As a blogger you need to constantly be generating content ideas so you don’t run out of things to write about.  When you first start your blog you often have lots of ideas but as the months or years go by, the ideas seem to go as well. No matter what your niche or blog topics may be, there are always ways to find new content ideas.

Generating Content Ideas

Expand On a Past Idea

Look at your past posts, especially the ones that have done well traffic wise and see if you can expand on the idea. For example a post on 10 Ways to Get Your Child to Sleep could turn into a new idea of 10 Ways to Get Your Child to Eat His Veggies or What To Do When Your Child Can’t Sleep. A DIY craft post could turn into a décor post of ways to use those DIY crafts in your home. Or a recipe post could turn into a health post of the benefits of eating the main food in the recipe.

Even better, you can link these posts together to keep people visiting your pages. Don’t just make them related posts at the bottom, but mention them and link to them IN your post. e.g. Chicken Chiloquiles Recipe. I love chicken recipes because of all the benefits of eating chicken (last 4 words linked to benefits post). etc.

Answer a Question

Check out Quora and find questions on subject matter that you cover on your blog. Quora basically does the work of generating content ideas for you. Find a question that you could answer and then turn it into a blog post. Find questions with lots of upvotes which indicate that others are interested in that question too. Just make sure that you are writing YOUR answer to the question and not copying what someone else said.  See the question? Now I have a post idea: The Downside of Keeping Cats as Pets.

There is also a small trending spot which could tell you what trending topic you might want to post about to take advantage of traffic.

Use a Content Generator

The Portent Content Idea Generator is a fun online tool that can help you generate post titles which you can then turn into posts. The content idea generator gave me the idea for my How to Be the MacGyver of Blogging post.

You plug in your blog subject and click the arrow to get an idea. Click the arrow again and again for more. I just copy and pasted the ones I liked into a txt document for later. Try again with each blog subject.

 

Use Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a website tool that is used by many big companies to see what is the most shared posts on a subject. There is also a trending tab so you can see what is trending and if it fits your niche, you can make a post about it.

Why do you want to know what is most shared? It will give you ideas of posts and hopefully if you share it well,  it will get lots of shares too.  In the image below, I searched for Fashion Tips. I can see which posts got the most shares and can use their post idea and make a post of my own. Just make sure you are using them as inspiration and not copying their post.

Please note that with the free version of Buzzsumo you can only do 3 searches a day and you will get limited results but the free version is just enough for generating content ideas.

HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

This generator takes 3 nouns that you input and comes up with 5 post ideas at a time. Save the ones you like into a document for later. You may have to edit for grammar. I inputted Parenting, Pets and Health and this is what it gave me.

Content Idea Generator

This generator requires you to signup with your email, confirm and then get an email and password. After all that, you answer 18 questions and then you are given more than a hundred great ideas you can use for blog posts, emails, audio, video etc.  However this is designed for people who have a product/service that they sell.  I generated 360 ideas in 0.0063 seconds! The best part is, it gives you a box that you can select all and copy and paste into a document easily.

Summary:

These 6 ideas and tools should help you come up with hundreds of potential post ideas. Make sure to record them somewhere and then pull up that document when your brain is stuck and you need something to write about.

Looking for more great blogging posts about content? Here are a few of my favorite bloggers:

• How to Keep Promoting Your Content With CoSchedule by Ellen Blogs
• Tips for Writing Your Real Life Story by Mama Knows it All
• How to Find the Inspiration to Create Amazing Blog Content by Moments with Mandi
• 7 Ways to Add Content to Your Travel Blog by Jen Around the World
• How to Find Content for your Blog by Day by Day in Our World
• How to Quickly Fill Your Blog’s Editorial Calendar With Outstanding Content by Pretty Opinionated