Bill Rice Internet Marketing > blogging

How I Get Ideas for Blogging

February 9, 2011 By
Blogging Ideas

How to Never Run Out of Blogging Ideas.

Blogging (or writing) everyday can be a challenge for most of us. The resistance to blog on any given day can have many causes. Often it is because you feel like you lack something—research, eloquence, knowledge. But, the one excuse I hear the most is “I’ve run out of ideas.”

I just had this conversation with a fellow blogger the other day. Although I believe it is possible to have a dry spell of ideas, my belief is that the problem is more process than creativity. I think the best solution is to create a disciplined process for feeding your idea machine. Here’s mine.

How I Get Ideas for Blogging

1. Read – This is essential. Every accomplished writer or author will cite this a the cornerstone of becoming an accomplished and prolific writer. Here’s what one of my favorite authors says:

“If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” – Stephen King

This means online and offline.

I’ll quickly talk about offline first. I think this is a lost fuel in most people’s creative fire. I see its absence regularly in the density of online memes. Everyone grabs a hold of a trending topic and soon I have hundreds of similar posts about it—with little or no original perspective. A good blogger brings in perspective from the outside.

Tip: I keep this part of my process fueled with a steady flow of new titles from my Amazon Wishlist to my doorstep. You can accomplish the same thing with regular trips to the public library.  However, I love books and filling my personal library. And, for about the price of what it costs to swing through McDonald’s these days—I invest in good books.

A good blogger also collaborates within the online community. That means more reading. The challenge here is processing the enormous volume of content being produced daily. How do you find the good stuff? How do you find new stuff?

Honestly reading online continues to be an evolving process for me. The frustration is always balancing time with quality. I am still very close with my Google RSS Reader—adding and winnowing my feeds frequently. This brings me lots of good stuff. The frustration is that I often have hundreds, even thousands of queued posts. This feels overwhelming. It also often has a high noise to value ratio. Following people that share in Google Reader helps a little bit, but it’s still too hard to show people how to do it.

  • Capture
  • Curate
  • Draft
  • Refine & Publish
  • What’s your process? Are there tools you like to use?
Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: blog content creation, blog post ideas, blogging, blogging ideas, howto, writing

What I Do When You Leave a Comment on My Blog

January 8, 2010 By

blog-comments.pngNot a lot of blogs get comments. It’s the exceptional blog that has an active community. And when you see one to pay attention. That’s why I try to appreciate every comment, every investment you make to this community.

Here is what I do when you comment:

1. Read your comment - I enjoy all the smart people and insights that show up here. Some I’ve met and others I hope to meet. I like discussion and encourage debate and dissenting views. You can be assured that all of your comments are being read. I appreciate your investment. I’m focused on giving you a good return.

2. Try to reply - Not all comments need a reply and sometimes my schedule prevents a timely reply. However, in all cases you are inserted into my social network. If your paying attention to me and investing your time in my community, I want to be doing the same for you.

3. Hit your link - I’m always curious who my readers are and what they are passionate about. The URL you leave is often the center of your current personal or business objectives. Visiting that link tells me a lot about what you want. I want to know that and help if I can.

4. Visit your social profile(s) - The next step is to plug you into my attention and learn more about you. This is the great thing about social media. Looping your stream into my attention is usually as easy as following you on Twitter, LinkedIn, or adding your RSS to my Google Reader. If you commented, I want to hear you in the future.

5. Leave a “social deposit” - Face it everyone is in the attention and promotion game–especially if you came to a sales blog looking for ideas. I think I should help you out immediately. Again, return on your investment.

Often I:

  • Comment on your blog,
  • RT a recent Tweet,
  • Comment on your LinkedIn Answers,
  • Tweet an interesting post, or
  • Introduce you to my community

Once you are in my network, I try to repeat this every so often.

6. Thank you - Somewhere in all this process I like to say, “thank you.” Hey, what can I say, I grew-up in the South my Mama taught me to be polite.

How am I doing? What else should I be doing? What should I be doing better?

