I can fly right through a speech or blog with the right topic. The other day someone asked me how I come up with great speech and blog topics. I told them that the blogs that interest me are often the topics that stimulate my thinking and actions. So writing about these same topics may only help me, but they are often a dilution or restatement of something I have read somewhere else. So, why regurgitate? What I have learned along the way is that coming up with topics to blog about can be rather easy. The harder part is filtering out the crap. Much like coming up with a topic for giving a speech for a conference or industry meeting, here is what I have been doing for years. I voraciously clip articles and topics of interest.

And, with the web this has just gotten a little more interesting. Certainly we can use Digg, technorati, or del.icio.us but something I ran across the other day that helps me clip and save is an add on for Firefox called Clipmarks. I have just started to use it, with a primary focus on my work, but I can already extend it into blogging and hobby. One tip, is set up folders called “Collections”…for business I used folders named Technology, Strategy, Operations, Finance, Marketing, and Legal.

That said, Clipmarking article ideas will continually build up my blog and speech quiver. Of my clipping here is a short list of ideas for speeches, blogs, podcasts and articles:

1. Write on blogging and what it means to you
2. Describe your observations of everyday business actions that you think are successful
3. Write about what everyday actions make you a better person
4. Write about an interesting technology and how it makes you better
5. Write about your travels and observations
6. Write about tools and tricks that make you happier or more efficient
7. Tell a humorous story
8. Tell about how you overcame a challenge
9. Counter someone else’s blog posting
10. Tell about how your favorite literary character or author has had an impact on you
11. Tell about a quote and what it means to you
12. Come up with a list of tools or ideas that someone else might find valuable
13. Describe a life changing experience
14. Share your work or life skills and expertise
15. Write about web 2.0 tricks and tools
16. Describe your passions and how you are an artist at what you do
17. Write about someone who inspired you and how they inspired you
18. Write about something obscure or obtuse
19. Write about an “AHA” moment or some news flash soon after it happened
20. Write something that has timeless appeal and lasting value
21. Write several things that have a short shelf life and are perishable
22. Write using different experimental writing styles
23. Write about something you have spent time researching
24. Describe how you came across an obscure tidbit or kernel of insight
25. Describe your thoughts about this blog (share linklove!)

So here are 25 ideas to get you started. If you find any value in them, please let me know. Only if I know there is some value here I am pretty sure I can come up with 25-100 more ideas.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Career and Business, Observations and Trends, Sites, Tools, Tips and Gadgets, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.