22 Ideas For Finding And Creating Blog Content

Many people will say that one of their biggest challenges in maintaining their blog is coming up with things to write about. Most of us have been in this situation at some stage, but when you look around and get creative with your thinking there really is an endless stream of topics and ideas to get your teeth into.

So here’s a list of 22 ideas of where to find and how to create different types of content for your blog which will hopefully help alleviate the dreaded writer’s block forever. Enjoy!

Comment on a video or post topic

If you find a video or a blog post that really resonates with you in some way, why not write your own take on it or expand on it? Someone else has already provided the inspiration and the basis for the topic, you just need to add your own thoughts. Put a link to the article or embed the video in your post, mention how you came across it earlier and that it clicked with you, then just let your typing fingers do the talking. Essentially, you’re just writing a blog comment on steroids.

Check out this post for an example.

Don’t just limit this to blog posts either. Email excerpts are also a potentially great source for responses (with the other person’s permission of course!).

Forum comments

If you’re in any sort of business then you need to be doing a hell of a lot of listening. And what better place to listen (or read) conversations and discussions in your niche than on a forum. If spending just a few minutes looking through a few highly targeted threads and links on a forum can’t stimulate even the slightest idea of a blog topic then not much else will!

Write a review

An easy one if you’re completely out of ideas. Review a great book, article or interview you’ve looked at recently and write down your thoughts. Even better, throw it on to a video. If you’re the entrepreneurial type, then the chances are you’ve come across more than enough quality resources to tick the box on this option.

Other blogs

This one’s huge. You can learn loads of great information and skills from books, training courses and the like, but I have to tell you that to date there is no other source that I have learned more from than by reading blogs. In fact when I think about, nothing really comes close. That’s the kind of world we live in today – everyone has a voice now, so we tend to be exposed to a lot of different insights rather than just those of the big shots.

So get into the habit of reading blogs. Pick a few favourites that relate to your business or your niche and periodically set aside some time to read them. Make sure you either subscribe to them or do what I do and make a folder on your browser’s toolbar with a list of blogs that you love to read. Go for it, make it a habit and reap the benefits.

Blog comments

Also, don’t ignore the comments section at the end of a post. Just like forums, reading blog comments can often lead to great ideas for you to write about. When discussions get going in the comments sections they tend to be a valuable extension of the actual post and are usually of a high quality, so ideas can be in abundance.

Social media feeds and searches

Another biggie. Open up your Facebook and Twitter feeds and watch in awe as a deadset plethora of content is pouring down the page. I mean you could – no, will – find something here in no time. And if you’re the type of person who organises your friends, followers and connections into categorical sub-groups, you’ve now got even more targeted sources to get ideas from.

Also, make use of social search sites such as search.twitter.com. Gary Vaynerchuk see’s this site as one of the most important on the entire world wide web, and to be honest I 100% agree with him. Just stop for a minute and think about what this site will become in the future – a live pulse of what everyone’s thinking. To say that that’s absolutely huge would be a gross understatement. Great place to look for blog content? You bet!

Keep a log of random ideas

I often come up with my best ideas while I’m sitting around relaxing, watching or reading something or even while I’m in the shower (yes, the shower, which I should probably dub the ‘fountain of inspiration’). The ideas seem so great at the time that I fall into the trap of thinking that I couldn’t possible forget it, but by the time I need them they’re completely gone.

Solution? Write them down if you can. Keep a notepad or a sheet of paper around that is solely for keeping a log of random ideas. Once you think of them, get them down on paper at your earliest convenience. Don’t obsess over it by any means, but if you’re able to write them down then go for it – don’t be lazy about it.

Capturing what you're doing on screen in real-time is a great way to give visual explanations to others

If you’re forming your post around some kind of step-by-step process that involves your computer, why not play it out on video? People are drawn to videos on the web that explain things on-screen in real time as they’re able to see exactly what’s going on. It’s much more interactive and much more personal.

It’s also a great starting point for people who poop their pants at the prospect of being on camera or those who are new to video. It’s a way of taking the focus off yourself and onto the people you’re trying to help with the video.

Jing and Camtasia are a couple of the tools you can use to screencast you content.

