How to Come Up With Great Blog Post Ideas for Your Website – 10 Methods That Work

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Blog post ideas – they’re either your best friend or your worst nightmare come to life!

If you’re an aspiring blogger looking to create a profitable blog/website, you absolutely need to have your own arsenal of fresh and trendy blog post ideas. With over 2 million blog posts going live on the internet daily, the only way to stand out is by being unique, different, and interestingly so. Your blog content ideas have a significant bearing on whether you will be able to achieve a strong following of loyal readers. It goes without saying that you need a devoted tribe of followers to get traction on your blog’s ability to generate revenue.

It doesn’t have to be this huge, overwhelming task to come up with great blog post ideas that are not just enticing for your blog readers, but also more importantly, relevant and easy to rank. Ideas are present everywhere – you just need to know where to look. But that’s easier said than done. And that’s where this post comes in. Coming up next, are 10 different methods you can use to find the fresh-est and trendiest ideas blog post ideas. . First, we will cover some conventional strategies which deploy a little bit of leg work in the form of Do-It-Yourself research.

Next, we will explore some out-of-the-box creative strategies to activate your right brain and come up with unique, fresh, and original blog content ideas. Lastly, we will cover some simple, easy methods for when you just don’t have the time or can’t be bothered but still want to churn out good content without short-circuiting frayed nerve cells. And, as a bonus, I will also provide a tip each on how to make the best use of the listed strategies.

Conventional Strategies to Come Up With Hot and Trending Topics for Blog Post Ideas

1. Stalk Me Some Social Media 

Stalking social media is without a doubt one of the easiest ways to identify ‘in’ and trending blog writing topics that of interest to your readers. Facebook, Linkedin and Quora are all rich sources of material for blog content ideas that readers want to have covered in-depth and can help you rank.

Use the search option on Facebook to search for your specific niche and then join as many relevant groups as possible. For instance, to find these groups, I would type out my chosen reference word ‘blogging’ in the search bar, and then filter down to groups in the right-hand side of the search results.

Join these groups and skim the content in them daily to see what questions people are asking. Specifically, note questions that come up repeatedly for discussion. If one person has the question, it’s a good chance a lot of other people do. A lot of likes, mentions, and shares is also a good indication that the topic is popular, trending, and has potential for ranking.

My search for blogging related groups threw up some very relevant and popular groups. It’s worthwhile taking the time to zone in on specific groups that have a lot of activity and engage in sharing and discussing content related to your niche.

Filtering down to blogging in groups yields potential groups that you can explore for post ideas. It’s also worthwhile connecting with people who engage in blogging, as influencers tend to post content regularly and the amount of traction that you see on individual posts in the form of likes, comments, and shares will give you an indication of how popular that content is.

How to Make This Strategy Shine: Find the pain points of your target audience and then create content around those pain points. Discussions, posts, and comments in these groups can give you plenty of ideas to work with and spark new ideas too.

2. Look Up Influencer Activity for Blog Post Ideas

The word ‘influencer’ is relatively new to the English dictionary. Its creation was primarily driven by the need to categorise individuals with high social media influence who could sell products and services. Influencers have the power to not just drive sales but also predict and even dictate trends.

Research influencers in your niche and look up what these individuals are serving up in terms of content on all their social media channels. For instance, some of the notable influencers in the blogging community that are trending now and worth following are Patt Flynn of smartpassiveincome.com, Gary Vaynerchuk with his blog of the same name, Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com  and closer to home, Harsh Aggarwal of ShoutMeLoud.com.

How to Make this Strategy Shine: Remember that content produced by influencers should only be used as sources for inspiration for your content. Hacking or stealing content is a complete no-no-no. At the end of the day, you need to use your personal flair and creativity to bring something new to what could be an already saturated niche market. Spinning content is no longer an option.

