There are several ways that bloggers can come up with ideas for their posts. However, there are always days (or weeks!) when writer’s block rears its ugly head and we are struck with no blog post ideas.
Fortunately, there were a few great places of inspirations where you can find blog post ideas without having to waste time sitting to drum up ideas on your own.
Here are some ways to brainstorm blog post topics.
Blog Readers
In order to stay relevant in your industry, you need to also keep up on other blogs that cover the same topics that you do. This not only gives you great social media fodder to keep your accounts streaming with great content, it also can help realize that types of topics that are being covered, which may help you find blog post topic ideas. To keep up with reading blog posts, you can usually subscribe by email or to read posts through an RSS reader. Even though Google Reader is shutting down this summer, you can use Bloglovin’ or Feedly instead. Both allow for Google Reader integration and make it easy to add blogs.
Social Media
Along the same lines as blog readers, following other industry leaders or blogs via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn can help you drum up blog post ideas. Besides seeing the type of content they are posting, look to see where the conversation heads by the users. If you see users asking several similar questions, that might be a good idea for a post.
Along those same lines, join relevant LinkedIn groups and follow the conversations there. See what people are asking questions and think of topics that may answer their questions or provide your opinion on the matter.
Blog Analytics
If you have analytics installed on your blog (and if not, you should!), you can use this data to give you blog post ideas. The areas of analytics where you can pull topics from include:
- Keywords: the actual keywords that people used to find your website via search engines
- Referral Blogs: where are people finding your site?
- Popular Posts: If you have a certain number of posts that are extremely popular, try writing more posts surrounding that topic or structure (such as a top 10 list)
Keyword Tools
Besides the keyword data that is provided for your own website, you can use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool or services like Wordstream to find ideas. These services can provide keywords and search phrases based on your blog content or top-level keywords that you put into the search box.
Regularly use these tools to stay on top of your blog posts can help you continue to craft creative and engaging content that will keep readers coming back!
photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via photopin cc
Author: Kelsey Jones
Kelsey Jones runs her own social media and search marketing business, MoxieDot where she helps clients grow their online presence. She was voted one of the top 100 marketers of the year by Invesp in 2009 and has worked for Yelp, Run.com, and Bounty Towels. Check her out at MoxieDot and on Twitter @wonderwall7.
Kelsey – When I get writer’s block, I’ll typically visit about a half dozen blogs that I follow to see if there are topics that spur a new topic worth writing about. I didn’t know about Bloglovin’ , which sounds like it can aggregate the new posts for the group of blogs that I follow. I will sign up for it.
Anne
Exactly Anne. I love it!
Kelsey,
I saw this post via my RSS feedreader. (wink) I follow lots of sites via RSS feedreader to collect ideas for blog posts and to keep up to date with what is happen in my industry.
Social networking sites are also a great place to get some ideas.
Forums are also a good place to get ideas for how to posts from the common questions asked.
There’s also the, shall we say, more traditional approach. What works for me when I get writer’s block (or have problems starting anything creative) is to just start. For writing that means grabbing a topic that’s at least semi-related to whatever it is you’re trying to create and going from there. It doesn’t have to be a great or original topic. Just take 30 seconds to find something to get you started and see where it takes you.
That’s true. I’ve found when I outline a post first (with my headers), it is so much easier to write.