30 Day Challenge – Content Generator Overlord

Posted: February 27th, 2013 | Author: Ryan | Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been mulling over a few ideas for my next self-imposed 30-Day Challenge. Â A couple of the ideas I considered (and may still do in the future, but you’re more than welcome to steal the idea) include:

Splitting up my workday/time between home and the office a la Rand’s three-workdays-in-one strategy
Trying out this whole “8 hours of sleep” thing that people keep mentioning
Cutting out all video games and entertainment media other than reading

With Game of Thrones and Dr. Who starting back up in the next month, that last one would have been just dumb.

Then, as I was biding my time, the high-level wizards over at Portent launched a snazzy new tool: Content/Title Generator.

To be fair, this sort of tool has existed before. Â Whether it was a linkbait tool or a list of article types, there have been methods in place to help people breathe new life into topics that they have covered before, or just flat-out “boring” topics.

Side note: I sat in on a table-topic at a conference that was specifically about content for boring industries and heard from a pair of guys who were tasked with writing about machinery used in oil rigs. Not the rigs themselves, the cogs and beams and bolts that went into them. Feel a little sorry for those guys; at least my industry can tap into the aspirational nature of moving.

The neat thing about the Portent tool is the added text it gives with each title it conjures up. (In hindsight, wouldn’t Content Conjurer have been a more catchy title? “I summon thee forth, foul headline!”) It’s one thing to replace the noun/verb in an existing headline and spin it for linkbait, but the simple notes scribbled in the margins on this tool almost write your outline for you.

So here we have it, folks. Â On top of the projects I mentioned on Sunday, I’m going to commit myself to 30 days of writing while incorporating the content generator to keep my on my toes.

I’ll take a random word each day, throw it into the Content Generator, and then write a post to match the assigned title. I think this will push me to write better, more engaging material, and will make me learn to research and formulate opinions faster so that I can keep up each day.

Hopefully this doesn’t blow up in my face like a poorly-cast Incendiary Slime.