3. Answer the Public

AnswerThePublic collates search engine queries or ‘autocomplete data’ from search engines and churns out a list of all related phrases and questions that people have been typing into the search boxes whenever you look up a specific word or phrase.  Needless to say, this social-listening tool is a treasure trove of potential ideas to create content posts around.

The single most important trend right now is ‘search intent’. In other words, it’s about understanding what people are really looking for and creating content around the same things.

Using Answer The Public is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is input the keyword you want intel on and click the search button. The site throws up visual and data versions of all connected/related questions and phrases. You can filter against 4 options – questions, prepositions, alphabeticals, and comparisons. Here are the results I obtained for the broad keyword ‘blogging’ in both visual and data versions:

 

 

 

4.BuiltVisible’s Content Strategy Helper Tool

At first glance, the MS-Excel based Content Strategy Helper Tool can look pretty overwhelming. But patience and persistence do yield fruit. Version 3 provides data from multiple credible resources including google search trends, YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter, Reddit, and .gov websites to name just a few. You will need to follow the setup instructions provided by BuiltVisible on their site to make use of the tool correctly.

The following is a screenshot of the sample data provided by the site. I used the search query word ‘SEO’ to get the list of related topics that were trending then.

Creative Strategies to Develop Fresh and Innovative Topics for Blog Post Ideas

5. Dream Journaling

Dreams have been the sources of some of the most exciting artistic, scientific and intellectual discoveries ever made in the history of mankind. Paul McCartney reportedly dreamt up the melody of the song “Yesterday”, one of the most successful singles of all time, in his sleep. He played it out on his piano immediately upon waking to etch it firmly in his memory. The wildly popular fiction series Twilight based on the rather original premise of a love story between an incredibly beautiful vampire and just your average girl-next-door, was the subject of the author Stephanie Meyer’s dream one night by her own admission.

The simplest way to elicit fresh, and hot topics for blogging from your dreams, is to have with a dream journaling practice.  Your journal doesn’t have to be an elaborately beautiful or expensive paper-based book/diary or journal. It can be the MS-Word document on your laptop or the notepad on your mobile device. The point is to have a blog topics list ready and easily accessible as soon as you wake up in the morning.

Before you sleep, set your intentions to dream up creative ideas that are relevant, original, and magnetic for your blog. Try not to force the process. Instead, ease into it every night over the next week or so, so as to make your pre-sleep activity habitual and natural.   You may get vivid dreams and inspiring thoughts as you sleep as the subconscious mind, unlike your conscious one is largely uninhibited. The most important thing to do is to record your A-HA moments as soon as you get up as the conscious mind can forget everything you’ve dreamt the night before over the course of the following day.

Remember to record all your ideas in the same place whether it’s your book/journal/diary/laptop or mobile device. You’ll find yourself being able to create a creative blog topics list with ease if you determine to stick with the process day after day.

How to Make this Strategy Shine: Dream journaling is a practice that requires time, effort, and some emotional investment from your side. Persistence and repeated application are essential to make this strategy work. Also, check out this infographic here for easy reference where I walk you through the process of dream journaling step-by-step.

6. Creative Word Association

The internet is a veritable source of amazing ideation methods you can use to come up with creative ideas for your blog.  Here is one method I like a lot –creative word association. Take 2 pieces of paper – A4 size if best so you can write out your associations in large text. Alternatively, just use an MS-Word document and create a table like I do (see the screenshot below). On one paper come up with a single word, theme or idea related to your blog. For this demo, I chose the word ‘writing’.  On the other paper come up with a completely random word totally unrelated to blogging. I chose the word ‘gardening’.

Now take each paper on at a time, and list related words on each. These are words that can just come up in your mind simply by thinking of your chosen focus word. Try to come up with at least 7 to 10 words each. Here are my lists.

