Where do your blogging ideas comes from?
Content marketing is becoming extremely popular, but you need to come up with good ideas for your posts. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing for your own blog, guest posting on someone else’s or creating content for a newsletter. It needs to offer something of value to your readers. It needs to be fresh and full of interesting content. But how do you do that? Where do you look for inspiration and overcome those mental blocks?
Here are three tips for creating the perfect ideas for your blog.
Use Books in Your Niche
Take a trip to the library or look at eBooks available online. You need to make sure they are in your niche. So, if you have a gardening blog, take a look at the gardening section and browse through a few of the books available. These are great for getting inspiration without actually copying the text.
Look at the contents page – just the contents page – and make a note of all the headings. The headings will be enough to help you create a post along a similar topic. You may even find that just looking at the headings helps you expand on that topic and a lot of ideas come to you. Jot all the ideas down and make your way home. You’re ready to start writing.
Read Other Blogs
Take a look at the other blogs on your topic and see what people are writing about. You need to be careful with this method, because you don’t want to directly copy. The idea is to look at the topic headings to help inspire your own posts. Of course, read through the blogs and see what they say. That will help you take a different angle with your topic. You may find that they don’t answer the question as well as you could or that they miss a specific point that you’d include.
Reading others’ blogs will also help you develop your own opinions. There may be something in the content that you don’t agree with. Instead of just leaving a comment about that, create a full post to explain your position on the subject, why you have that position and anything that connects to that.
Let others help you create imaginative and valuable content.
Answer Your Readers’ Questions
Your readers will ask questions all the time. This could be through a comment or an email you receive. You may even see the question on the comments of someone else’s blog or through social media. If people have questions, they want to know the answers and you can turn those answers into a blog post.
You don’t just give the answer in one short line. Create a small story around it and give explanations for the answer. You could even give examples if that’s applicable. The readers will see just how invaluable your content is and will sign up to your email list or subscribe to your blog to read more of your content.
If you’re struggling to find questions that people want answered, ask your readers. Send out an email to your list to find out which topics they would like you to cover or how you can help them. Create a post that calls for people to leave a comment about the areas they’re struggling with. As the answers flood in, you’ll have ideas for hundreds of posts.
Coming up with fresh and good ideas doesn’t have to be difficult. People have already done the hard part for you. All you need to do is come up with your own unique angle and content on the topics.
Alexandria Ingham is a freelance writer with experience in technology, content marketing and blogging.