Coming up with fresh blog posts and ideas is critical to keep a blog up to date and engaging. However, it can be a daunting task.
For most bloggers and content creators, it is easier to churn out ideas in the beginning. Slowly, as topics get exhausted, generating new and unique ideas becomes harder.
Sometimes, it can just be a writer’s block. Taking a few breaks and refreshing your mind for the next round can help you get over it.
However, the process goes on and on. Your profession is to keep turning up with new post types, new content, and a fresh mix of keywords while keeping things niche relevant. It becomes narrower and narrower in scope as things progress.
You have to expand your writing and content skills further from your existing abilities. Also, if you are always focused on things that “you” want to write about, your operations will come to a grinding halt in no time.
Readers nowadays look for specific solutions to specific problems.
You are there to provide end-user satisfaction. You must be doing that.
Pros, who come up with new ideas daily keep these things in mind. Therefore, they consistently expand their horizons. They stay on top of trends and tweak them to come up with unique and fresh ideas.
You can also use a mixed bag of tools and strategies to develop stellar content regularly.
Here are 15 Places to Get Blog Post Ideas When You are Stuck
#1 Portent
If you want instantly attractive post ideas, then Portent Idea Generator is an ideal choice. It works great if you want titles with a dash of humor and click-baits. It is one of the easiest ways to find catchy post titles.
To get the best results on Portent:
- You should only write proper nouns in capital
- Revise/refresh the results multiple times
- Use the singular version of your keyword
#2 AnswerThePublic
It is a creative tool for finding unique variations for any search term. You can find keywords, headlines and blog topics relevant to your niche. The unique thing about this tool is that it is visual.
Once you enter your keyword, it takes two minutes for the images to load. These images are divided into categories and have ideas embedded in them. The categories include:
- Questions (Like “What are the Trends in SEO for 2019?”)
- Prepositions (Like “What is SEO any good for?”)
- Comparisons
- Alphabetical &
- Related topics
With such diversification, you get a plethora of ideas to choose from around a single keyword. This way, you can quickly come up with new and unique insights on the go.
#3 Quora
If you are new to Quora, then you have been missing out on the largest database of all possible answers on the Internet. It is filled with an endless array of questions and answers. Furthermore, you get original and unique ideas directly from people in the form of answers.
You can proceed by posting doubts and questions that come to your mind. People will see these questions and start replying. Also, you can use the read option. It allows you to read and browse through relevant questions and answers in the niche of your choice.
Such large volumes of answers allow you to expand your opinions and come up with compelling ideas for blogs and social media posts. Furthermore, your content will already be toned with the target audience as it intercepts with what they already think.
Also, you can follow a question if it regarding a particular topic that’s relevant to you. You will receive notifications whenever someone replies to it. All in all, the answers you get are descriptive and help you in generating numerous post ideas.
You can also find ideas for your blog by visiting Quora Sitemaps. You can check out the most-viewed questions and answers in a particular niche and carry on your research.
#4 YouTube
YouTube is undoubtedly an ocean of content. However, you have to smartly scour through relevant videos to come up with awesome blog post ideas.
For instance, if you’re looking for topics in the eCommerce niche, you can check out videos by top companies like Amazon and eBay. Also, you can look at influencers who are garnering top views in the eCommerce niche. Afterward, you can check out these videos in detail and come up with individual blog posts.
Sometimes, the videos are so unique that you can convert a video into written content and manufacture a unique blog post.
Moreover, with ready to embed videos, the rich media quotient of your post is high, right from the start.
Different kinds of videos can lead to different content pieces. For instance, advisory blogs can convert into blog posts with advisable solutions. A video about gifting ideas can be converted into a listicle.
The comments generated on a video also contain valuable insights, doubts, and questions related to the video. You can search through these comments to come up with ideas. You can later reply to them with the link embedded and clear those doubts.
#5 Blog Comments
The comments readers leave on your blog posts are a goldmine of new and unique ideas. You should regularly scan your blog comments and take not of various doubts, questions, and suggestions that you readers have left.
You can club multiple doubts together and create a new problem-solving post. Afterward, you can publish and share it directly with your readers.
You can take random suggestions that readers leave in the comments sections. These suggestions can be transformed into entirely new blog posts. Similarly, if a related topic is enquired about, then it can be clubbed together, for instance, in an alternatives post.
Overall, blog comments are one of the best ways to keep generating new post ideas for your blog. If you already have a good reader base, engagement on your posts must be healthy. You have to start analyzing this engagement and then never worry about new ideas!
#6 Spying on your Competition
A competitor is someone who is working in the same niche as you are. Therefore, keeping tabs on the type of content they produce and the feedback they generate on the same is essential.
However, spying on your competition doesn’t mean stealing their blog ideas. You should use them for inspiration and always come up with ideas of your own. Furthermore, here are some tools you can use to identify and track your competition:
- BuzzSumo
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
There are even more various tools in the market that you can explore. Once you have identified them, you can analyze their content.
You can create highly engaging reply and opinion posts and share it with frequent readers. For instance, if you see a post about “How Affiliate Marketing is Slowly Dying Out”. You can create a post like “Strategies to Radically Modify Affiliate Marketing in 2019”.
Similarly, you can look at the comments on these blogs and generate another set of unique ideas regularly.
#7 Ask Your Readers
Publishers and readers have never been more connected. Clearly, social media is to blame. Most readers like staying in touch with publications and blogs they follow. Therefore, they always connect to their social handles like Facebook pages, Instagram and twitter handles and even Whatsapp groups.
I believe that such social circles provide the best metrics for analyzing trends and patterns. You get a real-time track on what readers are thinking. They post their doubts, opinions, and suggestions all over social media. You can check them out and create new ideas.
However, the best way to use social media is to interact with readers yourselves and ask them directly.
