Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

52Approach Content with ‘Mind Like Water’

A lifetime ago, when I was covering town-planning board meetings for a local newspaper, I arrived in the newsroom very late one night and told the night editor that there wasn't a single thing to report on, because no decisions had been reached by the board. The editor—who I'm certain ate cigarettes for breakfast—schooled me thus: there's always a story there, he said, even if it's not the one you were expecting to write.

So your boring technology product? Your services firm? Your regulated industry that precludes you from talking about certain specifics? The mind-like-water content creator finds the crevices that the stories flow into and reside in.

(Also, whatever you sell or market can't possibly be as dull as town-planning board meetings, and I found plenty to say after that night.)

I said it here already: content moments are everywhere. Companies so often fear that they don't have anything interesting to share. In truth, though, every one of us has a great font of inspiration right in front of us, if we only train ourselves to see it. As the designer Michael Wolff says, “What already exists is an inspiration.”

Consider the content-creation prompts that follow, and for more content development tools, see Part VI:

1. What's commonplace to you that might be interesting to others?
2. What events outside our industry or in the larger world ...