Writing Inspiration | Using Pinterest to Find Article Topics

Do you have a Pinterest account? Did you know it can be used for more than pinning photos and bookmarking links to your blogs and articles? Pinterest can also be a valuable tool for providing topic ideas.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think it is safe to say that all writers struggle at some point with either writer's block or a lack of fresh ideas for their next article. Topic generator tools can be good starting places, but they usually have a limited number of combinations which can be quickly exhausted.

Topic generators might also give you titles you really can't work with, such as:

• Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Dog In Bed

It is an eye-catching title, but it doesn't promise to be very lucrative. Using Pinterest is a way to see what is popular, what is available, and what is new. All you have to do is look at that information, and turn it into your next article idea!

There is something for everyone on Pinterest, but if you want to harvest a few marketable ideas, you need to look at what is trending on the big "P". A few genres that are hot include:

• Technology
• Fashion
• Beauty
• Parenting
• Inspirational and motivational
• Food
• Parenting
• Health
• Animals
• Pop culture
• Photography

Pretty much the same topics that are well-loved everywhere. So how to turn those into something extra special?

Here are a few article topic ideas inspired by Pinterest that you are free to use. Feel free to change them up as you need:

• 10 Hardest Desserts to Make for Beginners
• DIY Toy Ideas
• Best and Worst Dogs for Children
• Tips for Photographing Nature With a Smartphone
• 12 Camping Hacks to Save Money

If you like to write within a certain genre, then you probably know that the competition is already steep. Especially if it is a popular topic, such as fitness. That is why you have to narrow the topic down in order to get your fair share of traffic.

The best way to do this when using Pinterest (or any topic generator) is to target a specific audience. Just imagine all the different people in the world and tack something like this to the end of commonly used titles (such as Best Ab Toning Exercises) :

• For People With Blue Eyes
• For Working Moms
• For Those On a Strict Budget
• For Those with Dogs and Cats
• For People Who Enjoy Nature
• For Beginners
• For Newlyweds
• For People Who Hate to Exercise

If you keep examples like this in mind when browsing through pins, you can gain ideas with a little more depth. You can even mix-and-match, but the results might not always be helpful:

• "Easy Cupcake Decorating For People With Blue Eyes"

for example, sounds a little bit absurd. But

• "Best Spring Fashions For People With Blue Eyes"

might work if you love writing about clothes and jewelry. If you are more into writing about food, why not an article about easy cake decorating tips for people with arthritis in their hands?

This is my method for scoring article ideas from Pinterest. If you are a Pinterest guru, or one of those insanely popular Pinners, then you will probably have some better ideas!

1. Get a notebook and pen
2. Open my Pinterest feed page
3. Scroll through the photos until I find something that catches my eye
4. Ask myself if it is something someone would want to read about
5. Write down title ideas based of the photo (no matter how ridiculous)
6. Scroll to next photo
7. Continue until I have several ideas
8. Take a look at individual categories of interest and do the same thing there

From there, I take the ideas and play with the keywords using a keyword tool. I might even run them through another topic generator just to see if what appears can be helpful!

Somehow in all my research about online writing and freelancing, I missed the term "curated content" until I was specifically hired to write it.

For the rest of you who are as clueless as I was at the time, curated content is what happens when a writer rounds up information that is already available and organizes it in a relevant fashion.

An example of curated content can be found here, by one of Hubpages great writers, Jamie Brock, in her hub Frugal Crafts-15 Easy Craft Ideas. She takes links to great tutorials from around the internet, and writes supportive paragraphs to describe each one.

There is some disagreement as to whether this is good or bad practice, business-wise, but we all know that the average web-surfer is pretty lazy. They like it when you do the work for them, and curated content can be great filler content for blogs, especially when mixed with original content posts.

Pinterest is THE best place to get ideas for curated content, which is usually presented in list format. You have access to everything from the "10 Greatest DIY Kitchen Makeovers" to the "10 Funniest Dog Photos of 2013". You can find your inspiration for such content just by looking through the pins on your feed page!

Pinterest not only provides the idea, it can send traffic your way!

• Join Pinterest
• Follow Pinners who share interests similar to yours
• Gain inspiration from their pins
• Write your articles
• Pin your articles back to Pinterest
• Enjoy your traffic!

When you find a great idea for a topic, you may be able to "spin" it into several articles. For example, if you decided to write about buying your first houseboat, you could expand that into:

• New or Used Houseboat?
• Decorating Tips for Houseboats
• Basic Maintenance and Repair for Houseboats
• Tips for Selling a Houseboat

And so forth. Don't cram all of your knowledge or research into one article on the subject when you could easily produce multiple articles to generate more income! Plus, it is a lot easier for a reader to finish reading your articles if they EACH address one topic.

There you go. You already knew that Pinterest was great for:

• Pinning photos
• Pinning links to your articles
• Saving tutorials and recipes
• Making friends
• Driving traffic

Now you know it can do at least one more thing for your writing career. Pinterest can help you find ideas for fresh content. And we all want more content, right?

Just remember, never steal ideas that others have already written and pinned. There is no 100% easy way to come up with an article idea, but Pinterest can help. Just look at the photos and brainstorm the many ways you can turn those images into new ideas for your articles.