You can use simple features like Facebook Search. Use it to find groups and pages relevant to your niche. You can scour through these pages and groups and find out people’s problems. Afterward, you can create blog posts that are solutions to these problems!
Your audience is the best source of inspiration for new ideas. Another way you can directly ask them is through Google Forms. You can create them for free. Just put in all the questions you want answering. Afterward, you can send out emails or links to your readers, receive answers, map them and come up with unique ideas.
However, don’t overwhelm your readers with too many or complex questions. Keep it simple.
- Ask simple yes/no questions
- Always give multiple choices as answers to generate a quick response
- Let them identify problems, and you become a solutions provider
- Don’t ask double-barreled questions (questions that contain two or more underlying issues: they are complex and make answering tedious)
- Don’t use absolutes like “Do you always” or “How many times exactly”. They confuse the readers
- Offer the right incentives
- Set a deadline
- Don’t use unclear language
- Don’t use too many jargons
- Don’t ask too many questions
- Filter your email lists according to the theme of the survey.
- Mildly advertise the surveys on Facebook to get response boost
- Embed these surveys in thank you or confirmation pages
- Create a blog post around the survey to promote it.
#8 Analyse previous blog posts
If you don’t already analyze your blog posts, then you’re committing a big mistake. Old content needs updates and maintenance from time to time. Some of your old content may not even be relevant due to technological or other advancements.
Therefore, you can create new posts on the go as updates and upgraded information on the previous one. Furthermore, you can interlink these posts to improve optimization.
For instance, content marketing strategies in 2015 are deviant from those in 2019. Hence, you can create posts derived from 2015 and relevant in 2019 like:
- Content Marketing Strategies still dominant in 2019
- What Content Strategies to Discard in 2019
- How Content Marketing has evolved since 2015
Similarly, more topics and posts can be explored to generate numerous ideas and posts.
#9 Expand your Listicles
A great way to add content and interlinking is by creating detailed posts from Listicles. These articles contain many ideas around a specific topic. You can pick on of these ideas and expand it into an altogether new post.
Interlinking both posts with increase the relevance of both blog posts, enhance engagement and keep your blog flowing with content. For instance, if you have a post like “Top 20 Tools to Spy on Your Competition”, then you can create a post about each tool and have 21 individual posts in the end.
This strategy is relatively simple and works every time!
#10 Improve poor blogs by others
Some people come with solid blog post ideas. However, they don’t land high on the content and thus end up publishing poor blog posts online.
You can see this as an opportunity if these poor blogs are relevant to your niche. You can tap and look for such blog posts.
Then you use whatever research is available to start developing content. Then, you make sure to add value and create a creative piece that delivers far more value than the more mediocre post.
This way, you generate new blog post ideas along with increasing your credibility among readers. It happens because you delivered actionable content while others didn’t care to do so. You applied the effort to solve the information gap.
Google also recognizes such efforts now with its semantic indexing and ranks your content better.
#11 Amazon Look Inside
It is another unique strategy I have picked up while finding ways to generate new blog ideas. It is incredibly simple to crack.
For instance, let us say you are looking for ideas around the subject of Digital Marketing in 2019. First, head over to amazon.com. Then search the idea.
Search any book you like from the search results. However, look for results that the option “Look Inside”.
Make sure that the title you look into has the right balance of positive and negative reviews. After you have finalized the book, click on the book cover to preview it.
Great! Now you are there. Starting from the table of contents, you can start jotting down one new idea from another.
It is a fairly simple process. You can repeat it umpteen times with any kind topic across any niche.
#12 Slideshare
Slideshare has gained massive popularity in recent years in the domain of delivering relevant content. Furthermore, you get excellent rich media to include in your posts.
You can start by going to the “most popular” pages. Here you get trending content across categories. Slideshares that have the option of embedding are great for including in your blog posts. You can create a detailed post around the theme and embed the corresponding PPT to enhance the content.
#13 Twitter
Twitter generates hundreds of posts and ideas across all niches in a matter of minutes. These trending topics, hashtags popular retweets can be used to create new and enticing blog ideas instantly.
Moreover, using hashtags and trending content to come up with ideas allows you to create posts that are click-worthy and in line with what people are reading.
For instance, you can search the hashtag #digitalmarketing. After hitting search, some fresh posts pop up like:
- 50 Social Media Content Ideas
- Digital PR from 1999-2019
- How to get the most from your digital marketing team
You can go through these pieces of content and come up with unique ideas for your blog posts.
#14 Simple Google Search
Have you noticed something interesting about random Google searches? As soon as you start typing in, suggestions crop up in the drop-down menu.
This strategy couldn’t be any simpler. You type in the relevant words like above. As you can see from the image, numerous unique ideas pop up. You can add your thinking and planning to ideas and come up with exciting ideas. For instance, you can create a post about “Top 20 Digital Marketing Business Name Ideas”.
#15 Reddit
If you are looking for ideas highly specific to your niche, then look no further than Reddit. It is an old platform and topples any other platform on the Internet when it comes to the sheer size and range of content available.
However, if you are relatively new to Reddit, finding the right places for content ideas can take some effort.
First and foremost, you can head to the subreddit category of your liking and start exploring. You can also check out the “interesting” category to explore popular threads and questions. Now, as the research begins, new ideas for blog posts start cropping up.
All the methods and strategies discussed above help you in generating worthwhile blog post ideas. However, your power of observation should be polished and efficient. When you observe, ideas can pop up at the strangest of places. You can derive insights reading magazines at a coffee house on vacation!
Good writers and content creators are not perfect people. They can generate powerful ideas on the go.
However, it is safe to say that they also need inspiration and guidance to keep churning out stellar content. Therefore, use your resources efficiently. Be observant, patient and creative to stay on top of your content plans.
