Rehash or Refresh? Finding Fresh Blog Content.

Starting back in 2005 when I began to take on new writing clients instead of relying mostly on building and managing websites, I wrote a series of articles about home foreclosures. At that time the topic wasn’t national news, but it was still a problem–particularly for homeowners who had fallen behind on their mortgage payments. One customer had me write a series of articles about foreclosures, including related articles covering short sells, refinancing and personal bankruptcy.

Are you tapped out for new ideas?

As time went on I began to write additional foreclosure articles for other clients. By late 2007, when the foreclosure epidemic made for newspaper headlines and evening news reports, I had written scores of articles advising beleaguered homeowners as well as bargain seeking home buyers.

These days I still get the occasional request for a foreclosure article, but unlike times past I now face a real dilemma: how to write something new without rehashing or refreshing something I’ve already said.

Yes, with certain topics I am completely tapped out as I have basically written the book covering every angle imaginable. To write something new I supposed I had to revisit what I previously wrote and come up with something slightly different, although not entirely original. Certainly, this is not my way of doing things!

Or could there be another way to breath new life into an old subject?

So then I began to think: there has to be something I can say that isn’t regurgitated material. With the gears in my brain spinning, I realized that the answer was right in front of me. I just needed to apply my thinking accordingly by doing the following:

Ask.

Yes, my problem wasn’t simply that I had run out of fresh material. My problem was that I hadn’t considered talking with experts in the field for a fresh perspective. Granted, so much information is available to us online that we think that all knowledge is readily available. That simply isn’t true.

Instead, when we contact “thought leaders” in a specific field, we can often come away with information that hasn’t been published yet. Or at least gain fresh perspective on an angle we thought we had covered.

When you interview someone, you’re conversing or engaged in dialogue. When you read something online, you’re absorbing, but there isn’t anyone available to ask questions. Thus, as you engage an expert, you will hear what they have to say and then ask clarifying questions to come up with something unique. Of course, you’ll need to cite this person in your article, but you’ll also put to rest the notion that you’ve written everything about that topic that can possibly be said.

Books, academic works, articles and other printed material are fine and should be sourced when covering a topic. But the dialogue you have with a thought leader can open up a whole new world of possibilities, breathing fresh life into an old or staid topic.

By tapping experts directly for assistance, you’ll never hit the proverbial brick wall when you’re at a loss to come up with something new. Ah, why didn’t I think of that sooner?

See Also — Google Trends: Your Article Idea Generator