Last week, I ran a post sharing 28 reasons why I'd written recent Brainzooming blog topics. The post prompted me to go back through my current blogging sketchbook to figure out the reasons why potential ideas for blog posts didn't ever get written. Amid the blog ideas which made the transition from notebook to blog posts, a whole array of shaky ideas and partially written blog posts are dying on the vine inside the half-filled sketchbook containing my almost daily recording of potential blog ideas. Here are the reasons why particular ideas and topics haven't become blog posts yet:
- The topic idea was time-sensitive, and its relevance has passed.
- The underlying premise refers to something too old, so most people won't get it.
- It was an interesting quote, but not interesting enough to support a whole post's worth of content. (Example - "Be unafraid of your questions." Craig Ferguson to science author, Jennifer Ouellette)
- I suspect too many other people have blogged on the topic, and I don't really have anything new to say.
- The topic was too personal or needed too much inside information to be of general interest.
- It wound up triggering a different post which did get written.
- I simply forgot about the topic.
- Despite having a few ideas on the topic, the post requires too much background research.
- My ideas may be wrong and potentially harmful or hurtful to readers as a result.
- The topic could be too spiritually-oriented for the Brainzooming blog, so it's better suited to my "Aligning Your Life's Work" blog.
- The idea was for an overall theme week, but it didn't support 5 blog posts.
- It's still a solid topic I just haven't gotten around to writing.
- The topic has been kicking around for a long time (like 15 years), and it still hasn't reached the right time to be written.
- The topic suited a video post, and I still haven't gotten completely comfortable with doing video posts.
- It's a list post, and the list isn't complete enough yet.
- The topic idea was written down just this week, and most of my blog writing happens over the weekend.
- I haven't finished "thinking" about the topic yet.
- The topic was tied to an event I was going to appear at, and the event was postponed.
- It's part of a list of brainstormed topic ideas, and I never intended to actually write posts on all the topics.
- The idea isn't complete.
- The idea is heavily graphics-oriented and will require too much time to put together.
- It's supposed to be a funny topic, but I suspect it will only be funny to me (and probably Barrett).
- It's too proprietary to the business to include in a blog post.
- The post will be too long so it should really be an ebook.
- It smacks of promoting something too strongly.
- The piece would be critical of certain individuals or a specific group, and I haven't figured out a way to generalize the criticism sufficiently.
Those are some of my reasons for leaving blog topic ideas behind. What reasons do you have for not writing about one of your ideas? – Mike Brown
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