🆕 What's New This Week

How Do I Know If My Content Idea Is Actually Good Before I Write It?

 

Banana Guy suspiciously eyeing one circled idea on a whiteboard full of crossed-out ideas

Run your idea through one question before you write a word: would someone screenshot this sentence and send it to a friend?

If nothing about your idea could produce a screenshot-worthy line, it's probably a topic pretending to be an idea — and topics rarely get finished, let alone read.

Why Most Content Ideas Never Get Written

Most items on a "content ideas" list aren't actually ideas. They're categories — "consistency," "time management," "finding your niche." Broad enough to write about forever, specific enough to say nothing.

A real idea has a position — something a reasonable person could disagree with. "Consistency matters" isn't an idea. "Posting something mediocre on schedule beats posting something great late" is. That gap is why so many idea lists keep growing while the published list doesn't.

The Fast Test: The Screenshot Rule

Before writing anything, ask whether at least one sentence in your idea would be worth screenshotting and sending to a friend. Not "is this helpful" — helpful is the baseline, not the bar.

"5 Tips for Better Content" fails instantly. Nothing in it is a sentence anyone would screenshot.

"I deleted my content calendar and my engagement went up" passes. It's specific, a little surprising, and takes an actual position.

Run your current idea list against this test before spending an hour writing any of them.

Turning a Weak Topic Into a Real Idea

Most weak topics become real ideas the moment you add a stance and a stake.

Take "content consistency" again. Add a stance: "Consistency matters less than people think — momentum matters more." Add a stake, something that actually happened: "I skipped posting for three weeks and came back to the same engagement I'd had before. What actually hurt my growth was six months of inconsistent quality, not inconsistent timing."

That's no longer a category. That's an argument with evidence — exactly what makes a reader stop scrolling.

Why Safe Ideas Feel Easier — and Why That's a Warning Sign

Safe ideas feel easier to write because they ask nothing of you. No real stance, nothing to defend, nothing to disagree with.

That ease is the warning sign. If an idea doesn't require you to take a side, it usually doesn't give the reader anything to take a side on either. Content that asks nothing of the reader tends to get nothing back.

What to Do With Ideas That Fail the Test

Don't delete a failed idea — narrow it. Most failed ideas aren't bad, they're just too broad to have a stance yet.

Inside "content consistency" sit a dozen narrower, testable versions: "Posting daily is a worse strategy than posting weekly with more effort per post." "Motivation is the wrong thing to rely on for consistency — systems are."

Ask one more question of any failed idea: what's the narrowest true thing I actually believe about this, that not everyone would agree with? That's usually sitting one layer beneath the broad topic you first wrote down.

Bringing It Together

Before your next piece, check for three things: a stance instead of just a topic, a stake — something that actually happened — backing that stance up, and at least one sentence worth screenshotting.

Ideas that pass all three rarely turn into abandoned drafts.

Want more like this? Start with the pillar guide: How Do I Create Content that People Actually Want to Read and Engage With?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should I Switch to Short-Form Video, or Is That the Wrong Question?

Image
  Short-form video reliably outperforms text and static posts for reach — that part isn't in dispute. What's less discussed is whether "more reach" is actually the thing you should be optimizing for right now, or whether chasing the format with the algorithmic advantage this year quietly pulls you away from what's actually working for your specific goal. It's a genuinely reasonable question to ask, especially with the data as one-sided as it currently is. But reach statistics describe what happens on average, across every account on a platform — they don't describe what happens to your specific audience, goal, or business, which is the actual thing worth optimizing for. A platform-wide number is a starting point for a decision, not the decision itself. Why Does Video Get So Much More Reach Than Everything Else? A few structural reasons, not just platform preference. Completion rate is a core ranking signal on most platforms now, and short videos hit high...
Read more

How Do I Get People to Actually Comment on My Posts?

Image
  A view costs someone nothing. A comment costs them something  — time, exposure, the small risk of being wrong in public. Most content optimizes for the cheap metric and wonders why the expensive one never shows up. If your posts get read but rarely discussed, the fix usually isn't more reach — it's giving people an actual reason to say something back. Why Do My Posts Get Views But Almost Never Comments? Most posts are built to be agreed with, not responded to. A well-written, broadly reasonable piece of advice invites a nod, not a reply — there's nothing left to add, argue with, or personalize, so the reader moves on having gotten what they needed without needing to say anything. Comments require a gap. Something unresolved, something debatable, something the reader has their own opinion about that your post didn't already fully close off. A complete, tidy, universally agreeable post leaves no gap — which makes it pleasant to read and almost impossible to respond to....
Read more

How Do I Find a Fresh Angle on an Overdone Topic?

Image
  To find a fresh angle on an overdone topic, keep the  subject and change the approach. Narrow the audience, take a clear position, show what failed, update outdated advice, or explain it through an unexpected example. Readers don't skip familiar topics. They skip familiar writing, so one genuine shift in angle is often enough to stand out. You have a topic you want to write about. You search it and find dozens of articles already covering it. The natural reaction is to drop the idea and look for something untouched. That's usually the wrong move. Overdone topics are often the best opportunities, as long as you approach them from a direction the existing articles don't. Why do so many topics feel already covered? Because search results show volume, not quality. A page full of results makes a topic look finished, even when most of those articles say the same thing. Look closely at the top results for almost any popular topic. You'll often find the same points, in the sa...
Read more