What should I blog about? 25 posts types and ways to find new topics

Creating interesting and unique content for your blog can become tedious and challenging, especially if you think your industry or business is particularly “boring.” It’s common to feel  like there just isn’t enough to write about to sustain a consistent blog as part of your marketing automation strategy. However, according to Hubspot, “to grow a blog, you need to consistently publish content that your readers enjoy reading.” In a study conducted last year, they determined their best results were achieved by writing four posts a day with varied quality and comprehensiveness.We’re not saying you have to write that many posts to be successful; we’re saying that not every post has to be a college dissertation.

Here is a list of post types and ways to find new topics.

1. Search Twitter for keywords related to your business and look for questions people are asking. Answer those questions in your blog posts.
2. Look at what you share socially. Expand those short posts into longer blog posts or write about the articles you share. You can add context, opinion, analysis or insight to any industry or general news article.
3. Look at your competition. What are they writing about or tweeting about?
4. Write about challenges your business faced and the resulting solutions.
5. Write about a customer success story, even if the customer isn’t named.
6. Think about the questions your customers and prospects ask. Answer those questions on your blog.
7. What are the biggest myths about  your industry? Create a post to dispel a myth.
8. Look at how your product fits within other aspects of your buyer’s life. Write about those 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. Look at what you explain to customers and to others and write a short tutorial. Or try a how-to video! Different types of content resonate more with different people.
11. Look at the performance of your blog posts. Expand on those that are most popular. Cover the same topic from a different angle.
12. Take a look at Google Trends. Find what people are searching for and write a piece of content related to what people are currently interested in.
13. Tell a story. Write about your business and what you have learned or what has changed.
14. Conduct an interview with  your employees or customers. The challenge with this idea, however, is coming up with fantastically interesting questions.
15. Create a list. Look at the top 10 questions customers ask, top five trends in your industry, or 15 business lessons you learned from your dog. List posts grab attention and  are easy to read and digest. Here’s a list post about why list posts work: “7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work.” (Very meta, we know.)
16. Make a comparison. Choose two topics, services or products and write a side-by-side comparison.
17. Write a review of a book related to your product or industry. Or, review a product your business uses.
18. Look at industry news. Search for news about your industry and write a post about a current issue or topic.. Or do weekly “roundups” of what is happening as it pertains to your industry, audience or community.
19. Look at Reddit AMAs (Ask Me Anything). There are interviews of industry experts that can give you a lot of ideas based on the questions people ask.
20. Look at the Twitter Chat Schedule and find chats related to your industry or business. Use the Twitter hashtag of the chat to find related tweets. Look at the questions, answers and opinions to create topic ideas.
21. Use Quora. Quora is a Q&A site with a variety of questions and answers. Type in your keyword and Quora will list common topics. Search one to find open questions and use those as blog post topics.
22. Use BuzzSumo to find the most shared content relevant to a keyword related to your business or industry. Select a post and write a reply post offering your opinion on the subject or expand on the information in the original post.
23. Write about your opinion or thoughts on recent industry research.
24. Repurpose content. Create a post from something you already developed such as a  recent presentation or case study or from an email you received.
25. When all else fails, try the content generator or other topic idea generator. When we put the subject “blogging” in, it recommended we write about “Why blogging sucks more than the new Star Wars.”

The easiest thing to do is be helpful. Whenever you feel stuck for a topic or idea, find a way to answer questions either from your customers and prospects, or from people on the internet. Be patient and be persistent. Read a lot — not just blogs related to your business but everything. You never know what might spark an idea. And whenever you have ideas, write them down. You might not be ready to explore them deeper now but at least you’ll have an idea to work from when you sit down to write.