Content Is King!
Or so they tell us, as we are exhorted to write for a Web site, for a blog, for Facebook, for LinkedIn, for Twitter. Good grief! How can you get any work done while writing all of this stuff? And how do you find topics to write about, anyway? This issue gives you a method for finding a number of topic suggestions that are in current discussion.
Amazon is a Great Indicator of Current-Ness
Amazon sells an uncountable number of books, so they know exactly which books in each field are most popular. What’s very nice about Amazon is that they even make this information available to you–for free! And you can find it through a search. In just a few moments you have a number of topic suggestions.
First, Find a Popular Book
Do a search on the Amazon site for the topic of interest. Suppose your company has a software product that’s intended for property managers. So you’d like to write some advice for property managers, to interest them in coming to your site and looking at your software product. So do a search on “Property Management” in Amazon. Here’s what the top result was for me:
If you click on the title and scroll down, you’ll come to this listing:
This tells us that this book is the ninth best seller in books on real estate! I’d guess that the first books might be about investing in real estate and selling real estate, and this is likely the top book on property management. But you don’t have to guess, just click on Real Estate and you’ll see the list of top-selling books on real estate! And then you’ll find that this one is, indeed, the top one on property management.
Now look back at the book cover. It says you can look inside–so take a look inside. The table of contents lists the topics that are covered by this book that’s today one of the top sellers in its field! These are the topics that property managers want to hear about. If you look at the list, and you’re in the field, no doubt you’ll find plenty of things you can write about.
Another Approach
You’ll notice that our search in Amazon led to a book in the Dummies series as the best-selling book for property managers. The companies who publish these books–that sell lots and lots of copies–have an uncanny knack for finding book topics of interest and, within them, the questions of the day. So, instead of using Amazon, you could go directly to the Dummies home page and look at their books that are relevant to your writing topic. Here, too, you would use the tables of contents to suggest subjects to write about. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you from buying a book or two, and even using the content of the book to inform your writing. What you’re not allowed to do is to copy the text of the book word for word, but ideas are not copyrighted, and there’s nothing wrong with using a book to provide inspiration for your own writing.
The Bottom Line
Now that you know how to find lots of great, popular title with current “buzz”, you have no excuse to not provide all that great, compelling content that your Web site, your newsletter and your blog are thirsting for! It’s time to get to work!
