Bloggers often find it hard to locate information to write about. Indeed, at blogging workshops I run, people often say they run out of ideas for their blogs. Well, if newspapers ran out of ideas they’d soon lose money…!

So, where do newspapers get their ideas from? Other media – that’s where. Take a look at any daily newspaper and you will see tell-tale signs of recycling content. Specialist reporters, for instance, check out the trade publications in their sector or professional or academic journals. For instance, you’ll see phrases like “reported in this month’s issue of the ABC Journal”.

What trade publications or professional journals do you look at? Could you subscribe to particular periodicals that most of your readers won’t see? Can you read academic papers and translate them for your blog readers? If you can do any of these you can find out plenty of material to “report” in your blog.

Many blogs simply report other blogs. The result is you read a blog, click on a link in it, to find another blog, that is merely writing about yet another blog. It just goes round in circles.

Take a different approach to provide new information to you readers – report on news and research published in little-read publications like academic journals. That way your blog will be unique and you will also provide a valuable service to your readers.