Last month I took my 18-year-old to a two-day freshman orientation at the university he’ll be attending in just a few weeks. While he registered for courses, met fellow classmates and checked out the residence halls, I sat through a series of presentations for parents on the realities of college life circa 2011.

Sometime during the second day it occurred to me that a lot had changed since we sent our oldest off to school four years ago. It also got me thinking  about the things parents sending a kid off to college for the first time should know but won’t get from a presentation or brochure, for example, that if your student gets sick, the campus health center won’t bill your insurance company.

The Anatomy of a Story Idea

Flash forward to the following week. I’m back in the office and getting ready to send ideas for blog posts to my editor at SecondAct, Entrepreneur Media’s website for people over 40. I considered including a pitch for a post about what parents need to know when sending a freshman off to college. But I’m not sure she’ll like it, so I don’t put it on the list. But at the last minute I tack it onto the end.

Turns out she loved the idea. I wrote this post within the week and it got good amount of tweets and comments.

Good Idea Goes Viral

That was in mid-August. A couple weeks later, I discovered that MSNBC.com, which is a SecondAct content partner, re-ran the post with a new headline and deck – you can read the updated version here. It racked up even more page views, comments, tweets and shares on other social networks.

The Washington Post‘s personal finance blogger, Michelle Singletary, spotted the post on MSNBC.com and used it as the basis for this Aug. 25 post; her post reiterates a lot of my original points, with some of her own comments.

Late last week, I found out the original post was the third highest trafficked story on SecondAct in August.

And to think, I almost didn’t pitch it.

All of this is a great example of why it pays to trust your gut. If you think you’ve got an idea that would make a great story you’re probably right. Granted, you have to know which story is right for which publication, and how to cast a story to fit a particular publication’s readership and mission. But if you write for the same publications on a regular basis, you’re probably good at that already. (That’s another reason why I’ve always advocated cultivating ongoing relationships with a handful of publications over writing for dozens).

That’s my story, but what about you: have you trusted your gut about a story and had things work out even better than expected? Share your experience by leaving a comment.

It’s a simple question, but not a simple answer. The fact is, I get ideas for stories everywhere, too many places to explain in a quick soundbite for a new acquaintance.

During any given week, I’ll find ideas for stories in the local newspaper, talking to a friend or in a trade magazine. I’ve added a few resources to my idea bag of tricks over the years, thanks mainly to the Internet. And I’m happy to share.

Here, in no particular order, and my 10 favorite sources of story ideas:

Covering breaking news - This is a daily reporter’s bread and butter. Not so much for magazine feature writers. But even feature writers are called upon occasionally to attend town meetings, trials, games, press conferences or other impromptu or staged public or private gatherings to do interviews, witness something first hand or gather color for a piece they’re working on. Breaking news can be a good source of follow-up stories too.

Interviews – You’re scheduled to do an interview for story A. Don’t pass up the chance to tack on a couple miscellaneous questions at the end that could serve as a start for story B. If you get good material, you can use it in a query letter on the subject, and if you get a bite, in the story too.

Conversations with acquaintances – I don’t write about family and friends. But I do listen carefully when they talk about what’s going on in their personal or work lives because you never know when you might hear something that clicks. This happened to me not long ago when a friend told me that her company had curtailed flying to meetings and was having people do more videoconferencing. I used that tidbit along with a couple other examples to successfully pitch a story on the growth of videoconferencing in the wake of climbing costs for fuel and air travel.

Message boards – Online message boards are the 21st century equivalent of the man-on-the-street interviews I used to do as a newspaper reporter, where I’d hang out in a public place and listen to what people were saying, or go up to people and pose a question I needed answered for the story I was working on. Now I scan message boards devoted to particular topics that tie into the story I’m working on.

The local newspaper – Yes, I blog, keep up with news through my RSS feeds and spend most of my working hours in front of a screen. But I’m still an avid dead-tree newspaper reader. I parse the local paper every morning. Stories on the business page can introduce me to companies or people that could fit into a national trend piece. I’ve gotten assignments for business stories from ideas I pitched about personalities from the sports pages. And you never know what gems are hidden in pages of the local news.

Academic journals – I don’t write about health, nutrition or science, but I know writers who do and they routinely read the academic journals in their area of interest for new studies and other research they can use as the basis of stories for general-interest publications.

Trade and industry magazines – “The trades” are equivalent of academic journals for business and technology writers like me, in that they are often the first places to cover new products, services or trends. An astute writer can take stories written for a trade audience and recast them into articles that appeal to a broader audience of lay readers.

Trade shows and conventions – Back in the day, I went to the Comdex computer trade show,  Consumer Electronics Show and Internet World every year. Each one was three or four days of intense information collection and I’d come back exhausted. But by sitting in on lectures and panel discussions, visiting exhibitors’ booths, collecting product literature and schmoozing at breakfast buffets and cocktail parties I had a stockpile of information to sift through back in my office for possible trend pieces, profiles and other stories.

Numbers – I love digging into a good 10K or 10Q. Spreadsheets make me swoon. It’s not that I love numbers, it’s that I love figuring out what they mean, and then building stories around them. And as Mary Chapin Carpenter sang, “…the stars might lie, but the numbers never do.”

Press releases and PR pitches – The stories I glean from press releases aren’t necessarily the ones the agencies are selling. But the company or product being pitched might fit into a completely different trend I’m writing about. Or if it includes a source who sounds like someone I might want to use in the future, I’ll keep tabs on them by I’ll inviting them to join my LinkedIn connections.