We’re bloggers. In addition to that, we work with thousands of other bloggers. We work to help them to make their blogs profitable and that requires having great content. In this post, we are going to share our 9 best tips for coming up with great blog ideas. Hopefully, by reading this post, you will be well on your way to coming up with the topic for your next hot blog post. So without further ado here they are.
1. Read the News
Take a hint from talk shows. What do they talk about on the Tonight Show, Late Night, etc? They talk about the latest headlines. You can do the same. Following the news, allows you to post info that is relevant to the latest that is going on
Though, there’s another benefit to this strategy as well. It can be difficult to get to the top of the results for existing topics, it’s much easier to get there by jumping on a topic early.
This doesn’t have to be the front page news headlines, it could just be the headlines for your industry. So if you have a blog about weddings, follow the style section of your favorite newspapers, etc. Then take the latest styles and apply them to ideas for weddings.
2. Use a Feed Reader
Tip #1, and several of our other top tips, require following news sources, blogs etc. The more news sources you follow, the better of an idea you’ll have about trends, hot topics, etc. However, following lots or sources can become expensive in terms of your time.
To get through it all quickly, you should consider using a feed reader such as feedly. In addition to a unified interface, feedly shows the most favorited results from any news feed at the top. This lets you know what articles/topics are the most popular. This is incredibly helpful when trying to decide what you should consider writing about.
3. Follow your Competitors
You want your blog to be unique but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use your competitors to help get the wheels turning. Figure out who your competitors are and what they are writing about. You don’t have to write about the same topics but looking at what they are writing about (and their share counts etc) will be invaluable in helping you decide what you want to write about.
4. Follow Related Blogs
No matter what your blog is about, there will likely be other blogs out there that provide content that is related. To continue on with the wedding blog example, if you write a wedding blog, follow blogs about flowers, celebrities, etc. to get great ideas for new content.
5. Watch for Trends in Reader/Customer Correspondence
Readers/Customers are a great source for blog ideas. Run back through your emails, blog comments, etc. and see what people are contacting you about. Do you keep getting emails and comments about wedding invitations, it might be time to dedicate an entire blog post to it.
6. Keep a List of Ideas
The above tips suggest keeping up with a lot of different sources for blog ideas. Don’t try to keep these ideas in your head and don’t try to go through them all everytime you sit down to write a post. Instead, anytime you have an idea for a blog post, jot it down. You may never use that particular idea but your list will quickly become a great source of ideas and inspiration when you sit down to write.
7. Use Keyword Tools
Keyword tools can be an excellent source of inspiration. If you have keywords that you are already targeting, you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest to get more ideas. These tools let you enter in a search phrase and will then return a list of related search phrases.
8. Check the Search Volume
As part of your blog topic brainstorming, you should be checking the search volume for each idea.
Thinking about writing a blog about “wedding discounts”? It might not be as good of an idea as you thought once you check the search volume.
You can check search volumes with tools such as the Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
9. Keep it Interesting (for Your Readers)
As well as checking the search volume, you need to ensure that your idea is of interest to your readers.
Are you dying to write a blog about your second cousin’s unusual wedding? We’ll, your readers likely don’t know your second cousin and if you can’t tie the story back to something that is of value to the reader, they may quickly lose interest in the post. It may be better to mention it as an aside to a post that has a larger appeal.
Conclusion
Using the tips above, you should have no problem coming up with a plethora of great blog ideas. Once you get the hang of it, you should get to the point where you are picking from several great options instead of struggling to find anything to write about at all.
Have more tips, suggestions or things that work for you? Do you know of any other tools that should be mentioned? Please contribute in the comments section below.
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