Filed Under: blogging, Social Media Tagged With: blogging, comments, Social Media

Blogging Ideas: Keeping the River Flowing

December 13, 2009 By

Pen and notepad with breakfast backgroundBlogging has given me a great network of friends and colleagues. I’m thankful for these relationships. They are full of ideas and value. And perhaps even more importantly they remind us to share more openly our little tricks. Things that help us, and might help others, become more successful.

It was one of those relationships and discussions that I want to share with you. The topic was blogging and more specifically ideas for blogging. This challenge is probably the number one cause of thousands of abandoned ghost blogs littering the Internet.

5 blogging tricks and resources I use:

  1. Google Reader (of course) – This is the cornerstone of most bloggers’ creative stream. I am constantly adding and subtracting to the flow of blogs I’m watching. I like to use the sharing feature and relatively new “people you follow.” I’m a big fan of using my social network to filter content.
  2. Twitter – Another biggie, but it’s a little hard for me to harvest it effectively. I don’t have the time to watch it consistently. So, I tend to dip into the stream more than drink from it.  As a result, I tend to use it more for news and discussions than blogging inspiration.
  3. Delicious.com – In my experience, consistently capturing the ideas is the Achilles heel of most writers. We have little ideas and epiphanies all the time. However, if they’re not captured they float away—absent when you need them to write. This is where delicious.com comes in handy for me. One simple button on my browser taskbar and I am continually creating a clip file. I simple bookmark and tag “towrite.” Check out what my idea river looks like right now.
  4. Google Analytics – This is a big one that bloggers miss all the time. Your web logs are full of keywords and phrases that people came you your blog looking for. Often times I find that I really haven’t answered their questions (even though Google apparently thinks I was a pretty good source). So, take advantage of those little hints in you web analytics. I wrote more about this strategy in a guest post on WriteToDone.com. Bonus tip: This is a great SEO move. It helps strengthen your control of that keyword, likely to get linked to, increases visitor time on site, and makes those visitors more loyal.
  5. Hints from Friends – I recently found this list of 100 blog topics from Chris Brogan. He is encouraging you to blog about these topics. Take advantage of these great seeds. You’ll be helping us all out. These are things people want to know. I put them in my Delicious.com towrite file and I have a printed copy by my computer.

Can You Help Me with Ideas?

I know there are a lot of people that read this blog that I don’t even know. People that visit that are full of great ideas or even write their own blog. Help me discover you. Leave a comment with your blog URL and maybe even a short description.

I want to come by and visit. I want to put you in my Google Reader and Delicious.com idea river. I want to point to your great works so the whole Better Closer community gets a better filter for great stuff.

Will you help me? Please leave a comment and show-off your stuff.

Filed Under: blogging, Social Selling Tagged With: blogging, Social Selling, tips

Web 2.0 Mortgage Marketing, It’s Social!

June 11, 2008 By

The visionaries behind The Cluetrain Manifesto prophetically summed up our current market opportunity in the first of 95 theses–”Markets are conversations.” The folks you want as customers are increasingly expecting conversations. Your challenge? Figure out how to make an introduction. And I am going to give you the secrets–step-by-step…

Listen First

Since markets are conversations, the nice thing is people (generally) don’t mind you joining the discussion. This give you an enormous opportunity to learn. Take advantage of it.

Listen to other experts, competitors, and practitioners. But, most importantly listen to your customers.

Most miss this opportunity. The powerful thing about listening is that people talk about your products and services and what they want from them. Nowhere is it easier to do market research and survey your customers’ attitudes than on the Web. You just have to tune in.

Looking for the smartest and best in the business at Web 2.0 mortgage marketing? They are the folks watching their prospective customers. Here are the key things you should be learning?

  • Who are they?
  • Who do they talk to?
  • What do they talk about?
  • What words they use?


I highlighted a very important concept above, but let’s not get too far ahead.

Obviously, from the title–Mortgage Marketing–we are all in the mortgage business. Don’t forget your customers are not. They don’t talk to mortgage people. They don’t talk about mortgage, unless forced to. And they don’t know what FHA, subprime, and Fannie Mae are.

