15 ways you never run out of blogging ideas

Image showing a long road captioned never running out of blogging ideas

Whether you’re running a personal blog or a business blog the success of your blog lies in the fact that you are able to publish regularly without running out of blogging ideas.

Regularity may differ from person to person and business to business, but the more you publish, the better people remember you.

Topics discussed in this blog post include

  1. Take ideas from your existing blog posts
  2. Ask questions from your customers and clients
  3. Use newsjacking to make your blog posts more relevant and topical
  4. Maintain an editorial calendar
  5. Maintain an ideas file
  6. Write multiple blog posts at a time without worrying about completing them
  7. Ask your blog visitors
  8. Use Quora to do research on blogging ideas
  9. Create Google alerts
  10. Use keyword research tools
  11. Use the FAQs of other websites in your niche
  12. Use social media and social networking websites
  13. Use news aggregators
  14. Use Google analytics data
  15. Invite guest bloggers to write for your blog

Although, ideally, it is the quality of your blogging that leaves an imprint on people’s minds, it should also be mixed with frequency.

For example, great blog posts published every day are better for your business rather than great blog posts published every week, every fortnight or every month.

This is slightly an old survey but the challenge of producing great content on an ongoing basis remains around 65% (source).

This means that when it comes to implementing a result-oriented content marketing strategy, the biggest challenge faced by small as well as big business remains continuously coming up with great stuff to write about or talk about.

You may have an awesome beginning but soon you start wondering, okay, what to write about?

You begin to run out of blogging ideas.

This problem isn’t just faced by novice bloggers or bloggers who are blogging half-heartedly just because they think that blogging is good for their business without understanding why.

Even seasoned bloggers, the so-called a-list bloggers also now and then run out of blogging ideas.

What do they do?

They have a system.

The same system I use as a professional content writer while coming up with great blogging ideas for my clients.

These 15 ways will make sure you never run out of blogging ideas

1. Take ideas from your existing blog posts

Many of your blog posts have subtopics and you can always stretch the subtopics into full-fledged blog posts.

Even the bulleted lists may contain new blogging opportunities.

For example, I can use this very bullet point to write a blog post on “How to create new blog posts from your existing blog posts”.

2. Ask questions from your customers and clients

In fact this is the best way of coming up with new topics because as long as customers and clients are doing business with you they are going to have one or another issue and some concern that needs to be looked into.

Ask them questions, turn them into blogging format and create new blog posts providing answers to those questions and this is one of the best way of never running out of blogging ideas.

3. Use newsjacking to make your blog posts more relevant and topical

News is always happening.

If somehow you can create a spin in order to contextually attach the news to your business topic it can do wonders to your inbound marketing efforts.

Suppose a big snowstorm is coming up and the news is all over.

Suppose you sell batteries.

How about creating a blog post that advises people how to prolong battery life during such emergencies?

Here is a blog post that explains what is newsjacking and how to use it for content marketing.

4. Maintain an editorial calendar

Sometimes you run out of blogging ideas because you don’t know what to do on a particular day.

If you have an editorial calendar you always have a topic to write about.

In the beginning of every month chart out your editorial calendar and then stick to it. Read here about the importance of maintaining a content marketing calendar.

5. Maintain an ideas file

This is something like an editorial calendar but you can also do it roughly.

You can use Evernote or Google Keep or even something like ToDoist to maintain lists of blog post ideas that you would like to work on.

6. Write multiple blog posts at a time without worrying about completing them

It slows you down when you worry too much about completing a particular blog post.

Once you have lots of topics with you just keep on adding your thoughts as they hit you.

Evernote can come quite handy in this regard.

Create a dedicated note to particular blog topic and then keep on adding text to it or the research data that you need to use with the blog post.

7. Ask your blog visitors

Many bloggers have a dedicated form on their blogs to ask the visitors what all they would like to read.

This is something like crowdsourcing the generation of your blogging ideas.

8. Use Quora to do research on blogging ideas

People post great questions on Quora – the crowd sourced question-answer website with immense wealth of knowledge.

You can go through the questions being asked in your niche and instead of answering those questions on Quora you can answer them on your own blog.

9. Create Google alerts

People are constantly posting content on the Internet and as this content is posted, you can immediately get email alerts with the links and description of the content.

Just Google alerts can keep you going for many months without running out of blogging ideas.

10. Use keyword research tools

By using these tools – some free and some premium – you can find various combinations of keywords relevant to your niche and this can help you create blogging topics.

Remember that it’s important to create blog topics with your main keywords as much as possible without needlessly stuffing them.

A good example of an online keyword research tool is the Google keyword planner.

11. Use the FAQs of other websites in your niche

Regularly visit the websites of your competitors and see what all topics, especially in the FAQs section, they have covered and then create blogging topics out of those questions and answers.

12. Use social media and social networking websites

You can use something like Hootsuite to create a dedicated column posting updates about your niche.

For example, I’m constantly getting new updates on “content marketing”, “content writing”, “SEO content” and so on in a separate column and from that column I get lots of blogging ideas.

13. Use news aggregators

News aggregators like Feedly, Alltop, Prismatic and Flipboard can constantly supply you with new blogging ideas in your niche.

Some of these platforms also tell you how popular some of the topics are and you can create your blogging ideas accordingly.

14. Use Google Analytics data

If you have a blog you also must have Google analytics script on it that tells you what sort of traffic comes to your blog.

One section in your Google Analytics also tells you what keywords and search phrases are drawing traffic to your blog and you can use this information to create blog content.

15. Invite guest bloggers to write for your blog

This happens when your blog has become a bit known in your niche and people would like to highlight their content on your blog.

For this you need to cross a certain threshold level but once you have done that, it is a great way to make sure that you never run out of blogging ideas.

In fact, once you start inviting guest bloggers you will have to exercise discretion and be careful about what to publish and what not to publish.

Once you have seriously started blogging it’s just a matter of being sensitive towards receiving new blogging ideas.

I have personally observed that when I am blogging regularly I rarely run out of blogging ideas because consciously and subconsciously I’m constantly looking for new things to write about.

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