Stuck for what to write? Here’s a handy list of ways you can come up with something new to post. Be sure to consider you audience needs, though, when you write! This blog is for them.
- Use Post Title Generators, such as Portent’s, CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer
- Use a Mind Map tool and free flow with your thoughts from one of your popular blog topics
- Check out your competition (visit them or using keyword tools)
- Use Templates – I’ve seen great bundles of templates for posts online
- Look at the current hot news, trends (can use Google Trends), or topics
- Review the Google Daily Search Trends
- Use HubSpot’s Ideas Generator
- Think about the season you’re in and what might be popular in a month or two
- Repurpose some of your popular content, add to it, or improve it
- Look at your magazines lying around (or at the library or grocery store)
- Check out the Amazon Best Sellers (drill down into relevant subjects/topics)
- Look at your local library for what’s got the biggest reserved queue
- Incorporate a story
- Search Quora or StackOverflow
- Look for a wacky and/or holiday calendar online to find inspiration
- See what’s popular for your category/topic on AllTop
- Consider a reader comment or question and whether or not its topic could be great content for the rest of your audience
- Review and item, event, or movie
- Perform a tutorial or go through a course and give your feedback on it
- Look at your own or related Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter sites for hot or current topics
- Read through an RSS feed that’s optimized with your topic of interest
- Use BuzzSumo to see what’s popular, being shared – you may even see who has shared this and who links to it. You can find topic ideas, but also potentially build relationships.
- Record a post – free form and see where it goes but then refine, refine, refine based on anything of value/interest
- Use free or paid keyword tools
- Curate other’s content and add your thoughts, comments, or insight for your readers
- Free write – initially and see where it leads
These are just some of the ways to come up with new ideas for content!
An additional way to have others help you with this is by adding a “How to Guest Post” page to your site. Let other experts/bloggers know what you’d expect from them for a quality post, and see where this may lead!
Also, sometimes it just helps to either walk away for a while or switch tasks. Sometimes this is all that’s needed so that when you come back to it, you end up being able to flow.
Remember too, that a lot of pillar content on the web could technically be considered to be a bunch of related mini-articles put together. If it helps to think of things like this to get past the overwhelm, then just keep reminding yourself of this. You may even be able to trick yourself into more progress by breaking up your main sections at first and then putting them together logically for an epic piece of content at the end. Just be sure to read back through it and ensure it flows nicely.
