How to use the Stream to create new kinds of beloved blog content (Ideas)

MD 5.0 introduced us to the biggest overhaul we’ve seen in a single update but back in Q4/2018 Alex showed us how to Stream new life to our websites. But (for me) it was a guest post by Jake O’Callaghan that got my creative juices flowing.

You can think of The Stream as your very own Twitter—with an edit button—minus 300 million publishers trying to steal your follower’s attention!

Utilizing this built-in feature gives you an advantage over your colleagues and/or competitors, so use it.

But if you’re not interested in using it as a micro-blog, let me introduce a few “not so obvious” uses for The Stream.

1. Your Resume. You can use the Title and description areas to introduce yourself, enable the sidebar to list your skills, and use the content area for your work history.
2. Dedicated Podcast Page. Give your sponsors additional placement and embed audio files into the content area along with pod notes and links.
3. A self-hosted “link tree” style page. We’ve all seen “link in bio” on IG and other social media platforms. So instead of paying another company to simply host links and (possibly) provide analytics…just host your own links and add your own web analytic software.
4. A modern and robust blogroll. Take it back to the early days of blogging and provide a little link juice to your favorite blogs and a friendly/helpful resource for your readers.
5. Testimonial Page. Display your customer/client testimonials in style. The built-in share and like features might also incentivize your users to leave a review. Who knows, maybe if we nudge the big guy hard enough, he might even add pinning feature to The Stream which would allow you to show off your favorite testimonial at the top of the page.
6. Changelog. If you’re a software business you probably have a changelog. The Stream would be perfect for that.
7. User-generated microblog. Think FML for your niche. Maybe you’re a Real Estate agent and your clients want to share their horror/funny stories from dealing with other agents. Something like that could be fun, and it could work for other business categories as well.
8. Journal/Diary. What’s going on in your personal life? Maybe you want to keep a log of it somewhere online. If so, all you have to do is spin-up a WP site, install MD, and share.
9. A “Best Of” Page. Maybe you publish on a daily basis. And maybe some of your content is too overwhelming for new customers or website visitors. And what if you curated some of your best articles into a monthly Stream. Your very own curation tool.
10. Curated News. Similar to the “Best of” idea mentioned above — this would consist of links from around the web.
11. Deal of The Day shopping portal for your niche. I’m strongly considering this one for a side-project. It’s another great way to monetize your website, and I bet no one else in your niche is doing this.
12. FAQ page. Use categories and the sidebar to build a beautiful FAQ page.
13. Job Board. You can either post employment opportunities for your company or sell the space to niche-related companies.
14. Log and Post Milestones. 200th customer, 100th post, etc.
15. Status Page. This works best for software companies, but its a great way to keep your customers updated without disrupting the flow of your blog or relying on Twitter.
16. Newsletter Archive. This is how I’m using The Stream for my daily newsletter. Instead of having a page riddled with links to the MailChimp browser version of each email, I’m using The Stream to help me own my content.
17. And finally, if you running a high-trafficked blog that’s monetized with ads, you could offer a premium ad-free experience by publishing your blog content in a password protected Stream. The Stream would essentially mirror your main blog — minus ads, affiliate links, and every other revenue stream your main blog might use to maximize earning potential.

So there you have it. That’s my brain dump of creative ways to use The Stream and boost your business in the process.

The Stream is brilliantly versatile and getting new features and improvements delivered to it in our regularly scheduled MD updates. Wait ’til you see what we have coming next for the Stream.

How are you using The Stream? Which idea has the most potential? I would love to hear your thoughts!