Point out great people

Speaking of taking the focus off yourself in videos, why not point the finger at someone and tell them how awesome they are! Give a positive appraisal of a colleague in your niche or someone you’ve learned something from and let others know how they might benefit from connecting with them.

Avoid overdoing it and being an absolute suck just for the sake of it though. Just say what you truly think and give an authentic and real testimonial that your audience and the person in question will truly appreciate.

Do an interview

Interviews are fairly simple, yet potentially powerful. They generally get a fair amount of eyeballs and although they can be presented in written form, people are more inclined to take notice of audio and video content.

Don’t be put off doing interviews by thinking you need to land some well-known content provider in your niche to give a good quality interview for your readers and watchers. People are becoming increasingly interested these days in listening to a broad range of people on various topics, so put together a few thought-provoking questions for a colleague and go for it.

If you aren’t able to do some kind of live interview, just send the interviewee your questions and then present the interview as a Q & A post.

Have a guest author

The lazy man’s answer to generating content! Nah, I kid, this can actually be a great thing to get into if you do it right. If you have some friendly relationships with other bloggers, offering to do guest posts on each others blogs can be an easy and effective way to grow each other’s audience. Your content will be exposed to many more sets of eyeballs as you and your guest author post on each others blogs and follow that up by mutually syndicating the content.

Write a “How-To” Post

People love ‘How-To’ posts. It’s just natural for us to seek out solutions to problems that are laid out in an easy step-by-step format. So if there’s any particular skills you have or ways you approach things in business or indeed life that may beneficial to your readers, write up a short how-to guide on it.

“How-I” Posts are fairly similar but relate more to your personal experiences. You may want to write about how you cope with something or how you choose to go about achieving certain goals that you have. This can be quite effective and eye-catching if it involves something you do that isn’t considered the norm.

Be engaging and get some feedback

Stuck on what write about? Why not ask people what they want to hear? You could do this in a few ways:

- Conduct a poll on your blog or ask your connections on Twitter and Facebook.
- Write up a feeback post and encourage people to comment on your blog and what they’d like to hear.
- Have a set day during the week where you answer feedback or write a post based on one of the suggestions.
- Set up an ‘Ask (Your name)’ button on your site like the one on the left.

Too easy.

Write a list like this!

These are quite fun to do, as they simply involve a little bit of brainstorming and then writing a few lines about each idea. Just like “How To’s”, these “x-number of ways to do things” posts are also quite good at drawing the reader’s eye, particularly on social sites where posts need to really stand out to grab the attention of a skimming reader.

“What I would do if I had to start over?”

Entrepreneurs are accustomed to failing, as failing forward towards our goals is pretty much the name of the game in many respects. Therefore, you’ll no doubt have many instances that you could write about on how you’d go about a particular activity or experience if you had your time over again. Spill your guts in your blog post and concentrate on showing your readers what you learned and how they can avoid the same mistakes.

Incorporate personal experiences into your posts

Sometimes things that have nothing to do with business or entrepreneurship can provide great lessons, so always look away from what you do as an entrepreneur for things to write about. You could even tie in a lesson learned from your personal life into a post on business.

Offer Free Stuff

Ebooks, articles, videos, anything that you’re able to share for free that you genuinely believe would be of benefit to others. If you’ve got it, why not share it? People love getting value for free.

Create a series of posts on a topic

If you’ve got a post idea that you think you load a stack of info into, consider breaking it up into parts and spreading the posts out over a period of time. Not only will you be able to get all your thoughts into easily readable doses, but you’ll basically churn out 2-3 posts in one go. Sweeeeeeet!

Get inspired away from the computer!

You simply have to get off your butt and away from the screen from time to time to think clearly. Although there’s loads of ideas floating around on the internet that are just waiting for your square eyes to catch them, you can just as easily form some great ideas in the real world when you’re exposed to different kinds of stimulation. Go get some air!

So that’s it for now. Hopefully you’ll have found at least a few pointers in there that you can take away and use to create new content on a regular basis. Just remember to keep consistent, keep disciplined, keeping listening and, most importantly, enjoy what you’re doing!

Got any other ideas for coming up with or how to approach blog posts? Feel free to share around your thoughts below.

Cheers guys,

Justin.