For many the hardest part of blogging and writing content is not actually writing, but rather the discovery of ideas for content to write about. If you have just started a blog you may have a ton of ideas, great stuff, but conversley the more you write about (usually) the less ideas you may have as time goes on. It’s a fairly common issue, “what do I write, there is nothing more to say about my niche”.
In this article I want to help inspire these troubled writers to find some ideas. So here are my tips for finding more content ideas.
- Read other blogs in your industry and around your industry, it may be helpful to subscribe to them so you don’t miss an article.
- Read new & old books relating to your industry, analyse what they are saying and look to give another view point.
- Forums are a great place to see what users are talking and asking about, this is a great way to ensure there is an audience for a blog post.
- Conversations with friends and colleagues turned into a blog post can add an extra dimension to any blog post.
- Quotes which are from a well known person in your industry (or simply recognised) can be used to make a point within a blog, its a great way to inform your arguement or engage the audience.
- “Just Google It” – really, google a topic you want to write about and go through a number of pages to see what common topics and trends there are.
- Do the same thing on twitter.
- Write about something outside of your subject area, but relate it to what you do.
- Join groups on LinkedIn and Facebook – join discussions and these will naturally give you ideas.
- Ask your audience what they want you to write about. This is something I ask to my newsletter subscribers fairly regularly, I also take questions I get by email and answer them in blog posts – some of my blog posts with the best visitor numbers are in this format.
A few examples of my posts and where an idea has come from…
- Website Relaunch Checklist – Reader Requests & Client Discussions
- – Reader Requests
- Getting Found Locally on Google – Face to Face conversations
- Do I Need an External SEO – Reader Requests
- Embracing Failure and Big Data – Conversations with myself (mad i know)
What tips would you give to someone looking for new content ideas? What is your trick?