How to find blog post ideas

​Jerry Seinfeld once said, “Writer’s block is a phony, made up BS excuse for not doing your work.” OK, Jerry, but some of us still beat our heads against the desk coming up with blog post ideas. Creating interesting and unique content for your blog can become tedious and challenging, especially if you think your industry or business is particularly “boring.”

First, shift that way of thinking. There are potential customers out there who find your type of business wildly interesting, because you’re the solution to their pain points. Here’s how to find blog post ideas without giving you a knot on your noggin:

Be helpful and resourceful

When you feel stuck for blog post ideas, look for ways to answer questions either from your customers and prospects and from what people ask about on search engines. Think about the questions your customers and prospects ask. Answer those questions on your blog.

Be patient and persistent. Read a lot of other blogs and articles related to your industry. You never know what might spark an idea.  Whenever you get ideas, write them down. You might not be ready for exploring them deeper at the moment but at least you’ll have an idea when you sit down and write.

“There isn’t enough to write about” is a common thought when blogging as part of your marketing strategy. According to Hubspot, “To grow a blog, you need to consistently publish content that your readers enjoy reading.” Hubspot determined best results came from writing four posts a day of varying lengths and complexities. You don’t have to write that many posts to be successful, but not every post has to be a college dissertation.

14 ways to find blog post ideas

1. Uses Google’s search autocomplete tool: Type some relevant keywords or phrases into Google’s search bar and see what automatically appears. That autocomplete text is what your audience looks for and the questions that need answers. Get dozens of blog post ideas by typing different variations of keywords and phrases.
2. Search Twitter for keywords related to your business and look for questions people ask. Answer those questions with your blog posts.
3. Look at your social posts. Expand or combine shorter posts into longer blog posts. Give your take about the relevant articles you share on social media. Add context, opinion, analysis or insight to news articles.
4. Check out the competition. What are they writing or Tweeting?
5. Write about challenges your business faced and the resulting solutions. This demonstrates your ability for facing challenges with successful outcomes.
6. Share a customer success story even if it’s blind (the customer isn’t named).
7. What are the biggest myths about your industry? Create a post to dispel those myths.
8. How does your product or service fit within other aspects of your customer’s life? Write about related products or services. For example, if you sell computer monitors, write about pros and cons of “standing desks.”
9. Look at your data. Write about trends you see based on your own sales and customer information.
10. Write a how-to post, a short tutorial based on helping past customers. (Also consider a how-to video. Different types of content resonate more with different people.)
11. Look at the performance of your blog posts. Expand on the most popular topics or use a different angle.
12. Conduct brief interviews with your employees. Come up with great questions about their roles and interactions with customers.
13. Make a comparison. Choose two topics, services or products and write a side-by-side comparison.
14. Repurpose content. Create a post from something you already developed such as a recent presentation or case study or from an email you received.

When you’ve tried all of those ideas, write a post about this blog post and how it helped you generate lots of new content.