Coming up with blog post ideas every week that feel fresh, useful, and high-quality can be a struggle. Writer’s block is real and during those times—when the mind goes completely blank—it can help to have a fallback list of great blog post ideas.
Here are 12 ideas for blog posts that never fail to ignite the imagination and get the creative writer’s juices flowing.
1. Research Questions and Answer Them
What questions are people asking within your target market? Every time a visitor, prospect, lead, or customer asks a question they create an opportunity for you to write a valuable blog post.
The best part about answering questions for your target market is that you know your audience is already interested in the topic of your content.
Sites like Quora, Reddit, BuzzFeed, and Google are great places to start research questions. Being that Quora is a site specifically created to ask and answer questions, it’s the perfect place to start your search. Just choose a topic you want to research and use the search bar to generate related questions.
For example: try searching for “chocolate”
You can see right away that there are tons of questions that include the keyword “chocolate”. Find a question that relates to your industry and start writing a blog post that provides a detailed, well-researched answer.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Focus on questions and topics that will educate or entertain your target audience
- Avoid writing about topics that have been covered a million times before
2. Provide Shortcuts & Time-Saving Tips
Everyone likes to save time. As the old saying goes, “Time is money.” Providing time-saving tips to your audience is an easy win for your blog. It offers readers instant value and can earn your business brand loyalty.
Here are a few ways you can provide time-saving tips:
- List automation technologies that increase productivity
- Explain successful processes that improve efficiency
- Discuss organizational techniques that make it easier to store and find information and resources
Sites like BuzzFeed generate a massive amount of social shares and on-site engagement from articles that provide life hacks like the one below:
3. Share a Unique Perspective on News & Trending Topics
You have to be careful with trending topics because there’s the potential for your article to get lost in a deluge of similar content. Make sure to differentiate your blog post by doing one or more of the following:
- Provide a unique perspective
- Include additional research or insights
- Be the first to report on the trend
If you’re talking about an update to Facebook’s algorithm and everyone else is writing about the newest performance parameters, try talking about ways to avoid penalties.
4. Write About a Celebrated Industry Icon
Who are some of the greats in your industry? People love to emulate a good icon. In our industry, it’s the greats, like David Ogilvy, Cipe Pineles, and Seth Godin.
Do some research on the greatest pioneers or influencers in your niche and share your findings with the audience. Sometimes you can create an entire blog post based on just one quote or philosophy.
Aligning your business with established brands and personalities is a great way to reach a larger portion of your target market and gain new followers.
5. Create a Step-by-Step Guide or Tutorial
There are certain times when you have to go big, or not go at all. Creating in-depth tutorials and guides can be the most valuable blog content your audience will ever read. Writing them requires extensive research, re-writing, and revision, but at the end of the day, it’s worth the extra effort.
Creating a stellar resource that solves a problem for your audience will establish your brand’s credibility. It also means your audience is much more likely to come to you first the next time they have a problem.
Check out the engagement Backlinko’s SEO tools blog post received for being the ultimate helpful resource:
6. Answer a Simple Question (especially if it seems too simple)
A lot of writers assume that the answers to simple questions are inherently understood. Not so. Some of my most successful blog posts have been focused on VERY simple questions. Check out this example:
Many people reject the idea of writing around simple topics which means that this type of blog content often has less competition.
7. Roundup Tips from the Cream of the Industry Crop
Not to be confused with writing about industry icons—section #4—roundups are written in the form of lists, with individual points discussing advice from one expert at a time.
Industry experts are always on top of the latest research, best practices, and industry standard changes. Gather all the latest and greatest tips from industry experts and create a roundup post. This works especially well when major changes have occurred in your industry.
In the field of marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is constantly changing, so there’s plenty of content available to make engaging roundup posts:
Your audience probably doesn’t have the time—or patience—to run down a dozen different tips scattered across the internet. Do the work for them and create a compelling, relevant post.
8. Write a Narrative Style Post
In 2017, Envision Creative—an Inbound Marketing and Branding agency in Austin, TX—went through a rebranding process that included the construction of a new website, logo design, and much more. The Founder and President—David Smith—wrote a corresponding blog post that explored the brand’s 16-year evolution:
Content like this is not only interesting, it also serves as an examination of the company’s processes, culture, and more. You can turn virtually any brand success story into an engaging blog post.