Search is your friend, especially the blog search engines. Remember you are looking for conversations. Conversations about homes, buying homes, refinancing homes, mortgages, mortgage brokers, mortgage scams, real estate rip offs (yes, look for hateful conversations too). Here are some good places to start for conversations:


Back to words! This is the number one failure in marketing and a death sentence in Internet marketing. On the Web, words are how customers find us. If you use words that they don’t–you guessed it: No conversation!

These conversations, from blogs, discussion groups, and Twitter, are short and candid. Write them down and use them.

Identify a Niche

You know where they are, who they talk to, and the funny words they use. The next order of business is to find out what they want (not what they need)–another common marketing blunder.

Their conversations will give you valuable information. It will reveal their pain, like their monthly payments going up unexpectedly, a job loss, or may be a divorce that is going to force them to reconsider their current home or loan. Maybe they are just concerned about the stability of their lender or even getting a bargain on a foreclosure.

Once you know what they want and how they ask for it, build your Web 2.0 mortgage marketing platform.

Building a Web 2.0 Social Platform

Web 2.0 mortgage marketing is all about directly engaging your potential customers in conversation, but you need an identity. This is the role of your website or blog. Almost every social application on the Internet associates you with a website. If you don’t have a website people can’t learn more about you–and your efforts are already doomed.

How you design and build you home base is critical to your success. Did I mention it is your identity? This is how people are going to decide if they want your expert mortgage counsel.

I typically suggest a blog. It is simple and versatile. Plus, it is a conversation.

Here are a few suggestions on where to get a blog:


The other consideration to this platform is your name (identity), which in the Web world is a domain name. Take some time in figuring out the right name. It doesn’t have to be your company name, and probably shouldn’t be.

Here are some creative guidelines:

  • Consider your list of words your customers use
  • Consider the niche you have selected
  • Short is better
  • Register only .com, .org, .net


With your social identity and home in place it is time to fill it with credibility.

Content in King

Web copy is the current king of Internet marketing and lead generation. You need to not only know how to write, but what to write. Again, go back to your list of words your customers use. Take each one and design your Web site to talk about each of these key words.

Here are some good resources on writing good copy for your website or blog:


Your written words are critical because they are the language of Google and other search engines. However, don’t miss the growing importance of other media types, like audio and video. These richer media types help to make a more personal conversation. Consider adding in podcast, short audio messages, as well as video into your social platform.

Here are some resources for developing out your audio and video content:


Content builds credibility and trust, the two critical components in any sales. Make sure your mortgage marketing plan understands the impact of content to a simpler sale.

Develop Amplifier Relationships

Okay, we have a platform and lots of valuable content. But, who knew? The Internet is a big place. You, alone, screaming into an already buzzing conference hall filled with good conversations is not going to get you noticed.

You need amplifiers. People who find you interesting and are willing to tell others. Hopefully, some of these already have a big audience.

This, like the conventional offline Rolodex, is the role of social networks. Connecting with people who have audiences is the quickest way to get into the conversation.

Great places to build a social network of amplifiers:


These are all great tools and people on the Web love to share, but no one likes someone how takes advantage of a relationship. Be respectful and add value first. Even in little ways.

Distribution Makes a Kingdom

Being a king is only interesting if you command a kingdom.

In the Internet world that is an audience of potential buyers that respond to your recommendations and/or you have a networks of amplifiers that brings this ability.

Creating that kingdom is a process of distributing your name, your value, and your content.

The most effective way of executing that distribution is built into a lot of the principles I have already introduced:


Add to these inherent distribution channels some well placed personal emails and you will have a kingdom in no time.

Assembling the Web 2.0 Toolbox

You have the road map. A mortgage marketing plan that should have you flowing leads in no time, but what are some tools you should have on hand to run your new mortgage marketing empire?

Here are some of the basics:


The key to building your mortgage marketing platform is trying, testing, tweaking and re-testing. These tools allow you to produce and try a variety of approaches to your social market.

Filed Under: Lead Generation Tagged With: blogging, blogs, cluetrain, generating mortgage business, Lead Generation, marketing, mortgage, web 2.0

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