We all have been through this, where we stare at the blinking cursor on the blank document for hours, trying to think of the next great blog post ideas.
I know I have. It’s nerve-wracking when you just can’t find anything to write about and that deadline is sitting on your head. Some people call it a writer’s block, I call it lack of panic of not planning.
To overcome this fear, I wrote this article for you, which will help you with 10 unique ways to generate ideas for 100s of blog posts.
And the best part of this exercise is that you will never run out of blog post ideas to write.
So, today I’ve pulled together a massive list of great blog ideas to pull you out of the doldrums.
Let’s get started.
Google Autocomplete
Google search is the go-to place for anybody looking for any solution. So it’s obvious that if you run out of ideas to write about you should ask the mighty Google for help.
However, sometimes we don’t realize that Google helps us out before we even press enter with our focus keyword. Through Google’s autocomplete feature, you can find topics related to your industry that you might not have struck your mind before.
In the image above, you see that the search for “digital marketing” auto-suggests terms like “digital marketing course”, “digital marketing course in surat”, “digital marketing course services”, “digital marketing company” and more. These are great topics and can be turned into a detailed feature post.
Answer the public
Answer The Public is a great and might I add a free long-tail keyword tool that visualizes various search questions and autocomplete questions in a search cloud image. The questions are divided into categories including What, Why, Where, Will, When, Are, Can and How. And each category contains at least 10 questions that are related to your domain niche.
These are the questions that your target audience is searching for and therefore each question can become an addition to your blog series.
SIDENOTE: Choose your topics based on what your target audiences are looking for.
Google Trends
Google Trends is the perfect tool to help you find trending topics related to your niche. In itself is not a great tool for keyword research but sometimes you can find the currently trending topics that can bring in a lot of traffic on your blog.
One of the most useful features of Google Trends is the Related Queries where you can find trending topics related to your search. It also offers data and graphs of trends over time and interest by sub-region which can give idea on what topic will work for what region.
Let’s face it, hardly anyone uses Pinterest as a social media website, it’s mostly a search engine and a great one to find blog post ideas for some niches.
You can start your search with a single keyword on the Pinterest search bar or look for blog ideas in the “Trending Ideas” section.
You can get further ideas by clicking on the pin and visiting the source blog. Additionally, a lot of companies and bloggers post infographics on Pinterest, which can be a great source for you to get good ideas as well.
Another interesting way Pinterest can help you source blog topics are the images posted by various users. Every time you search for a topic on Pinterest, you will find a lot of images with quotes or facts about your topic, which can be turned into blogs.
Forums such as Quora/Reddit
Forums like Quora and Reddit are great platforms where you can find user-generated questions on a wide range of topics and find answers as well.
As this is user-generated content, you are most likely to find the pain points of your targeted audience and that’s the most important blog topic you can write about. You can either just reply to these questions or use these questions as potential blog ideas.
These online forums help you see the most trending industry-related questions as well. If they are popping up more than a couple of times, these buzzing queries are great blog topic ideas.
The number of followers and answers that are given on a particular question can give you an idea about the popularity of the topic. Additionally, they also help you understand what all needs to be covered in the blog idea.
Your customer reviews
We know business reviews are important to build the trust factor amongst the potential clients and increase sales but who would have thought that you can use client reviews to dig up blog ideas as well?
For example, for an eCommerce website, a common area people put up reviews for is fast delivery. You’ll often notice customers commenting on how fast or slow the product was delivered to them. In this case, you can write a blog about “Why Your eCommerce Delivery Strategy Is Important?” Or “[No.of] eCommerce Platforms with Best Delivery Service” or Case studies about “How we improve our delivery time from xx days to yy hours.” and more.
Moreover, you can find your customer’s pain points from reviews and write a blog post to solve them.
Facebook Groups
Just like Quora and Reddit, Facebook groups are also an amazing place to find blog ideas. You can find Facebook groups about almost any topic, starting from movie fan groups to religious groups to SEO to cycling enthusiasts groups and more. Each of these groups contains thousands of members who constantly ask your industry-related questions. You can join these groups and simply pick up interesting questions other members are asking or you can ask them what they’d like to know about your domain and pick topics from the replies you receive.
You can also run polls or ask for their pain points by posting in group. Once you start engaging with audience, you will find more ideas from it
Famous blogs in your Industry
If you have a blog of your own, chances are you are already following other bloggers writing about the same industry. These bloggers are technically your competitors and you should always keep an eye on them. Not only will that keep you on your toes, encouraging you to be better but sometimes you can get great post ideas from the kind of blogs they are writing.
Even though you should never copy these pretty good blog ideas but you can always draw inspiration from them and create something of your own. You can use tools like BuzzSumo and SpyFu to scope out the best blogs in your industry to find other possible topics related to them.
Audience Survey
You’re writing to please and connect with your audience, so who better to ask for ideas than them? When you’re feeling out of ideas to write about, a great way to draw inspiration is to ask your audience what would they like to read about.
This way, you know for sure that you’re creating content directly connecting with your audience and these are queries they are most likely searching for, as well.
You can easily create a Google Form asking your followers and subscribers for their inputs. Their response to your survey could result in some interesting and popular blogs for you. You can survey them on Social media, or close groups as well.
Social Media comments
Even though a big chunk of comments on social media might be trolls, some comments are questions from genuine users and can be covered as a blog post. Scout your social media comments to find these pieces of gems that are worth writing about.
Additionally, you can even look at the social media comments on your competitor’s page as well for some out of the box ideas as well. Especially, if that competitor is someone famous. Out of those comments, you can find out what exactly they are asking or looking for. Accordingly, you can decide on blog post ideas.
There you have it! 10 unique ways to generate blog ideas.
Hopefully, these methods will help you come out of your “I am out of ideas” coma and get you inspired. Because even though it might feel like everything interesting has already been written about, the possibilities of finding new topics are endless.
I don’t remember the last time I was out of ideas to write about since I started using these methods to source blog ideas. I am now able to generate blog ideas in chunks and reserve them for later use. I repeat the process before I have exhausted my previously noted down topics.
This way, it’s easier for me to publish blogs regularly and frequently.
I hope it helps you too.
I would love to know what works for you when it comes to generating blog post ideas. Let me know in the comments section.