Better Blogging

One Very Simple Way to Come Up With More Blog Post Ideas Than You’ll Ever Need

2011-12-02T10:57:00.001-08:00

Any great piece of content has to begin with a great idea. You can be an amazingly talented writer – but without a strong idea, your post isn’t going to resonate with people.

So, where do you get your ideas?

If you’re like most bloggers, you probably sit down in front of a new document and stare blankly at the screen, wondering what to write about. If you’re lucky, a great idea pops up – but often, you’ll end up writing nothing at all, or you’ll come up with a topic that doesn’t really work.

I strongly recommend setting aside time just to come up with post topics/titles. There are lots of great ways to do this, but here’s one of my favorites. It’s very simple – but very effective.

Many big blogs have sidebar listings of their popular posts. (If you’re reading this on the DailyBlogTips site, rather than in a feed reader, you’ll see the “Popular Articles” list over to the right.)

You can take these headlines and “twist” them to suit your blog.

For instance, the first article on the DBT list is:

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website

You could turn this headline into:

35 Ways to Save Money on Your Household Bills (personal finance blog, home improvements blog)17 Ways to Make Money from Your Writing (writing blog, entrepreneurship blog)

You could even move further from the original by choosing a different benefit:

8 Ways to Improve Your Skills through Your Local Library (career blog, personal improvement blog)

Here’s another example:

The 7 Characteristics of Good Domains

(This one reminds me of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, another great title.)

You could turn this headline into:

The 7 Characteristics of Great Job Opportunities (career blog, student blog)The 7 Characteristics of True Friends (personal development blog, women’s blog)

Again, you can shift further away from the original:

The 10 Key Habits of Successful Gardeners (gardening blog, hobbies blog)

The great thing about this process of idea-generation is that you can repeat it again and again. You might get multiple ideas from just one headline – but even if you go through all the popular posts on one blog, you can just head on over to another blog and start again.

So – it’s your turn! Pick one of the headlines from the “Popular Articles” list in the right sidebar of DailyBlogTips, and come up with something that would work for your own blog. (You might also want to take a look at the article itself to see how it’s structured.)

Share what you come up with in the comments below…

View the original article here

Gold ...

2005-08-24T02:42:00.000-07:00

Value News
India gears up for the gold season
17:12:43 GMT, 17 August, 2005
With the religious festivals of Diwali and Eid al Fitr both approaching in November, Indians are already preparing to buy gold items.

A fundamental factor in Indian gold sales is the quality of the harvest, as the majority of Indians work in the agricultural sector.

It is hoped that the harvest will go well as the monsoon season, which caused severe flooding in Mumbai last month, is not as strong now and this should aid rice crops.

India is the largest consumer of gold and Indians display their passion for gold both at home and abroad.

For example, Indians make up the majority of consumers at Dubai airport each year when they take advantage of the duty-free gold.

The impending harvest that usually starts in September will be avidly watched by the gold industry as it has such a large impact on the gold market.

Marketting

2005-08-23T03:51:00.000-07:00

Kim T. Gordon is one of the country's foremost experts on entrepreneurial success. A multifaceted marketing expert, speaker, author and media spokesperson, over the past 26 years, she's helped millions of small-business owners increase their success. In 1991, her firm pioneered nationwide marketing coaching by telephone, and Kim continues to be a leader in coaching entrepreneurs. As your one-on-one coach, she'll provide practical marketing advice and budget-conscious strategies to help you increase sales and grow your business.

2005-08-23T03:42:00.000-07:00

IBM Showcases Tech Innovations for Financial Services

By Steven Marlin, InformationWeek Wall Street & Technology August 18, 2005

Tuesday IBM offered its vision of the future of financial services, complete with biometrics, state-of-the-art branch offices, enterprise risk-management systems and advanced customer interaction.
IBM demonstrated a "cancelable" biometrics system, in which a prearranged transformation algorithm intentionally distorts a person's biometric data, such as a fingerprint, rendering the original biometrics useless for identification purposes. The biometrics project was conceived out of a need "to make replacing biometrics as easy as replacing credit cards," said IBM researcher Nalini Ratha, during a presentation at IBM's Industry Solutions Lab in Hawthorne, N.Y. One of the most valuable properties of biometrics -- its invariance -- also is its biggest drawback: If a credit card number is compromised, a bank can simply issue another card. But with biometrics, replacement is impossible.
Under the IBM system, when a bank enrolls a new customer, it will capture the customer's biometrics, such as a fingerprint scan; run it through the transformation algorithm; and store the new, transformed biometric records in its database. Should this information be stolen, either through a phishing attack or by hacking, the bank cancels the biometric data on file and issues a new set of data by running the transformation algorithm once again. The process can be repeated as often as needed.
The process is irreversible. Even if a hacker were to obtain the transformation algorithm and the transformed biometric data, the original, unaltered biometrics couldn't be reproduced.
IBM also demonstrated its Everywhere Interactive Display, which turns surfaces in a retail store into interactive kiosks. The system also can project images onto walls or the floor of a bank branch. By touching a button on the image, for example, a customer can bring up information about a new financial product. Three large U.S. banks are evaluating the system, which has been tested by Germany's Metro Group retail chain, said Mark Greene, general manager of IBM's global banking unit.
IBM detailed an enterprise risk-management framework intended to help financial institutions cope with a stream of regulations such as Basel II and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The central themes of the IBM approach are that risk and compliance need to be managed centrally, and that operational risk, such as the likelihood of loss due to unpredictable events, such as natural disasters, needs to be modeled using probabilistic means. IBM tested the risk framework during its own Sarbanes-Oxley compliance process, which involved almost 10,000 financial-control points.
IBM also showcased a customer-relationship-management project called Smart Customer Interaction, featuring a "semantic engine" capable of generating highly targeted scripts for customer-service representatives. The system models human needs, goals and behavior, said IBM scientist Doug Riecken. It differs from traditional rules-based systems by providing greater "fluidity" of movement across the data accumulated on a customer, thereby generating more-precise questions for a service representative, he said. The system has been tested by HSBC Group plc in its small and midsize business divisions, and is due to be tested by another international bank in the fall.

2005-08-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

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