Seven Ways to Come Up With Great Blog Ideas

Coming up with great blogging ideas can be a challenge, whether you’re writing for one blog or multiple blogs. Sure there are thousands of topics to write about, but with the Internet being flooded with content good and bad, you want to stand out, be ready for anything, be relevant and be professional.

Blogging has become one of the best ways to become known as an expert in your given industry and a great way to market your services. Here are seven ways you can use to start coming up with great blog ideas today.

1. Read, read and read some more
Reading is one of the easiest things you can do to come up with great blogging ideas. Carve some time out of your day to catch up on reading that will inspire you and get your creative juices flowing. Start reading…

Blogs similar to your industry. Get some ideas from what other people have written. Use these blogs as a reference. If you don’t agree with their angle on a certain topic, write a blog post that shares your thoughts on the same topic.

The newspaper. Read the news and look out for what’s going on locally and globally. Write a blog post that is relevant to the most talked about current events.

Non-marketing books. Think outside the marketing box and get inspiration from your personal reads. That article you’re reading about this year’s fall fashion trends just might trigger an idea for something like, This Year’s Top Trends in Blogging.

2. Curation
Great blog ideas come from great bloggers. We never want to copy anyone’s work of course, but by gathering and referencing certain blogs, or bloggers, can become the base for a great blog post. Always be sure to credit the source and provide a link to the original blog. Curation is also a great way to establish or reinforce your relationship with other bloggers since you are essentially pointing your readers to them and giving them credit for their great ideas.

3. Brainstorming session
We’ve learned this technique in grade school, and it still works. Get your team together and brainstorm blogging ideas. When generating ideas, stay positive, write anything and everything down even it doesn’t make sense at first it just might be something great later. Staying positive throughout your brainstorming session will help eliminate any discouragement and keep people actively participating. After you’ve’ come up with great ideas, put them into your blog categories, then you can start eliminating or expanding on topics.

4. Events
Have you recently attended an industry event, seminar or conference? Create a blog post to share what you learned. If there is an event that you think your readers should attend, create a blog post to tell them your top reasons for attending.

5. Sharing is caring
You’ve experienced a lot in life and work, why not share those experiences with your readers. Teach them something you found helpful once you learned how to do it, make their lives easier. Don’t be afraid to share your secrets. Take it as a compliment when you start to see others following in your lead. Share your experiences in the simplest form possible, using lists, images, and how-to instructions. Start a list of everything you know and determine what is useful to share.

6. Ask your readers.
Please your loyal readers and keep them coming back for more. Utilize your audience to help better serve them. Create a poll, pose a question through social media channels or send out a newsletter asking readers about specific topics they want covered. See a recurring question in some of your latest blog comments or in a community group? Do some research to help readers and potential readers find answers, or at least point them in the right direction. The important thing is that you become the ultimate resource for them.

If you don’t want to bother your readers for whatever reason, then you can use your measuring tools. Review your Google keywords and analytics tools to see what blog topics readers click on the most. In Twitter, find out which tweets are retweeted the most and on your Facebook page determine which posts are shared the most.

7. Unconventional Holidays.
Everyone knows the major holidays that happen throughout the year. But did you know that there are hundreds of unconventional holidays that you can use to your advantage when developing blog ideas? Holiday Insights is a great site to learn about the history of random holidays that might be relevant to your audience. Honoring an unconventional holiday is fun for you and your readers. For example, the second Monday in February is, “Clean out Your Computer Day”. If you are in the business of computers, then you can honor this day by writing a blog post about how-to clean out your computer files.

Tips to always be ready for ideas

• Keep an editorial calendar and make sure you include a list of ideas at the ready Use a notebook, digital recorder or your Smartphone to record ideas when you’re on the go
• Take photos of things that might be helpful in a future blog post
• Subscribe to news feeds so you always have something to read
• Use Google Alerts to keep track of specific topics, places or people who you want to write about
• Have a plan to repurpose your blog posts, think about how you can reuse the content later to create a series or expand on a topic that was briefly covered
• One blog topic can result in a variety of different angles

What are some ways you like to come up with great blog ideas to post?