It seems like it’s almost impossible to come up with original content nowadays. No matter what you want to write about, someone else seems to have already done it. Not only do you have to think of great ideas to write about for your own blog but also for every guest post that you do. You have to spend so much time crafting the perfect outreach emails in hopes that some of them will respond back to you, only to realize that when someone does email back with the go ahead, you have absolutely no idea what to right about. This can drain your energy and make you frustrated fast. Here are a few solid tips to help reenergize your brain.
Hundreds List
This is by far one of my most favorite brainstorming methods. Using the hundreds list is effective because it tends to stop your conscious mind from filtering your thoughts. Whether you realize it or not, your conscious mind is constantly shooting down ideas that keep popping up in your head, simply because it thinks that these ideas are stupid even before they have the chance to fully mature. For the majority of us, this is a process that we take part in everyday without ever really noticing. The List of Hundred counters this process to help you come up with more ideas. The goal is to get your conscious and subconscious mind to work together instead of against each other. If you really want a much more detailed article on this method, you can check out Luciano Passuello’s post here.
- The idea is simple. You want to recognize your problem and write a hundred solutions to that problem. Yes, a hundred. Only by writing a hundred things down will you come up with amazing ideas.
- Once you figure out what your problem/question is. Write it in this format:
100 ways to make get more traffic.
100 ways to make a difference.
100 ways to get a link.
100 ways to increase your Adsense revenue.
So if you question is “what can I blog about?”, You write it as, 100 blog post ideas. - Make sure that there are no distractions and that you will be undisturbed for the next ten minutes.
- Now list out a hundred solutions to your problem. Don’t judge these ideas, don’t think that they are stupid and don’t spend too much time thinking. Just write. Don’t use full sentences because that will take too long and make you linger on each idea.
- Don’t worry too much about repeating ideas, this may actually shed some light on how your thought process works.
- AND most importantly of all: Do not worry about your ideas being stupid. You can evaluate them all once the list is finished.
Once you get to about half way through the list, you will start coming up with some pretty unique and bold ideas. A lot of ideas that may have sounded bad in your head, but will actually seem pretty interesting once you put them on paper. The great thing about this particular method is that it just about works for all aspects of life. Whether you are trying to think up of brilliant ways to monetize your blog, or trying to figure out how to get your boss to like you, you can give this method a go.
Befriend Social Media
Listen to what your niche is talking about. This can be done really easily by paying attention to what is going on in the social media world. ‘Follow’ groups on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. that have to do with your niche and see what they are talking about. See what kind of problems people are running into and blog about the solutions to those problems.
Opposites
This is something that a lot of people do not consider. If you already have written an article on a topic, consider writing about the opposite idea of that post. For example, if you have previously published an article on how to achieve high rankings with guest posting, write a post on how to achieve high rankings without guest posting. The titles do not necessarily have to be such obvious opposites. Even if you do not want to write about the exact opposites of your articles, this is sure to at least get your creative juices flowing.
Talk about you
I don’t mean just talk about random things about yourself but rather your experiences relating to your niche. Talk about what you like about this niche or what you don’t and why. Talk about the aspects of this niche that you are passionate about. Why do you love this niche and how did you end up getting yourself into this world in the first place? What aspects of this niche just rub you the wrong way? Are there certain things in this niche that you simply had a bad experience with? Tell them. People always love to hear stories.
Use the Keyword tool
Use Google’s keyword tool to see what people are searching for. You will be surprised by what you can run into here. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Start of by selecting exact search. This will only show you the exact search numbers of those keywords. This is important because even if you come across a brilliant topic to blog about, you might not want to do so if there are only very few people who are actually searching for this. Also, keep in mind that this is no way keyword research for SEO purposes. That is a process you should do in much more detail once you decide what topic to write about. This is simply to get an idea of how large your audience is going to be if you decide to blog about any particular topic.
- Make sure that your search phrase is not too particular, this will cause you to get results that are just a different way of saying the phrase. I tend to go for something not too general or not too particular like, tools for webmasters which will give me ideas like, Social media management tools, Seo tools, CRO tools, web analytics, development tools, etc. If you are really lost for ideas, I suggest that you simply choose your category in the category section and browse the results.
Ask your audience what they want to read about
Seriously. Just ask. Let the collective mind of your community help you come up with great post ideas. Send a tweet asking about what they want more posts on. Email them. Or even have a section of sidebar or really any part of your template that asks the audience for ideas. Or use UserVoice or Get Satisfaction to get feedback. Simple feedback can generate a lot of ideas. If you have a strong following, you can even use Survey Monkey to make a survey to see what kind of posts your audience really enjoys and what they would like to see more of.
There are a few advantages to using this method other than simply generating ideas for your blog. Blogging about what your visitors want to read about will help them understand that you listen to what they have to say as well as help generate a feeling of community. This will inevitably create more and more returning visitors because people will start to feel loyalty towards your blog.
Note* People don’t always know what they want. It is your job to go through all their suggestions and figure out which post would be a success.
Bonus: When all else fails..
Hopefully you will never get here but if you do, get others to guest post on your blog. You don’t necessarily have to wait until you have no more ideas to accept guest posts. This can be a great way to build connections and gain links. If you feel like you really have no new ideas left, take a break for a week or two and let other’s write for your blog while you recharge.
- Note that you can also hire a freelancers to write content as well. There are quite a few good ones out there and this can offer different expertise and perspective to your blog. You will also have more control as to what the post is about and where it is linked to.
These methods are bound to give you ideas to last a life time. I find that the best ideas generally come from combining two or more of these methods. Try these out and see which combinations get your ideas flowing.
What do you do when you need blog post ideas?
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