add-ons
- Styles.
The objective is not to champion your product and trash your competitors, but to provide an objective and impartial rundown of what’s available.
For the buyer, it means they get the right product for them and that best meets their needs and budget. For you, it’s a trust-building exercise that shows you’re honest and act in your customers’ best interests.
3. Write an ‘ask me anything’ post and give your answers
You’re an expert in your field, right? So you must have knowledge and experience you can share with your audience.
And what better way to do that than by answering genuine questions from your real followers.
First, write your ‘ask me anything’ post. This will be published on your social media channels, because it’s the easiest way to reach out to your audience.
You can write a couple of versions of the post and vary the day and time you publish them to reach as many people as possible.
Second, keep a record of all the questions you get and who asked them.
Third, answer the questions in a blog post, or over several blog posts if you have a lot of questions.
Fourth, when you promote the post on your social media, tag everyone who asked a question so they can go to your blog for the answer.
4. Collate a list of industry facts and statistics
Facts and statistics are incredibly useful, in all industries and for all kinds of projects.
For example, they:
- Highlight trends and behaviours
- Influence key policies and decisions
- Inspire blog articles and social media posts
- Help make compelling points and arguments.
But credible statistics, from multiple original sources, can be difficult to find. So any post that compiles these statistics in one place and with links to the original sources would have immense value.
5. Compile a look book
Use your style expertise to compile a look book showcasing the latest clothing or interior styles for the season.
Using your own clothing line or interior products as the star, find other items from around the web to inspire a complete look or scheme. The aim is to wow your prospects and make some sales.
6. Write an industry news round-up
Write a round-up of things happening in your industry by collating stories from a range of different sources, with a summary of each story and a link to the original article.
This is something you could — and would need to — do regularly, as this content has the potential to date quickly.
However, writing and keeping these round-ups over a period of time would create an incredibly useful resource. An ongoing record of everything that’s happened and that shows your industry evolving in realtime.
Be sure to tag each post diligently, with a consistent tag for each story included, so they’re searchable and trackable.
7. Create a swipe file or inspiration guide
The official description of a swipe file is “a collection of tested and proven advertising and sales letters”.
This kind of swipe file is typically collated by copywriters and creative directors. But having collections of things that have worked in practice can be valuable for other industries, too.
There are things that have been proven to work, by solving problems or achieving results. These are useful to study and can inspire new ideas.
But there are also things that are just inspiring and that might help your audience in more creative ways.
For example your swipe file could show:
- The evolution of a successful product over time
- Examples of cool graphic/web design
- Stunning interior schemes and how they were created
- Branding photography examples
- Examples of brilliant social media posts or memes.
You can add value by collating more specific examples, like:
- Web design for a specific industry or sector
- Interiors centred around a specific style or colour
- Branding photography for a specific kind of brand
- How brands won at social media on a specific special day.
8. Compile a media guide
The purpose of the guide is to introduce your prospects to interesting content in your industry.
This might be:
- YouTube channels
- Podcasts
- Books, ebooks and blogs
- Interesting people/accounts on social media.
This can be a mix of content you enjoy and content you produce.
Remember to include links and sign-up links for all the content — especially your own.
9. Discuss the most interesting posts you’ve seen on LinkedIn
If you’re looking in the right places, you can find some really interesting and original content on LinkedIn.
From content that talks about new technology and visions of the future, to content that poses interesting questions or just makes you think.
You can curate some of these posts into a blog post and discuss them, adding your own thoughts, ideas and insights.
This is a good way to show prospects more about who you are, how you work and what you stand for.
10. Collect advice from the experts
A lot of so-called ‘expert’ advice is just bravado and hot air.
But if you search for it, you can find some real golden nuggets from the wisest people on the web. This is the kind of advice people remember and share. The kind that cuts through all the other noise with its exceptional wisdom and grounded common sense.
To create the post, scour the web for bite-sized quotes of genius. Use the quotes just as they are and, under each one, credit the person who said it and link back to the source where you found it.
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About the author
I’m Jenny Lucas, a freelance copywriter and content writer, based in Leicestershire, UK.
Originally employed as a conceptual copywriter, working on creative campaigns, I now specialise in website copywriting, content strategy and writing blog articles.
To find out more about me and the services I offer, you can visit my main website.