9. Talk About Your Wins
It doesn’t always have to be the BIGGEST win in your company’s history to make a great blog post. It just needs to interest your readers. Dig deep and explore what led to your success and suggest how your audience can replicate that success in their own lives.
People always appreciate when you emphasize the process and break it down step-by-step. That makes the information much more practical and actionable for your audience.
Ways to promote your brand’s wins:
- Review the success of the past year, quarter, or month
- Talk about the successful launch of a new product or service
- Discuss how you helped a client or customer overcome a problem
- Write about the best takeaways from the last conference your team attended
10. Do a Q & A with Experts in Your Field
This doesn’t have to be as much work as it sounds. Why? Because you don’t need to interview the Bill Gates or Warren Buffet of your industry to create a good interview post. Start by interviewing some of the specialists in your own company.
Periodically, I sit down with some of our in-house experts to get their insight on aspects that relate to their job roles. It highlights the varied skills in our organization and provides useful tips our readers appreciate. Native content like this helps to boost brand authority and demonstrate thought leadership without directly selling to readers or coming across as boasting.
11. Write a Statistical Roundup
Everyone loves to read a good roundup of statistics. The bigger the list of statistics the better. Find data in your industry that your audience will find entertaining or helpful and create an amazing blog post.
An added benefit of statistical roundup posts is that they’re easy to repurpose into other forms of content:
- Infographics
- Social media posts
- Additional blog posts that drill-down into the most engaging statistics
- Slideshows and presentations
- Whitepapers
One of the most successful blog posts I wrote in 2017 was a massive list of social media statistics. Seventy-nine to be exact. The final article didn’t look that pretty, but it provided a ton of research that people were looking for:
12. Focus on Specific Keywords
Using a specific keyword can help you develop a more focused, detailed blog post that’s more targeted than a randomly chosen blog topic. There are a variety of free keyword research tools and methods you can use to come up with good blog post topics. One of the best is the Google’s Keyword Planner. In addition to generating a massive list of keyword ideas, the Keyword Planner tool will also provide bid estimates for each keyword in case you want to run a PPC campaign.
Want an even simpler way to find keywords?
Try this simple trick:
1. Go to Google and search for a keyword or keyword phrase:
2. Scroll to the bottom of the results page and you’ll see a variety of related search terms that are more specific:
3. Choose a keyword phrase that offers value to your audience and start writing.
An added benefit of using keywords is being able to optimize older blog content to improve search engine rankings. Find blog posts that have a solid main theme and assign a keyword based on that theme—for example, a blog that talks about funny video ads could be assigned the keyword “humorous commercials.” Revise the blog post to include a main keyword, along with a variety of synonyms and related terms.
Tying it All Together
The more organized and strategic you are about developing blog post ideas, the more effective each post can be. These 12 blog post ideas will help you create valuable, relevant blog posts for your audience no matter how brain dead you feel:
- Research questions that your audience is asking online and then answer them in a helpful, easy to implement way.
- Provide shortcuts and time-saving tips for your audience that will help improve their productivity.
- Share a unique perspective on news and trending topics that differentiates your business from the crowd.
- Write about a celebrated industry icon by discussing their philosophies, life experiences, or greatest accomplishments.
- Create a step-by-step guide or tutorial that helps people in your target audience solve a problem or resolve an issue.
- Answer a simple question—the simpler the better—that allows you to capitalize on low-competition topics your audience needs help with.
- Roundup tips from the cream of the industry crop and share a detailed list of various advice from respected experts.
- Write a narrative style blog post that tells a story and shows off your company culture.
- Talk about your company’s wins and provide a step-by-step breakdown of how you achieved that win so you audience can replicate your success.
- Do a Q & A with experts in your field and start with the people that work for your organization to promote brand credibility.
- Write a statistical roundup that can be repurposed into a variety of supporting content and entertains or helps your target audience.
- Focus on specific keywords to deliver detailed, targeted blog posts and optimize older content to rank higher with search engines.
This article was originally published here.
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