Lori Soard
One of the things busy bloggers struggle with is finding fresh ideas to write about. Whether you update your blog once a week or you post daily, you still need a minimum of 52 ideas each and every year. After a few years, it can be tough to find new ideas to cover.
Tips For Finding Ideas
In April of 2014, I wrote about finding enough ideas to blog about every day, if needed. These ideas are still useful and you may also want to read How To Come Up with a New Idea for Your Blog Every Day as well as Jerry Low’s Write Headlines Like Brian Clark, Neil Patel, and Jon Morrow. If you only follow the advice in these two articles, you’ll be well on your way to writing unique ideas with great headlines.
If you need a few more ideas than what are listed there, this article is here to help.
Look At Current Events
Stay up to date on news in your niche. For example, we’ve done some web hosting news and current event updates here at WHSR. In December of 2014, we wrote an update titled Web Hosting News Updates: Syrian Electronic Army, Right to Be Forgotten Push and Amazon Cloud Outage.
We covered some of the current things going on in web hosting. This type of roundup of current news help you find something to write about without having to overthink it. You simply pull the topic, research it, and write how it pertains to your industry. You may also find that it triggers some ideas for additional articles for you.
Look At What Competitors Are Covering
Another neat trick is to look at what your competitors are writing about and then cover what they have missed or cover what they’ve covered better. While you never want to copy another blog, you can trigger some ideas this way.
If you do want to write on the same topic, it’s smart to go ahead and credit the original source and talk that article up and then cover it from another angle so that your post is unique.
Ask For Ideas
Do you have followers on Twitter or Facebook? Perhaps you have a mailing list filled with those who regularly visit your site. Ask them to give you some ideas to write on.
Simply send out a call that goes something like this: “Looking for new ideas to cover at ABC Blog. If there is something you’d like to see me write on that I haven’t already covered, send your ideas this way.” You’ll be surprised at the ideas that your site visitors come up with that you didn’t think of. You may also want to look at questions your visitors are asking in the comments section of your site. Can those questions be turned into articles?
Blogging Prompts
Knowing how to come up with ideas is great, but what if you are truly so stuck that you can’t think of a single thing? The blogging prompts below will help. Simply fill in the blank with a term that makes sense for your niche topic and you’ll have an engaging headline that you can tweak a bit or write as is.
- 25 Myths About ______
- 5 Fast Tips About _______
- The Worst Advice Ever about _______
- Top 10 Things About ______ Your Clients Want to Know (you may want to change the word client)
- Think You’re Ready For _______?
- Discover the Truth about _______
- Why We Love _________
- How to Solve _____ (problem)
- Why _____ Sucks More than Spilling your Milk
- 5 Worst Things about __________
- Why ______ Won’t Tell You the Truth about ________ and What the Truth Is
- The Only Resource You’ll Ever Need for _________
- The Complete and Unique Guide to ____________
- 20 Ways _______ Can Increase Your Productivity with ___________
- It Not Easy to _______ But We’re Going to Tell you How
- How to Make Money from ____________
- What Mistake Are You Making When it Comes to _________?
- Top 10 Examples of _____________
- Do You Spend Too Much Time on ____________?
- Has Your _______ Lost Its Edge?
- I Started This Business Because _________
- The Top 5 Gurus in ___________ (fill in your industry)
- Someone Who Is a Hero in ____________ Is
- An Exclusive Interview with _________ (interview someone within the industry or who has helpful advice)
- Taking a Look at the History of _________
- The Biggest Fear ___________ Have
- What to Do in a ________ Crisis
- The Day I Decided to Become a __________ and What You Can Learn from It
- 10 Ways to Improve _________
- Predictions of Where the ______ Industry Will Be in 10 Years
- Tips for Making 2015 (can change the year) Your Best Year Ever in __________
- How to Instantly Revive ________
- Review of _________ (this can be a book, another blog, a movie, or anything that you can relate to your industry in some way)
- _____ Is the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread
- Building the Perfect __________
- Top 5 Apps to Help You ___________
- Best Tools for _______ (should relate to your industry)
- Why Procrastination May be Hurting Your ___________
- 10 Social Media Tricks for Growing __________ (can be your industry in some way or an element of the industry)
- Spring Cleaning Tips for Your ___________
- A Holiday Primer on ___________
- Getting Help with All Your _________
- The Must-Have Tool for _________ (review a tool to help people in the industry)
- ______ for Newbies
- Does _______ Really Matter When it Comes to _______?
- Why ______ Works Better than __________
- Get _____% More __________ with These Tips
- How _______ Saves You Time
- Save Money by __________
- The Secret to _________
More Tools to Help you Come Up with Ideas
If the 50 prompts above aren’t enough to keep you busy, you may also want to utilize some tools that offer additional writing prompts, such as some of the online blog topic wizards or daily writing prompts.
- HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
- Portent’s Content Idea Generator
- ContentIdeator Content Idea Generator
- The Blog Post Idea Generator
- The Daily Post – free ebook with 365 days of writing prompts. While most of the prompts are personal in nature, they may help spark an idea for you to write about.
A final tip that you can take to heart is one that nearly every professional writer will tell you works. Carry a notebook or some way to record your ideas around with you.
As you go about your daily life, you’ll have ideas about things to write on. Jot these ideas down in title form. You can always refine the idea or title later on to be SEO friendly, but the initial idea will be one you can pull out when you’re feeling blocked.
Photo credit: ideas via photopin
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