Ghostwriters: For blog ideas, and laughs, turn to Portent

I enjoy writing – I really do – but the pressure of coming up with topics I think will be useful to fellow ghostwriters and freelance writers can add to my stress. So when I lamented my lack of 30 days of blog posts for the Freelance Success/WordCount Blogathon, my colleague Stephanie Schwab of Crackerjack Marketing suggested I look into Portent.com. I’d never heard of it, I told her, but I was game to check out any potential source of ideas.

Over to Portent I went, looking in the Tools section for its Content Idea Generator.

I expected to type in a keyword and be given a bland list of possible subjects based on popular search terms. You know, something akin to Mad Libs that would only make sense or be useful 20% of the time. What I actually got was a clever and hysterical source of topics. I was giggling as I started taking notes on possible articles having to do with the keyword “ghostwriters.”

Sure, there were useful prompts, like “16 Ways Ghostwriters Can Make You Rich” and “How Ghostwriters Aren’t as Bad as You Think,” which made me stop and think what I’d write.

But when suggestions like “True Facts about Justin Bieber’s Love of Ghostwriters” appeared on screen, I couldn’t stifle my laughter. Then came “What the Amish Can Teach You About Ghostwriters.” Really? The Amish? I mean, Justin Bieber loving ghostwriters made sense to me but the Amish just went too far. I was chuckling so loudly my kids came to see what I was looking at.

Fortunately, there were enough ideas that I would never have thought of that made me glad I’d spent time clicking through different possible titles. Like “6 Ways to Become the MacGyver of Ghostwriters,” which may be my next post, and “The Evolution of Ghostwriting.” And there are more that I didn’t get to because I stopped clicking the various combinations, but that are still there, waiting for me, the next time I need inspiration. Or a smile.

Portent suggests using the singular version of your keyword and not capitalizing the initial letter to get the best results. Personally, I’d recommend coming up with a short list of related keywords you expect to write about to see what hilarity Portent might present you with.