One of the best ways of getting inspiration to write an article for your email newsletter or your blog, is to comment on something that is topical. The obvious ones are particular days – Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter etc, as well as all the other ‘days’ and ‘weeks’ and even ‘months’ that are constantly springing up (Movember comes to mind, as does the month before – Ocsober).

So if you were a barber or a men’s hairdressing salon, now might be a good time to talk about moustaches, launch a promotion or offer some advice on facial hair!

Another approach is to scan what is currently in the news and see if you have some advice or an opinion that may be of value to your readers, clients and contacts. Another benefit of this is that the media themselves may be interested in your opinion, so as well as including this as a story for your newsletter, it can double up as a news release or a reason to contact the press.

During the recent election we knew that any stories focusing on the election that might be of interest to voters, would in turn be of interest to the media, and we were able to get a client of ours in the media several times on the basis of their expertise and the advice they were able to give.

If you jump on Google you can search with keywords or phrases that are relevant to what you do. Narrow it down using the filters on the left hand side to eg ‘Australia’, ‘news’ and ‘in the last two weeks’ and you will see what is being discussed. You can then use this as a starting point for your item.

David Bateson
David on Google+