Writing a new blog post can get difficult. Sometimes the ideas just don’t come. What are you supposed to do when the ideas just stop flowing in? Or maybe you have been wanting to blog but never started because you don’t know where to start. I’m going to show you 3 practical ways to get new blog ideas you can use today to get the ideas flowing and get you writing.
Who are you writing for?
It’s important to understand why you are writing a blog to begin with. This article is primarily for people who use blogging as a tool to improve their business to build an audience, not just for a fun personal blog. The number 1 ingredient of a successful blog is obviously valuable content, there’s not question about it, but if you’re blogging to build an audience you must understand that you are writing for them and not yourself. How can you get new blog ideas if you don’t even know who you are writing for?
Who is your audience?
Now that understand that you are writing for an audience and not yourself, you have to know who your audience is. Who are your ideal clients you would like to work with? Have these people in mind. Find out what these ideal clients want to read.
For example, let’s say you had a business selling cakes. What would the best customer be interested in reading about? What types of problems would they need answers to? Thats what you’re going to blog about. You have to take the approach of solving problems and not simply writing about something that sounds cool. I know nothing about cakes so it’s a great example to use.
Forget about being super original
It’s not important to have this new amazing blog topic that no one has ever covered. If no one has covered it, then most likely no one is searching for it! Focus on writing about what everyone is already interested in. Use inspiration from books, blogs, and social media. It’s okay to talk about the same topics others are already talking about, just don’t plagiarize! Once you get going, and get the hang of it, the originality begins to come to you.
Write your ideas down
If you get new awesome ideas, you’ll need to write them down somewhere. You can’t just drop what you’re doing and write a blog post then and there. What if you’re eating dinner with the family and an idea pops into your head? You can’t say, “Sorry guys! Finish my dinner for me or give it the dogs. I have to blog!” I mean… that sounds like some dedication, but No! Eating with your family is important. What you want to do is get your phone out and write down the idea, put your phone away and continue enjoying dinner.
There are so many free tools for this. Just google “Best Note taking apps”, and you’ll find so many options to choose from. If you don’t feel like doing that, just use the most popular one. Evernote Its free, theres an app for your phone, and it gets the job done!
After creating an account with Evernote you can create a “New Note” called Topics, article ideas, or anything along those lines. Next, Write down all the ideas you get. You can even add a “checkbox” at the end of each topic and check it off when you actually write the post on that topic. How to create a checklist
How to get blog ideas?
Content is consumed in many different ways. I’ll show you how to get blog ideas with a few of them. Popular ways to consume content are:
- Books
- Blogs
- Social Media
1. Books
Which books are your readers interested in? Go to amazon.com and search under the books category and type something like “Cake lovers”. Check out popular books and view their table of contents. Using the table of contents is a great way to find out what readers are interested in. Why? Because you’re viewing one of the most popular books that people have already purchased many times.
Here’s a live example(Well… it was live while I wrote this!):
I’m on Amazon.com and selected the “Books” category and searched for “Cake Lovers”.
First book is “A Cake Lovers Recipe Notebook.” I clicked on the image that says, “Look Inside” and I scrolled down to the table of contents.
I see “Baking Essentials”, “Essential Equipment”, “Essential Techniques”, and many more. Ok cool, now I have an idea of what readers are interested in.
At this point, I might have an idea of a topic already and I would write it down in Evernote, but I don’t so I can use these phrases to find blog posts instead.
Let me look for blog posts now…I typed in “Cake Lover Baking Essentials.” And I found a post called “Baking Essentials: Must-Have Tools for every Baker”. Now, I’ll write this headline down, or I’ll tweak it instead and write “5 Essential tools every baker must have”.(I can change the number later if I only write about 4 essential tools.)
2. Blogs
You can follow blogs many different ways. A few easy ways are using Feedly, Bloglovin, Digg, or other similar sites. For simplicity, just use Feedly. (There’s a phone app too)
Set up a free account. Go to “Add Content” > “Follow Publications & Blogs” >Search a topic, or if you already know which blogs you want to follow then write the blog name and it should pop up. Once you are following several blogs, you’ll get to see the newest articles showing up. View the headlines and see what looks interesting to you, now open up Evernote and write down the headlines!
You like my examples? Fine I’ll do another one.
I already have Feedly set up. I’m logged in and I’m going to click on “add content”.
I typed in “Cake Lovers”. The “Cake Wrecks” blog popped up, along with “Carrots and Cake”, “100 Layer Cake” and many others.
I’m going to follow all 3 and some other ones. When I click follow I have the option to create a new feed that I’ll call “All about Cakes” because it sounds cool.
I’ve added all those blogs to that feed. Now I’m going to click on the feed and I see a bunch of articles.
One that caught my attention is “Our Favorite Mickey Mouse Cakes” but I really like Bugs bunny so I’m going to jot down “Our favorite Bugs bunny cakes” in Evernote. (I’m actually not. I don’t even like cake. lol)
3. Social Media
I’m not going to go through each one, but simply use the search to look for pages and hashtags. Here’s my example:
I’ m using my Instagram account and I typed in “#caketips” in the search. I’m looking at pictures and videos until I find some inspiration.
I found an image about a football helmet cake and that made me think about the Super Bowl. I got a great idea, “5 Best Cakes for your Super Bowl Party”. Maybe that post will be a big hit every end of January. Who knows?
Now I’m going to follow that Instagram profile and the hashtag for future inspiration.
Look… I’m not saying my examples are genius ideas. I have no clue about cakes, I’m not interest in cakes and I’m definitely not taking my time in these examples. What I wanted to show you how easy it can be to get blog ideas for just about anything.
Write a catchy headline
Writing a catchy headline is an art of its own. You stick with the simple but popular, “3 steps to make ______” , “10 reasons you shouldn’t _______”, “5 quick tips to get ________ in just 2 weeks!”. I’m not saying these are the best possible headlines, but they are catchy and people like numbers. If you want to read more about headlines, check out this Hubspot article.
Choose a Topic and Research
Now that you spent plenty time and have compiled a long list of topics, choose a headline from Evernote, use you catchy headline skills and turn it into a catchy headline of your own. Then you’re going to have to research this topic. Google the topic and read through blogs, take notes, buy a book and read it, or experiment on your own about the topic. It all depends on how original and how much value you want to give. I would be fine with just reading a few blogs, and using my experience to add some original value. The main thing here is to not plagiarize. Don’t copy someone else’s post they worked so hard on. If you made it this far, I’ll assume you’re not lazy and you’ll do things the right way.
In conclusion
Finding blog ideas isn’t that difficult, but it does take some time and effort. And that’s a great thing! If it were easier, everyone would do it and it would lose its value. But if you use these practical tips, you’ll get new blog ideas left and right! Be creative, be unique, be yourself and go blog!
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