5 Ways to Generate New Blog Post Ideas

I’m sitting here this morning, struggling with finding a good topic to write about. I know I’m not the only one, so it comes to me – why not talk about some things you can use to generate ideas for your blog posts.

Ok, so when you’re sitting in front of your computer with absolutely no idea what to write about, what can you do?

1) Set up google alerts for some of your top keywords. Every day you will receive emails with links to other blog posts, news, articles that you can use as inspiration for your own posts.  Just remember to actually look at these alerts, otherwise they tend to pile up in your email inbox, and can cause you to feel a little overwhelmed.

2) Subscribe to blogs that provide information that you think readers of your blog would be interested in. Devote a blog post to commenting on one of their posts and link back to the original post. Be sure to give the original blogger the acknowledgement that this is their post – we’re not talking about taking credit for someone else’s creativity.  You can add any points you think were missed, explain why you agree or disagree with their post, or just say “Hey, this is a great idea, check it out. I think it gives some great information.”

3) Use your social media networks to generate ideas. Take note of what your connections are talking about that relates to your area of expertise. Ask what people want to learn more about, what questions they have on a particular topic. Conduct a survey. Just paying attention to what people are discussing can be a great way to get your creative thoughts flowing.

4) Use your keywords. Take your keyword list, and see what topics you can work with incorporating those keywords. If you don’t have any keywords, then do some keyword research – just doing the research will start to give you some great ideas on topics to tackle.

5) Repurpose your other materials. If you wrote an article, break it out into 2 or 3 blog posts. If you conducted a teleseminar, turn it into a series of posts. If you made a video, add it as a blog post. If you have an ebook, take some of it and turn it into a post. You get the idea. Make the most of your time, and get as much use out of each creation as you can.

This isn’t really a way to generate a new idea, but it will make your blog posting much easier. Think of it as a bonus:

Plan ahead. Instead of staring at a blank “Add New Post” screen, plan out your posts ahead of time. Obviously, I haven’t made it to this point yet for 2010, but it’s in my schedule of things to do. By picking out topics before hand and having a loose schedule of when you’re going to write about what, you avoid that “Oh my gosh, what am I going to write about today,” feeling that can tend to just freeze up any creativity from happening. Create a list of all the topics that you want to discuss for the entire week or for the whole month, making sure they’re all related to your blog’s theme and they are all interesting to your readers.

How do you come up with new blog post ideas? Please share any unique or interesting ways you get those creative thoughts flowing. I’d love to hear them!

Have a great day!