One of the more challenging aspects of running a successful blog is having to regularly come up with new post ideas. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how disciplined you are, if you don’t have an interesting idea, you can’t write a new post today. And when you’re all ready to start writing, this situation can be maddening.
Though there’s no real solution for writers block, when you’re only problem is a distinct lack of new ideas, the key is to find inspiration somewhere. Here are ten sources of new post ideas that have worked wonders for me in the past. If they can’t help you, maybe it’s time you found a new niche.
Relevant RSS Feeds
One of the easiest ways to come up with new post ideas is to simply get them delivered to you on a daily basis. Sign up to RSS feeds that are relevant to your niche. They are not only a great source of post ideas but they also ensure that you are not left behind when breaking news occurs.
Forums
If you’re a member of any forums relevant to your niche, which you should be, get into the habit of keeping an eye on the top topics of conversation. Threads with high view counts generally make excellent post topics. Their popularity also ensures that you will be blogging about something that people actually care about.
Your Competitors
Your competitors blogs can be an excellent source of inspiration. Take a look at their most popular posts. Discussing identical topics puts your blog on the fast track towards mediocrity but this doesn’t apply if you take a different view. For extra points, opposite opinions backed up by facts always attract attention.
Q and A Sites
The likes of Yahoo Answers and Quora are surprisingly underutilized by bloggers but they can be goldmines in terms of new post ideas. For quantity, it’s hard to beat Yahoo Answers but for intelligence and quality questions, it’s Quora that comes out on top. Whenever you base a post on a question, you can also benefit from answering it with a link to your post.
Your Traffic Statistics
Take a look at your traffic statistics and establish which posts have amassed the most visitors. Follow up posts are always popular and provided you link to the original post, they tend to send a lot of traffic in that direction too. Examining how much attention different posts get is also a great way to establish exactly what your readers are interested in the most.
Your Comment Section
Another source of inspiration that is close to home is your blogs comment section. All bloggers know that it’s important to respond to comments but many don’t bother to mine their comment sections for post ideas. This is pretty foolish because basing posts on comments is the very definition of writing for your audience. You also might be surprised by just how many post ideas are lurking there.
If you can find a high quality product that’s relevant to your niche, a detailed review is always going to make for a solid blog post. Not only are such reviews pretty useful to your readers, they can also be highly profitable if your review manages to generate a few sales. The best place to start your search is usually the book section. If your niche is worth blogging about, there’s probably quite a few books on the topic.
Google Trends
I’ve had varying levels of success with Google Trends when it comes to idea generation but when it works, it really works. If you can come up with a post idea that is both relevant to your niche and incorporates a person or topic that is trending, you are going to be looking at a lot of traffic coming your way.
Facebook and Twitter
There’s no denying the ridiculous amount of time that people spend on both of these social networks. They are not only excellent tools for blog promotion, they are also great sources of inspiration. Take a look around, what are people talking about? What are people sharing? What do your followers care about the most?
Outside
Finally, sometimes the last thing that you want to do when in search of a great post idea is to sit on front of your computer. Go for a walk, have a coffee, hell, go to the pub. Sometimes just the very act of standing up and getting away from the computer can send your imagination into overdrive. And it’s certainly a better idea than just sitting there with that annoyed look on your face.
John Smith is a London based online marketer and seo expert who is currently working for www.seo.org.uk
