I spend a lot of time blogging for businesses, large and small. And I’ve talked before about why it’s a great idea to turn breaking news into relevant, interesting blog posts.
Here are some actual examples to inspire you to create better-than-ever quality content and keep people coming back for more.
How to make breaking news work for your brand
4K TV ‘pseudoscience’ unmasked
I love the latest revelations about new generation 4K TVs, whose benefits are only discernible to the human eye when the image on the screen stays still. Otherwise the picture is no clearer than an ordinary HDTV which, as a different scientific experiment proved a couple of years ago, is in turn no better than an ordinary telly.
As the scientists said, “Using 4K resolution when we only see 50 or 60 pictures per second is daft.”
That’s what I call the perfect news item to report on for my money saving blog clients. Why spend £££ on a 4K TV, or even HDTV technology, when human senses are not acute enough to notice the difference?
Kill the mini-beasts in your home at your peril…
Here’s another story that’d be perfect for the same client. It appears using pesticides, herbicides, antibacterials and other chemicals that kill the mini-beasts we live with has serious effects on human health… and things are set to get a lot worse.
When we use pesticides in the home, we speed up the evolution of the mostly-harmless creatures we’re trying to kill. As a result they’re evolving in sinister ways. As the article says:
“If we continue to try and eradicate organisms from our homes in this way, we will end up with ever more species adapted to cope with our chemical warfare. Much as we may want to, we will never create a sterile and barren environment – besides, it’s an ill-conceived objective since a home devoid of non-human organisms is one in which we cannot survive.”
The research contains plenty of detail. And the argument is controversial, flying in the face of big brand TV ads for products that kill hapless, harmless beasts like bacteria and archaea, many of which have lived cheek by jowl with humans for at least 8 million years. In short, it’s perfect blog post fodder.
The findings mean you’ll do much more than save cash by rejecting modern home cleaning products in favour of soapy water, elbow grease and a more forgiving attitude to dirt. It might save your health, or even your life.
Now that’s what I call a compelling story.
What’s it like being a baby? It’s like being on acid… all the time!
Making unusual and unexpected connections is something I do a lot in my work. Right now I wish I had a drug rehab client so I could write a post about the latest research on the brains of babies. And I’d make an interesting connection: it might help explain why so many humans enjoy altered states of mind, whether it’s through tobacco, booze, caffeine, acid, ecstasy or magic mushrooms.
What’s the story? Alison Gopnik from the University of California, Berkeley, has a suggestion. If you want to know what it’s like being a baby, you could, “go to Paris, fall in love, smoke four packs of Gauloise a day and down four double espressos.”
Apparently a baby’s world is “vivid beyond adult imagination”, and the experience is very like taking drugs. As the article says, “the psychedelic state offers a window into what infant consciousness is like”.
Every human was once a baby. Ergo could our species’ love of mind-altering substances so deep-seated because it takes us back to those halcyon, thrilling, hyper-vivid times? Is it why so many grown-ups like to change the way they experience the world through coffee, fags, weed, E, cocaine and chocolate? If so, the findings could help identify cures for those who habitually take things too far and end up hooked.
Voila, the bare bones of another fascinating, unique and relevant post.
The very act of smiling makes us happy
The research above also includes the throwaway statement that, “The very act of smiling is thought to induce happiness”. Now that must be worth researching in itself, with the aim of writing a blog post for an NLP therapist or an organisation working with depressed people. If I had such a client, which I currently don’t, I’d be on it like a shot.
Quality content means sideways thinking
Can you see how a spot of creative thinking and dot-joining can reveal brilliant blog post ideas nobody else has thought of? Weave a few judicious keywords into each post and you’ll create even more of a digital marketing winner.
If you don’t have the right skills, why not get me on the case and I’ll do it on your behalf?
