Straying Off the Beaten Track for Ideas

1.1K followers

5 years ago

I was checking out the Most Asked Questions on Google list which took me to a website with all these “most searched…” lists. Interesting stats there. While I cannot verify the authenticity of it, I could see some interesting questions there. “What is my IP?” tops the list which is somewhat strange because other than a few techie people, why would anybody want to know his or her IP address?

The second in the list is “What time is it?” which is stranger because if any person is making the search, it has to be done on a computer or a mobile device, isn’t it? And unless there’s something wrong with the date/time settings on the device, the time is already on display there on the screen itself. But I assume it must be a question in the lines of “What time is it in Vancouver now?” or something like “What time is it in Melbourne if it is 9:30 am in Mumbai?”

However, if one checks the list of questions, it is populated by How To questions – How to tie a tie? How to register to vote? How to lose weight?

Anybody who’s been into the Internet marketing are already familiar with the How Tos. But you know, a how-to guide in any topic spawns more how-tos. Like for instance, when one asks “how to drive free traffic to your website”, he’s at once confronted with many choices – optimise for search engines (SEO), use social media platforms, build backlinks, use viral content…the list goes on. And if one goes deeper, there can be “how to drive free traffic to your blog using social media platforms” which consequently could result in “how to use Pinterest for getting free website traffic”. Dig deeper, you can think of other Pinterest how-tos like:

How to set up a Pinterest account?
How to create Pinterest board?
How to create Pinterest pins?
How to create Pinterest images?
How to create Pinterest page for business?
How to create Pinterest community?
How to create Pinterest ads?
How to create beautiful Pinterest covers?

See? For any broad “how to” guide, we can have many sub-how-tos. And one could see in the example above, all the how-tos for Pinterest in the list are important and relevant topics for anybody looking to up his or her game on Pinterest for blog traffic. They are also popular searches, mind you.

So there’s nothing like everything-that-had-to-written-has-already-been-written. There’s always a better way to write on a thing that has already been written thousands of times before. There are always unique ways to promote your blog. You have to travel somewhere off the beaten tracks at times.

Keep digging!