Where Do You Find Good Content?

This week I’m too swamped to focus on writing for CONTENTIOUS, so I thought I’d highlight an article I wrote last year:

Finding Content Pearls Within Your Organization.

It explains why creating online content for your organization needn’t be torture. If you approach this task with the right mindset, it can be more like harvesting pearls.

I’m drawing your attention to this piece because so many organizations are blogging these days – much more so than when I wrote that article last August. Judging by their content, a lot of these internal or contract bloggers are having trouble consistently finding “blogworthy” material. If that sounds like you (or your organization), I offer some specific advice in this piece.

So read it, and enjoy!

…Oh, and let me know (by commenting below or via e-mail) what you think of this blog rerun strategy. I have so much good content in my archive that when I occasionally get swamped for days at a time, I figure a rerun is better than extended silence. But I’d like your view on that. Thanks.

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This entry was written by Amy Gahran and posted on April 13, 2005 at 4:46 pm and filed under Content Style & Business, Real World Writing. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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5 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

Amy, thanks for highlighting this–I managed to miss it before and it’s certainly timely now. The humanitarian aid agency I work for recently launched a blog and so far we’ve recruited a few enthusiastic bloggers. Ideally, though, we’d like to see a steady stream of contributions from staff in all the countries where we work. As you point out in your post, often people within an organization are too close to their own information. Some good tips to act on to “draw co-workers out of their shells” and help build up a blogger corps.

1. Kate Sands on April 14th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
I think the reruns are a good idea, too. Obviously, if that’s all you did (like that would ever happen!) that might be a minor problem. But I think most people who are getting the blog feed don’t even know about the archives.

Also, there are things you have written about in older archived articles that are timeless or have sudden relevance to things going on currently. I think pulling from that resource at those times is a good idea.

2. Tom on April 14th, 2005 at 12:08 pm
I think the rerun idea is good. You might also look for old posts on related themes and link them altogether in one new post.

I have linked to your original article from http://www.cuttings.me.uk/AW/traffic/blogging/blog-content.html where I am building an article full of blog ideas for artists and craftspeople.

3. Derek on April 14th, 2005 at 7:44 am
Content Rerun Strategy on Blogs
Amy Gahran of Contentious has a content rerun of her previous article titled Finding Content Pearls Within Your Organization.

Further down the post, Amy request for comments about this blog rerun strategy. She said:

I have so much good content in my …

4. Marketing Loop Blog on April 14th, 2005 at 5:18 am
Dear Amy,

I started reading your articles just a couple weeks ago (vive le RSS!), and I haven’t browsed the archives as of yet. So, f to me the “reruns” are very helpful. I would have just missed this (really valuable) piece if you hadn’tposted a link to it here.

Anastasia

5. Anastasia Komarova on April 14th, 2005 at 4:42 am