Garland Coulson, The E-Business Tutor

I write a number of articles every month to attract people to my web sites.

Many people ask me, “WHERE do you get these article ideas?”

Well, I use a few techniques, including:

1. My Article Idea Capture System

2.  Researching What My Audience Wants

3.  Keeping Up With Topic News

4.  Applying Other Topics/Approaches To My Topic

Here is how I work with these 4 techniques.

1.  My Article Idea Capture System:

Have you every had a great idea, then a few hours later you couldn’t remember what it was?  Me too.  This is normal.  Our lives are so busy that there is no way you can keep everything in your head.  Einstein is said to have remarked that he never bothered to memorize his phone number as he didn’t want to keep anything in his head he could look up.

So, like Einstein, you need a way to easily look up stuff so your head is clear.  You need to create your own article marketing system.  This can either be low tech, like recipe/index cards or written notebooks or journals, or high tech such as voice memos, outlining or mind map software.

2.  Researching What My Audience Wants.

I regularly spend time in forums for my field, reading what questions people are asking.  When you see a question asked regularly, you know there is a need for an article about it – especially when you feel the pain of the forum writers when they post.

3.  Keeping Up With Topic News:

I use RSS Feeds to “feed” me news in my topic of expertise.  I look for hot topics and write my own article about it.  I also LOVE to write articles where the “common wisdom” is that things should be one way and I have a contrary view.  Could just be the brat in my, but controversy results in traffic.

4.  Applying Other Topics/Approaches To My Topic

Here is a fun one.  Look for interesting ideas from other areas and apply them to your topic.  For example, I am a Star Trek fan.  (Yes, my secret is out – I AM a geek)  I decided to write an article called “Borg Copywriting Secrets.“  It was fun, and gave me a welcome change from normal business writing.  And I was able to post it in Star Trek forums where it brought me to the attention of many people I wouldn’t normally reach.

So that is how I find and capture my article ideas.  At any given time, I may have 10 to 50 potential article ideas in my list.  Then I just look for one that grabs me and I start writing.

Make sure you have your own article idea capture system in place and start gathering your own ideas.  You will be surprised at how many you find.

Garland Coulson, “The EBusiness Tutor

Kids are natural entrepreneurs.  They trade amongst themselves and are creative in coming up with money making ideas.

Unfortunately we usually squelch this early creativity and soon turn them into mindless work drones.

The problem starts with parents.  Most parents have worked at jobs all their life.  It is all they know.   So a kid learns early that Mom or Dad or both have to go to work every day and exchange their time for a bit of money to keep a roof over their heads and buy groceries.  All they learn is how to become wage slaves.

The problem continues in school.  Here, it is even worse.  Most teachers went from being a student in school to being a student in university then to teaching in school.  They not only have no entrepreneurship experience, most have never worked in a standard type job where results are measured other than some part time jobs while they were being educated.

School career counselors aren’t business owners and once again focus on “jobs” as the only career choice.

So the primary role models for kids are job-slave parents and never-escaped-from-school teachers and school counsellors.

So what can we do to teach kids about entrepreneurship?

First, look to ourselves as parents.  Even if you do work at a 9 to 5 job, you can encourage your kids to be entrepreneurs by:

• Listening to their money making ideas and encouraging them.
• Teaching them that small business owners are important to the community as they create local jobs and make local products and services available that might otherwise be missing.  If you constantly complain about business people, you are infecting your kids with an anti-business attitude.
• Teach them about finance or enroll them in courses that teach them how to manage their money.
• If you know successful business people, ask them to talk to your kids and share their experience.  Perhaps your kids could shadow them for a day or a week to get a feel for what they do.

Secondly, look at the schools your kids go to.  Does your school have a youth entrepreneurship program?  If not, spearhead an effort to get a Junior Achievement program going in your school.  Junior Achievement has a number of entrepreneurship and financial training programs for youth.

Your child may be the next Bill Gates or Thomas Edison.  Don’t let your kid’s natural entrepreneurial talents get crushed by our anti-entrepreneurial education systems!  Take action to encourage your young entrepreneur today.