Five Ways to Have Fun with Boring Content

Posted by Francis Raymond October 21st 09

If you're dreading writing about a particular subject and don't know where to start, one coping strategy is to inject something fun into it. Do yourself and your readers a favour and find a fun way to present your topic.

Here are some ideas:

Capitalize on mistakes: Rather than sitting down to write ANOTHER blog post advising how people should do something, turn it around and tell people what NOT to do. You can even share some of your own stumbles - who doesn't love an embarrassing story? This style can apply to so many subjects, like What Not to Do When Starting Out as a Freelancer. Variations: The 10 most common mistakes on X, or the seven deadly sins of X.

Dear sir: When you're in the mood to take a stand or vent about something, write an open letter. This format allows you to personally address a particular person or party about something you'd like to change. Here's An Open Letter to Steve Jobs: Fix Apple TV and an Open Letter to Recent College Graduates.

A bluffer's guide to X. This format is intended to read like an FAQ on a particular subject, giving people enough information so that they can hold an intelligent conversation on the topic. Variation: A beginner's guide to X, or X topic made easy.

Go Hollywood: Tie your content to a current movie or character that people can relate to, like a Wild Thing's guide to parenting, or Mad Men's top 10 strategies for advertising. Copyblogger's Brian Clark has a very popular post called The Inigo Montoya Guide to Commonly Misused Words. Inigo Montoya is a character from The Princess Bride, one of Clark's favourite movies.

Go Reality Show: Another twist on the same idea is to use the concept of a popular show like American Idol or, if you want to create buzz, get a group of people together for a contest called So You Think You Can Blog?

Make it delicious: Everyone likes to eat, right? So put a food spin on your content, even if it has nothing to do with food. Take the subject of writing a press release, for example. The title could be: How to bake the perfect press release or The secret ingredient to a mouthwatering press release, or How to bake a press release that will have everyone asking for seconds.