Take it from someone who knows it, coming up with new blog topics is hard. It is basically a form of writer’s block that you have to deal with once a month, once a week, or potentially even daily, depending on how consistently you update your blogs.
And since blogs should be updated daily, or close to daily, in order to maintain engagement, blog block can be a serious problem.
How do you get past blog block? There is no perfect solution, but the following advice will help.
Vary Your Topics
Sensibly, blogs tend to have a narrow focus, especially when you are trying be respected as an expert in your field. This becomes a problem, though, when that narrow focus makes your blog begin to feel stale.
The best blogs only post directly on topic about 75% of the time. Roughly 20% of the time your blog post should be related to the general topic of your blog, but not directly address it.
For example, if you write a blog for a flower shop, a good blog entry might discuss fun spring date activities. You will obviously mention buying flowers at some point during the entry, but the main focus of the entry has little to do with flowers.
Finally, the last roughly 5% of your blog entries should have nothing to do with your main topic. These are fun, light hearted posts designed to entertain your audience and break up the pace.
While a post discussing your favorite Beatles albums may not seem like it is valuable to your blog about cars, it will foster discussion and be memorable.
By varying your content, it is easier to come up with new topics.
Use Guest Writers
A brilliant way to come up with a blog topic is to let someone else do it for you. Occasional guest writers are a perfect way to deal with blog block.
Maintain a list of people interested in writing occasional blog entries and request assistance when you feel you could use a little time off from creating new topics.
If you don’t know any other writers in your field, you can also hire professional writers online, who will come up with the topic and write it for you all at the same time.
Use Freewriting Techniques
Brainstorming techniques like freewriting have been an effective solution to writer’s block for centuries and are equally effective for blog block. Instead of trying to come up with a great blog topic, just sit down and come up with as many topics as you can think of in 20 minutes or half an hour.
Will a lot of them be awful? Yes.
That doesn’t matter, though.
You can separate the chaff from the wheat later. Commit to doing this every day and you should never run out of topics.
Talk to Your Readers
Finally, always remember that you aren’t just writing for your edification. You are writing for others.
The people reading your blog are the perfect people to ask for ideas on what to write about next.
In fact, if you want to kill two birds with one stone, make a blog post asking people what they want you to write about.
Even if asking your readers publicly doesn’t appeal to you, you can use polls, read the comment sections, or discreetly contact some of your most avid readers and ask for suggestions.
It is never a bad idea to take into account the wants of your readers when coming up with blog topics.
How do you deal with blog block? Let me know if the comments section below.
