How to Generate Blog Ideas

Blogging can be tough.

It’s easy to get started with the few ideas that you had in mind during the epiphany you had when you decided “blogging” would be a good idea… But to keep generating new blog posts is a different story altogether.

Even professional bloggers and online marketers often get stuck and run out of ideas for new blog posts. A little halt in your blog production line may quickly become an enormous problem.

That’s where this blog post comes in to play: if you are not able to find new ideas for your blog, we’ve some great tips for you.

Follow these tips and tricks to generate an endless stream of ideas for new blog posts:

1.    Study Your Competitors

You may have run out of ideas, but your competitors may still be coming with great new posts. Study your competitors and their blogs, and you can easily come up with a ton of new ideas for your own blog.

When you are studying their blogs, you don’t have to copy their exact ideas. That’s never recommended. However, as their blogs are in the same niche as yours, you can write on related topics. Secondly, you can also use different angles and opinions to discuss a topic.

2.   Use Social Media Signals

Coming up with new ideas is one thing. But it is equally important to come up with ideas that your readers would like to see on your blog.

So the trick is to generate new ideas that are already popular on different social media websites.

You can use free tools like Quick Sprout and Buzz Sumo to find ideas that are getting popular on social media websites. Even a simple search – with broad and related keywords – you can come up with at least a dozen awesome ideas for your blog.

3.   Survey Your Readers

You write blog posts for your readers. Isn’t it only logical to ask them what they’d like to read?

Surveying readers is one of the most effective techniques to come up with new and highly targeted posts. Most professional bloggers actively engage with their readers in the comment section of their blogs. Such discussions always lead up to new ideas.

Moreover, you can always take a step ahead and survey your followers on social media websites. Use Twitter and Facebook pages to find what your readers would like to read next.

Some guys like Noah Kagan use emails to survey their mailing list subscribers.

If you don’t have a sizeable readership to survey, you can use a service like Qualaroo.

4.   Use Quora and Relevant Forums

Chances are that most of your target audience and readership hang out on different forums and Quora.

If you want to know what they are talking about, visit those forums – and Quora – on a regular basis. See what they are discussing and how you can generate new ideas from those discussions.

Besides that, I’d also recommend getting active on Quora by asking specific questions. It will help you generate specific ideas. Moreover, with so many targeted audience at your disposal, you will also be able to validate many of your new ideas.

5.   Brainstorm

Never underestimate the power of brainstorming. Once you have done a little bit of research – with the help of above techniques – your mind would already be working in all the right directions.

There are many free – and paid – tools to help you brainstorm new ideas. Here are a few of those tools that will help you get started.

Last, but not the least, you can also use a tool like Portent to help you generate some random ideas with your selected keywords. It may come up with a few stupid suggestions, but you will always take away a few good ideas by using it.

Final Words

So these are a few methods that always work. Whenever you run out of new ideas, rinse and repeat the above-mentioned techniques, and you will always come up with a bunch of great new ideas.