As a blogger, providing high-quality, engaging content is the most important thing you can do for your readership. But what should you do when you run out of ideas? Check out these five ways to find inspiration for blog posts.
1) Read Other Blogs
To keep your creative juices flowing, find inspiration from blog posts of other writers is a terrific way to keep your creative juices flowing. Not only that, but you will get an idea of topics and ideas your audience wants. In addition, as you read other posts, you might see ways you could write a better post.
The easiest way to find inspiration is by reading others’ work, so find blogs or sites in your industry. Look at their post topics and see if they spark ideas you could write about on your site.
Since there are hundreds of millions of blogs, finding some you might like seems overwhelming. That is where blog directories can help. These directories are enormous databases of blogs.
Blog directories can also be hit or miss, so check out this article from BlogPress on worthwhile blog directories. While you’re at it, get your blog listed on one of the directories.
2) Get out of the house
Nothing beats finding inspiration from taking walks, engaging in other creative activities, or otherwise relaxing. If you find yourself struggling to come up with ideas, exercise, take a break from your computer, or take a walk.
A routine is important to creating consistent content, but sometimes a routine will lead to a creative block. We can get so comfortable in our routines that we get into ruts and lose inspiration.
Engaging in a hobby or other artistic activity frees your mind to stop actively seeking inspiration. While you are painting, taking pictures, playing music, or crafting, your subconscious is hard at work.
3) Check Your Social Media for Inspiration
If you are looking for inspiration for your blog posts and want to know what people are talking about, look no further than your favorite social media sites. You can see what’s popular right now in real-time, and often you can find plenty of ideas there.
For example, if you see many people posting a specific picture or status update on Facebook, it might tell you that there is an audience ready and waiting out there who would like your post if you wrote about something similar.
4–See What’s Trending on Google
We all know that social media is a big part of blogging, but what’s trending on Google can inspire our blogs. Fortunately, Google has created a site that lets a user find out what is trending right now.
Google Trends allows you to discover what is trending now and how a topic has trended over time. Trends can be explored at a country and state level. Enter a search word and filter region, time, and how users searched for the term.
Related topics is a valuable feature. If you want to explore a related topic further, hover your mouse over the term and click on the three dots. The “Search on Google” can lead you to other blogs.
5) Ask Your Readers, Colleagues, and People on Forums
From your readers to your colleagues and people on forums, there are many people you can ask about what is important to them. By reaching out and having conversations about your topic, you can get new ideas that may be useful in one of your future posts.
For example, if you are writing a post about dog training, start checking out forums about dog training. Forums aren’t challenging to find—type in the topic and add the word forum. For example, the phrase “dog training forum” has 7 or 8 forums on the first page of Google. There is even a blog post that lists dog forums.
Bottom Line
Jack London wrote
“You Can’t wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club.”
However, the artist Bruce Garrabrandt has a more helpful quote for those of us who need some inspiration
“Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.”
So go out and seek some ordinary moments and wait for those perfect moments for creativity to spark.
Struggling to structure your post? Check out this blog post.
Great post! Pretty apt timing too, since my own blog ideas are slowing to a drip these days. I get my best inspiration from reading other blogs, particularly writers I enjoy. Also, I respect writers who create regardless of their mood. That, to me, is the true demonstration of craft. Anyway, thanks for this post!
Thanks. I stumbled across the Google Trends and should have written a post about tool. I can take a topic like “AI Writing” and find other resources. An amazing resource (as well as a rabbit hole that can take up an entire day).
I never wait on inspiration to work on a blog post, because if I did, my publishing pattern would have been a sporadic one.
Do enjoy the rest of your day, Steve.
As Jack London said, “You can’t wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club.”