One of the first things I do before writing any post, is to check my 'Unfinished Posts' folder. There are scraps of ideas, and partial paragraphs that I can either flesh out into a full post, or add little bits to them until they are complete. All of these are saved via Notepad instead of having to open a text editor. Quick and simple is the key.
Text me
I use LibraOffice to paste my text in when the skeleton and most of the flesh of the piece are ready. It's much faster than Microsoft Word, and doesn't nag me to log in. Grammarly is another tool beyond spellchecking, that helps with style and really improves your overall grammar. The yearly subscription price is worth it, and has saved my bacon many times when completing tedious course assignments.
One of the things you notice watching The Beatles Documentary Get Back, is how Paul McCartney constructs the song out of whole cloth. Something similar happens with me, where a new post often starts from just a vague idea, and comes into shape as I mold it.
The mighty question mark and 'How Do'
And where do those ideas come from? Well I'm glad you asked, as the answer might surprise new readers of my blog. I begin with a question mark... I'll head over to Twitter, and just drop a question mark in the search field. Up pops tweet after tweet of questions people want answers to. All of these are like vast fields of digital wheat, just waiting to be harvested for post ideas. They ask a question, which you can answer it in your post. Take a moment to try it out for yourself and see the power in helping the Twitter audience, and over time some of them just might become new members of Hive themselves.
I've seen this countless times myself, and witnessed how grateful people are to have someone help them out. Next thing you know, they're checking your Twitter profile out and clicking on the link to visit your blog on Hive or LeoFinance. And you do have the blog linked in your social media profile riiight? :)
At Google, or just about any online destination where the masses congregate, you'll get things like search queries from Quora for example. Entering "How Do" into the search box, and you'll see a plethora of questions in need of answers for you to mine like digital gold. And that brings up our next tip.
Research
Many of the posts on are may consist of just a few hundred words, while others go on much longer. When you're ready to craft that epic 'Deep Dives' post loaded with information, facts, and figures; Google Scholar is there to help you. This is a great source of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals, that can really make your piece stand out as an authoritative source of information.
I use Google Scholar throughout mu educational journey, and it's really helped me succeed in my coursework. I'm seeing more really good long-form writing out there, and know that this is a resource that can really make your writing stand out from the crowd.
Now if you really wanna head down the rabbit hole, you can search from within the beast itself. The US government offers Data.Gov, with the following boilerplate:
Resources.data.gov is an online repository of policies, tools, case studies, and other resources to support data governance, management, exchange, and use throughout the federal government
This website contains a suite of resources, data tools, case studies, and more for the budding researcher. Clicking on the 'Privacy' category for example, brings up a wealth of information from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). A handy little resource, and all paid for by the government of the U. S. of A.
For even more free US governmental goodies, you can checkout GovInfo, which is a great resource for you political junkies. This site run by the US Government Publishing Office (GPO), contains information on congressional bills, rules and procedures, the U.S Code, judicial publications, and more. Unravel the beast, and take your government research to the next level with this handy website.
Tools for Blogging
Some of the tools that I use every day in my blogging journey, are native to the platform itself. Not a day goes by without me loading HiveStats and checking out the state of my tokens, website analytics, and more. This is one of two tabs that I check throughout the day to stay on top of things. The other stalwart being Hiveblocks, which gives me a granular look at everything going on with my accounts. It kind of reminds me of watching the code onscreen in The Matrix films. I can react instantly to whatever is happening, in realtime.
Ever have someone (usually a foreigner), mention UTC time? In my area here in the states, you could throw a rock and hit 100 people, and none of them have heard of it. A blogger will announce that he's streaming at "11:15 UTC" and people like me on the east cost are like: "WTF Eastern Time is that?" and usually end up missing the webcast. There is a website called UTC Time Now, where you can convert the alien UTC time, into whatever the hell your local time is.
Sometimes you'll hear foreigners announcing the temperature using something called "C" which apparently stands for Celsius. No idea why they don't use the superior Fahrenheit system "F" trust me, 30F is below freezing baby! So for those odd time when you need to convert temps to our system, the Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion tool is your friend. (sarcasm alert) :)
It can be useful to know which holidays are being celebrated day by day in countries around the world. A list of Worldwide Public Holidays for the week, can inform what subjects you should post about, and when.
Today December 10th for instance, four countries have holidays. Iraq celebrates the 'Anniversary of the Victory over Daesh/ISIS,' Kiribati observes 'Human Rights Day,' while Namibia marks 'International Human Rights Day / Namibian Women's Day,' while Thailand holds its 'Constitution Day.' See how useful this can be in helping you to work around the best days to publish, while also sparking ideas about new blog posts as well.
That should hold you for now, as this post has reached it's natural conclusion. I hope you found value in the information shared here, and I'm sure new blog post ideas are rattling around in your head this very moment. A big shout-out to each and every one of you for creating original content on Hive! Keep Going!