What other blog post can I write?
It is a questions every blogger frequently asks.
It’s not easy to come up with a great blog topic for your website over and over again, and which is actually worth reading for your critical readers.
If you want to attract more visitors to your website, then it is a must to regularly, at least every week, place a new article on your website.
Often bloggers or website owners start blogging with enthusiasm. However, after a couple of months it becomes more difficult to come up with good blog topics.
You find out that blogging is actually hard work.
You delay writing the post for week. And then another two weeks…
I might have a writers block, you will be using as excuse.
And then slowly but surely you will see your blog dying…
At a certain point you give up. And then you realise that the last blog on your website was already three quarters of a year ago.
Sound familiar?
It’s not necessary. Thinking of blog topics is something you can learn.
I will give you 10 tried and tested tips, even if you think you are not creative enough.
1. Keep a list with topics
Often you will think of the best blog topics during a run or a discussion with a colleague.
But before you know it, you have forgotten it again.
Do you have an interesting blog idea, write it down immediately!
You can write it down in an old school notebook. I myself use the digital version: on my iPad and iPhone I have an app with notes in which I write down all the ideas I come up with.
A good tool to write down ideas is Trello, a clear tool where you can also divide your topics into categories.
It would be even better to keep a content calendar.
A content calendar gives an overview of all the topics you are going to write about. You can also instantly see if you have written about it before so you don’t write about it twice.
2. Ask your visitors
Many bloggers search after ideas for blog posts, but it is more efficient to let the ideas come to you.
I have already written a few articles in response to a question on WPjournalist in the comment section.
This might be a question which will be asked more often.
Aside from blogs you can also check Twitter and Facebook to see which questions are current. Which questions are asked? What stories do they tell?
What you can also do: I often ask my readers another question at the end of an article. This is to enlarge the interaction with my audience.
Ask your readers what they would like to read more about. It often yields new topics for blogs that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
3. Steal topics from others
It might not seem right, but there are many bloggers who first look at the topics of other bloggers.
I do it too. 🙂
Don’t be afraid to steal blog posts from others that score well. You can learn a lot from others.
You shouldn’t of course copy a blogpost 1 on 1. Google wouldn’t appreciate it and will see it as duplicate content.
But you can take an existing blog post as starting point and then add your own experiences and knowledge.
Many bloggers for example look at Buzzsumo, an online tool that analyses which content will perform best. You can type in a topic and then you will see which articles score well.
The header of the article can also often be used for the article.
4. Search on the internet for blog topics
I myself often look at a specific blog by Neil Patel who writes a new blog every day. His blogs have kind of the same content as WPjournalist: WordPress & content marketing.
[Fun but a little off point: WPjournalist is listed as number 3 when you search after ‘WordPress & content marketing’ in Google…]
I also read a lot of other blogs. I send the best ones to myself through email with the blog post’s link. Then I save it to read it again later.
There are also enough articles that are specifically about this topic: coming up with ideas for new blog posts. Like these:
50 Content Marketing Ideas For Your Website Or Blog.
There is even a special tool to generate blog topics: HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator.
5. Look on Google Analytics.
You can also find out through Google Analytics which are your most popular posts. There is obviously a need for it and you can write about this more often from a different perspective.
I wrote a high ranking article about quotes this way. Thousands of people have already looked at it. So in the near future, I will be writing a new and more extensive version on creating quotes.
6. Look at trends
There are different ways to find out what is hip&hot at this moment.
You can often write articles about new developments. A lot of people search after this.
There is another benefit: because the topic is quite new, not many articles have been written about it yet, which makes it more likely for people to land on your article.
Google Trends gives an overview about – the name gives it away- the developments. You will see an overview of the most sought after topics. But you can also enter a topic yourself and see how popular it is.
Also through social media you can check which topics are popular at this moment. Take a look at Trends24.in where you can check worldwide or per country which topics are often shared.
7. Tell a personal story
Often bloggers write a personal story about themselves. These articles are very well read because the writer tells something drawn from own experience. For example:
- what you have learned;
- which setbacks you experienced;
- the mistakes you’ve made;
the successes you’ve encountered; - what personal advice you can give;
- etc.
These kinds of tips which are drawn from personal experience can be very useful for readers.
It is a good thing to put personal experiences on paper now and again. It gives another great topic!
8. Ask someone else to write a guest post
Don’t have the time to come up with a new topic every week? You could ask someone else to write an article for your website.
Often they can easily come up with a topic themselves which they want to write about. But inform upfront if the person you approach is actually a writer, this can prevent disappointment.
A guest post is good for you, but als for the guest author. They can profile themselves as a specialist and leave an email address or link where interested customers can contact them.
So WINWIN.
There is also a guest article on WPjournalist, Starting a WordPress affiliate site, how to do it? A great topic I myself hadn’t thought of yet.
9. Look at headers of good articles
Often known marketeers publish lists with the 100 best headers or e-mail lines of the year. I also get a lot of inspiration from this.
You could even google ‘best headlines’ and you will instantly see a list with articles about this.
I for example draw experience from these articles:
Digital Marketer’s 101 Best Email Subject Lines of 2015
22 Headlines That Went Viral. Have These Marketers Cracked the Code?
Read these headers and there are probably some good ideas for new topics. You could also look a little more specifically by searching after the best headlines of a specific branch.
10. Improve yourself in creative thinking
Coming up with ideas is something you can practice. The more you do it, the better you get at it.
With every question you get, you can think about how to answer it.
I will give you a few tips to think more creative:
1. Don’t judge too fast. First write down ideas and know that no idea is bad or unachievable. By not instantly judging you will notice you’ll start to think more flexible.
2. Think outside of the box. Don’t limit yourself to your own worlds but look, read and listen outside of them. Take off your winkers and create a wider view.
3. Brainstorm in images. By imagining what something will look like you will get a better insight into things. It allows for more creativity.
4. Walk away from your computer. As much as you can find topics on the internet, take a break now and then. The ideas will start to come in no time.
So it is a matter of practice, practice and more practice. By doing it a lot, you will learn to come up with blog topics a lot faster.
Conclusion
When you put the above tips into practice, you will never have a shortage of blog topics again.
Look (and listen) around you, be curious and use the internet to look for topics. But also in real life you will often think of the best ideas.
When I am exercising, my mind becomes clear and I have thought of many blog topics this way.
You know the best tip I haven’t given you yet?
Read more than you write. The more you read, the more knowledge you can apply in your articles.
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
Maybe you also have some tips to come up with blog topics? I would love to hear them.
