If you’re new to blogging, or you’ve been blogging for awhile but sometimes find yourself struggling for something to write about, here are nine ideas to get you writing quickly:
1. Take a poll. Using a free tool like Survey Monkey, you can poll your readers on a fun, controversial or hot topic. You will, of course, write another blog post sharing results of the poll. For blog polls, the quickest and easiest thing to do is use a widget. You can get one at PollDaddy.com (they have a WordPress plugin) or you can use the WordPress survey plugin to put a poll inside a blog post.
2. Use Google Alerts. Create alerts for your topics at Google.com/alerts. Google will email you as often as you wish with great content that ties into your topic.
3. Create Top 10 lists. Letterman made these famous. Readers love them!
4. Create a video. Video is hot, hot, hot and it will pull traffic like crazy. Here’s one I created on how to get your consumer product into holiday gift sections. If you’re intimidated by video, let Mike Stewart help.
5. Comment on somebody else’s video which you can also post to your blog. You’ll find millions of videos at YouTube. I blogged about this video that shows Peggy Noonan, a conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and Mark Murphy, a strategist during John McCain’s 2000 campaign for president, who were caught criticizing McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for vice president. It happened during a panel discussion on the set of MSNBC, where Murphy is a commenator.
6. Report on interesting conversatons on Twitter. I frequently blog about discussions I have with my Twitter followers, how we help each other, and how Twitter is a fabulous tool for publicity, if you use it correctly. I use screenshots, too, to dress up the blog post. (Caution: Don’t let Twitter and Facebook steal you away from your blog.)
7. Find content at Digg.com. Use the search box at this social bookmarking site to find interesting content on a specific topic. You can guage the popularity of the topic by how many Diggs it has received.
8. Share humorous content. Funny photos, jokes and videos—particularly those that ties into your topic—are a nice break from the serious stuff.
9. Recycle content from other sources. If you’re a speaker, extract content from your handouts. If you’re an author, excerpt from your book. I frequently cut and paste helpful comments I post to other blogs, like the comment you’re reading, and turn it into a post at this blog. I wrote seven of these nine tips this morning for the Blogging Made Easy post I read at the Salon.com blog. (It’s the second comment.)
How do you find interesting content for your blog?
(Shutterstock photo)
Answers to my customers’ questions frequently become blog posts. Questions from customers and their colleagues tell me what my market is interested in. I just flesh out an answer for the blog post.
I also looked for “searched terms” in my site stats. Again it tells me what people are interested in.
Linda Abraham
Linda, reviewing search terms in your site stats is a fabulous way to find content. I learned that “how to write a bio” pulls significant traffic to my website. I never would have know that if I didn’t check my stats.
great ideas…..sometime you can get stuck for ideas of how and what to blog…the best blogs are blogs that are full of useful posts ( in my opinion)
Joan, These are extremely helpful tips! It gets so frustrating when I don’t feel I have something relevant to post about. These 9 ideas should keep me fresh for a long time.
I appreciate the informmation!
My one tip on creating Google Alerts will keep you busy for months! Sometimes, reading my google Alerts is like drinking out of a firehose. There’s so much content that it’s difficult to decide which topic to write about.
great post…. sometimes writers cramp can be hard to overcome. twitter is a great topic mine and recent market research, especially when presented from a systems analyst and not a biz analyst can leave you with a ton of good info to discuss and really engage people with.
First rate post. Being a profeesional writer I even find it difficult to come with new topics for all the various posts, twitter comments, social sites etc, etc. It sometimes makes me feel like I’m going crazy trying to put together all the information I want to say and in the best possible way.
I like your idea of commenting on videos since it’s something that most of us do anyways. I also like your concept of looking into less-known keywords and just write simple posts based on those keywords. I’ll start using that technique soon because it has two benefits: it is new content and it’s kind of optimized for a term people are looking for
Great ideas, thanks! You can also look at Google Trends to find the hottest topics and talk about them…chances are theyll generate a lot of interest to your readers, especially if the topics are well suited to your niche.