This is a guest post by Andrew Kardon.

I love the ’80s. It’s true. Give me a Rubik’s Cube, some Twisted Sister and a John Cusack movie and I’m in my eternal happy place. I’m also a huge comic book and video game fan (fine, geek), who is beyond ecstatic that the mainstream media has finally caught on to these two goldmines of content. Avengers movie, anyone?

Why am I talking about a decade full of Big Hair and guys wearing spandex on the big screen? Because I want to. And more importantly, because it’s fun. No matter what I’m writing, I try to work some sort of mainstream or pop-culture references into my articles. At times this is way more challenging than other’s, but it goes a long way towards pulling your reader in and, more importantly, keeping them.

While I can certainly write your articles for you (hey, what are freelance writers for?), I’m a firm believer in teaching a man to fish, rather than just giving him a fish for dinner. So if you’re looking to punch up your writing or add some interesting angles to your articles, hopefully this one will turn your writing from a dull Clark Kent into a high-flying Superman of a post.

Pick Your Poison

Just because I love comic books doesn’t mean I’m going to write about them in every article I publish. If Hollywood wasn’t jumping all over the superhero bandwagon, I probably wouldn’t even bother. But it is, so that makes for an easy topic to pick. But what else can you write about? And where can you get some inspirational ideas?

Movies, TV and music are the biggest influences for me. I’ll generally check out a list of upcoming movies and just sort of gauge what’s going to be immensely popular. Same goes for timeless classics like Star Wars, Harry Potter or even the Twilight Saga. Magazines are a great resource too. Grab an issue of Entertainment Weekly and flip through to see who’s advertising and what big entertainment is out or coming out.

Social Media can easily be one of your greatest tools. Pop in at any given time and you can take a pop-culture temperature to see what the bulk of your friends are talking about. Let Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook be your muses.

One of the ways that I promote my most important blog posts, like my massive post on 40+ Tips on How to Become a Social Media Rockstar, is through commenting on blogs enabled with CommentLuv.

There are a ton of awesome lists of CommentLuv enabled blogs out there. But what about forums?

Sure, you might be thinking CommentLuv only works on WordPress, so how can there be CommentLuv enabled forums?