WRITING	GARDENING
Thought process	Planting
Creative	Nurturing
Pencil	Growing
Doodles	Watering
Shakespeare	Pots and Plants
Grammar	Smell of the Earth
Typos	Create Profit
Sarcasm	Seeds
Humour	Green-Thumb
Literary Criticism	Organic

Your next step is to connect words together from both papers to form meaningful concepts and associations. Here’s what I came up with and I didn’t even use a single tool for reference or help:

• How to Align Your Thought-Processes to Create a Profitable Blog
• What Shakespeare Can Teach You about Growing Your Blog
• 10 Creative Ways to Nurture Your Blog Subscribers
• How to Be a Green-Thumb at Blogging

How to Make this Strategy Shine:  Creative ideation methods like this don’t come naturally to most people. However, success is attainable if you apply yourself with consistency and persistence. Block off a small amount of time on your calendar just for this exercise even it’s just 15 minutes a day. Give yourself permission to connect with a more primal and creative part of you. 28 days is the time period experts recommend to form a new habit and make it stick. But you may find you will start getting brilliant ideas way before this.

Can’t-Bust-My-Brain and Don’t-Want-To-Either Strategies (Easy Methods for the Rest of Us)

Sometimes life gets in the way. You just don’t have the time. Or, you’re so tired, you’re in danger of your brain slowly dissipating off the top of your head. I get it! We’ve all been there. So here are some really easy sites where you can go and generate blog post ideas instantly.

7. Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator

Hubspot’s brainchild blog topic generator features a simple yet easy interface that will help you get some interesting blog ideas. You are given two options in terms of the numbers of blog writing topics you can get off the generator.  There’s a weeks’ worth (i.e. 5 blog title ideas) and a years’ worth (250 blog title ideas). The latter option is available to access only if you share your personal information (aka name, email address…etc.).

The tool requires you to input nouns only for idea generation. This also means that the topic ideas tend to generally make a lot of sense. This generator is good for a one-off download, especially for blog topics for beginners.  There are plenty of blog title ideas on the list that are trending now. But these do need a lot of tweaking from your side. There is potentially a large number of readers who may have already downloaded the same resource.

8. SEOPressor Blog Title  Generator

The best thing working in SEOPressor Blog Title Generator’s favour is that it is literally able to generate hundreds of title ideas from your specific keyword. The site threw up 1168 titles for the word ‘blogging’. All were displayed in an un-overwhelmingly fashion, in sets of 4 per page. Some of the titles were certainly creative i.e. “7 things you most likely didn’t know about blogging.” But the rest lost me at hello, i.e. “20 Wonderful Blogging. Number 16 is absolutely stunning.”

An email address and seeing a few landing pages are needed to get access to more than the daily quota of 5 sets of 4 blog titles each. All in all, this is a good resource to get hot topics for blogging, especially blogging topics for beginners.

Use this site as a source of inspiration for your blog topics list. But remember to review the titles for pure common sense, readability, syntax and grammatical errors. Also, check for relevance to your niche.

9. Portent’s Content Idea Generator

While this content idea generator from Seattle-based Portent delivers just one blog idea at a time, it does have some other little extras that take its coolness factor up a considerable notch. Featuring a blackboard background with a vintage logo, it provides food for creative fodder with its zany and clever quips that get delivered with every title.  Portent also has what’s come to be a standard vault of useful resources in the form of blog posts and their own digital marketing services. This tool is worth it for when you have the time and in the inclination.

10. Upworthy Generator

Upworthy Generator works on a different concept altogether. The tool creates a viral-worthy post suggestion each and every time and in a completely random fashion. The blog writing topics may not always be related to your niche. But, you will still be able to find inspiration to generate some creative titles of your own using this tool.

How to Make These Strategies Shine: Automated Blog Title Generators are not human. Enough said. You will still need to check for obvious errors and ensure the title makes sense. You also have to ensure the relevance of the title for your blog readers.

So there you have it! 10 different strategies you can deploy to find excellent post ideas that are fresh and trendy for your blog.

What is your biggest challenge when it comes to finding ideas for content? Share in the comments section below together with your website URL if you have one! I read and am grateful for every comment.

Until next time!