One of the issues of keeping up with an online business, especially if you are writing regular emails or blog posts is coming up with content ideas.

Keeping that constant stream of ideas… well… constant… is incredibly difficult and most people falter very quickly.

There are tons of tricks to keeping the content flowing as I have noted before http://internetphenomenon.com/how-1-idea-can-become-2-months-of-riviting-blog-content/

The main obstacles as I see it are these

-believing you have nothing to say
-believing you have nothing new to say
-believing that what you have to say is not valuable or useful
-not knowing how to share your authentic voice
-believing that people will not like you if you share what you really think

Usually, none of this is true. You have much more to say and to contribute to a subject that you probably know. The trick is that you have to play therapist and delve into your own subconscious to dredge up the gems you have hidden there.

I go down to the beach on weekends sometimes, and I love walking with my kids and picking up beautiful shells. Usually, thanks to my daughter, I come home with pockets full of little treasures.

There are millions of shells on the beaches we go to, so by comparison to the amount of treasures we find, most of them are nothing special.

Most internet content is like that.

It's all the same… it has the same voice…

Unfortunately, I reckon it comes from how we are educated.

Whipped and graded until our creativity is ground into oblivion, and we can all write a professional sounding paper or analysis on some crap or other, but we can't write what we are feeling, or share an engaging story, or have a laugh (on paper).

To stand out and be one of the shells people love to pick up and share you have to find the voice that you use with your friends.

The chatty voice, the conversational voice… but most of all…
The voice you use with your most dear friends.

You know how there are one or two friends that love you no matter what. You can say the most horrendous, politically incorrect, irreverent things and you know that they will laugh, forgive you and probably laugh right along with you?

If you write from that place you are going to find an audience that love you.

I don't know why this is. You'd think that being a rebel, saying what no-one else will, and being contrary to what everyone else is saying that you'd end up and outcast… however, counter-intuitively it seems to go the other way.

We are surrounded by the dross of boring people, crapping on about boring stuff, so when someone just shares what they really think, we sit up and pay attention.

Now don't get me wrong, you don't have to be necessarily in opposition to everyone else, but your life experience, your own personal insights, and opinions are important and need to be shared.

People are too busy putting on a nice shiny face with is designed to hide the truth of who they really are. We all seem to feel that if we are found out, and people see who we really are that lynch mobs will start shouting “grab your pitchforks”.

Most people will recognise someone who has the strength and courage to fully speak their truth and stand behind what they say.

Here are 3 ways to get great content for your blog.
>you can either write this kind of content,
>or you can take inspiration from others who write like this…
>or you can flat out take what they give written and post it into your own blog… and then leave a link and a short comment about the author and its original source.

This has become a perfectly acceptable way to find content for your blog and if you let the author know that you have used their content and provided links back to their site they will often thank you for it.

Authors have even been known to make mention that their content has been mentioned on your site that can provide reciprocal backlinks and even free traffic from their site to yours.

Let's face it, if you spend all that time writing great content to get your name and topic out there, and someone loves it so much they share it with their audience, that can only be a good thing for you right?

Not only is this a healthy symbiotic relationship but it's also a good way to meet new people online who can help you grow your business.

Strictly speaking this is not plagiarism, since you are not claiming the work is yours and you are acknowledging where the work came from.
In fact, it's not plagiarism… it's promotion (and free promotion at that)

And if you speak your truth and someone copies your work and leaves a link… Contact them, thank them and make sure the link to your site is clickable.