Finding ideas for blog posts and content development can be tough. You may feel like you have writer’s block or you are running low on ideas.
We have all been there. It’s tough to write from a blank page.
“You can’t edit a blank page.”
— Jodi Picoult, an American writer
Idea shortages can happen to everyone. The key is to find out how to overcome the challenge. It’s important to take inspiration from a variety of avenues to come up with new topic ideas.
Coming up with ideas is a muscle you should exercise often. The more you do it, the stronger that muscle becomes.
Create a Google Sheet or you can save drafts in your draft stories. Find what works for you and refer back to it when you are out of ideas.
Here are 10 tips to help you come up with topic ideas for your blog posts and content.
1. Subscribe to newsletters
Let’s face it, we are all busy. Don’t search Google. Subscribe to email newsletters instead. They are a great way to stay up-to-date on news, trends, and tips.
You can digest information and find story ideas. One of my favorite email newsletters is SmartBrief that aggregates the top content from across the web.
2. Write the “Evil Twin” of a past blog post
Think about the topic from a different angle and write the “evil twin” of that blog post.
For example, “the top X recommendations” becomes “the top X myths to debunk” and “the X best practices” becomes “the X biggest mistakes.”
3. Look through news sources
Go to Google News and search for a topic that you can write about.
Is it marketing, personal development, self improvement, writing, or relationships?
Whatever topic you write about the most, search for that term and see what other stories are being written about that topic.
4. Read books
If you read books, you’ll never run out of new ideas. The key is to do it consistently and have a variety of books that you are reading at one time.
Search Amazon for topic books. Look at the book titles.
What topic or book titles capture your attention?
5. Search Quora
Quora is a popular website where people ask and answer questions. It provides users with answers to questions.
Search for topics and take notes of what types of questions people are asking. Answer those questions in your story.
6. Use Google autocomplete
Perform a Google search on a topic you are passionate about. As you type, Google will suggest other words that are close by.
For example, let’s say you enter “find ideas” into Google. Here’s what you’ll see:
Typing in “find ideas” in Google and its auto suggest feature. You can also go to the bottom of the page and you’ll see related searches to “find areas” as follows:
7. Use Google Related searches for “find ideas” in Google.
Google provides eight related searches at the bottom of the page to gain sharper insight into what people are searching for on Google.
8. Make use of tools
There are lot of topic idea tools available online. They’ll make sure you have something to talk about.
These topic generators such as:
They will help kick-start your inspiration. These tools make sure you have fresh and compelling stories on your niche topics.
9. Analyze your top blog posts
Find out what are your most popular stories and then use the opposite approach. What is the flipside of your story?
If you took a negative approach such as “X mistakes you should avoid X” then you should write the positive approach “X keys to a successful X.”
You could you also take a different angle to the same topic but from a different point of view.
10. Go deeper on a topic
If you write about a list of ideas, go deeper on one of those topics in your next story. You probably have written about a variety of topics.
Review your past blog posts and go deeper into one of those topics. You already have the idea so explore it more.
Expand upon it. There’s probably more you could write about the topic.
Bringing it all together
With these 10 ideas, you may have too many ideas that you won’t know what do with. Create a long list of draft stories that you start.
Let them rest and then come back to them to add more details. Some days I have tons of ideas and some days I don’t. It’s important to capitalize on the days where your creative juices are flowing.
Not all of your ideas will turn into a blog post or piece of content. I have deleted my fair share of stories that I thought were interesting but when I was talking to others, they ended on the cutting room floor.
Coming up with ideas is one of the hardest parts of writing, but it doesn’t have to be.
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