blog ideas for writers

Publishing a steady stream of ever-flowing content is important for ranking. If you’re an online content writer in any capacity… You need a seemingly endless river of blog ideas for writers, one that never runs dry. So, what do you do when it does? What do you do when you need to come up with topics, but you feel like you’re stranded in the middle of a rain-parched, burnt-out desert? You’d better head toward that oasis shimmering on the horizon, and pray it’s the river. Lucky for you, in this metaphorical scenario, it usually is. The way to the river of content is a path full of writing prompts, research, brainstorming, and good old-fashioned hard work. To make your journey 10 times easier, we’ve compiled our best strategies for getting there. Come back to this list again and again for a quick way to get on track. Let’s get going with blog ideas for writers! Blog Ideas for Writers: 20 Prompts, Research Tips, Keyword Discovery Strategies & More to Keep You Rolling Sometimes, all you need is a push in the right direction to get moving. That little nudge is enough to get ideas sprouting in your head, growing quickly, and bearing fruit. 1. Start with a Subject and Create Variations Chances are, if you’re looking for blog ideas, you probably already have one or two percolating. Take these and create variations to start off with some quick ideas for lots of posts. For instance, HubSpot recommends creating iterations of one topic by going both broader and narrower with it. If you start with “X Baking Tips and Tricks for Beginners,” you could narrow it down to “X Cookie-Baking Tips and Tricks for Beginners.” Or, go a little broader: “X Everyday Tips and Tricks for Baking and Cooking.” Keep going up and down the broad/narrow ladder and you could come up with 10, 15, or even 20 ideas quite easily. 2. Use Topic Generators Another way to find variations of one blog idea is to use topic generators. All you have to do is plug in a keyword, and the generator will spit out different ways to frame the topic. Sometimes these won’t make grammatical sense, but the point is to get ideas flowing rather than grab ready-made, publishable topics. One of the most popular topic generators is HubSpot’s. I entered the keywords “baking,” “cakes,” and “beginners” into the generator: Some don’t make sense, but some are a great starting point for ideas. (I would really want to read “The Worst Advice We’ve Ever Heard About Cakes”!) Another worthy tool is Portent’s Content Idea Generator. Mess around with these and see what comes out of it. You could make some good sparks that light up your idea fire. 3. Ask Basic Questions If you’re stumped for blog ideas, go back to basics. Write about basic topics, but frame them in terms of your business/industry, your personal brand/growth, or your keys to success. Here are some good questions to ask to get you started: What does your creative process look like? Have you discovered any new tools recently that boosted your workflow? What’s the top question customers ask you? What’s the history of your business? 4. Find Trending Topics with BuzzSumo for Blog Ideas for Writers BuzzSumo is a fantastic tool to aid you in your quest for blog ideas. There are seemingly hundreds of ways to search various topics and keywords and glean lots of helpful data. Here’s just one way. Go to the site and head over to “Content Analysis.” Plug your keyword or seed topic into the search box and hit “Search.” From there, scroll down until you get to the section with the heading “Popular Topics for Content Related to…” Gold! Here we can see the most popular topics for the keyword, which give us a good idea where we can go with further ideas. For instance, a post about beginner baking tips would probably land really well. To get different stats, don’t forget to filter by date (scroll back up the top to find that filter). Plus, for more general ideas on trending topics you can use, head to the “Trending Now” tab and filter the information by your industry. Below, the content is focused on trending stories in “Business” within the last 24 hours. 5. Read Competitor Blogs Your competitors’ blogs are good benchmarks for success, but you also can get lots of ideas from them and add your personal spin. Look at these blogs, especially solid ones, and see what they’re up to. What have they been writing about recently? Which posts are getting a ton of engagement? Grab some good ideas for yourself, but remember: Never copy. 6. Search Quora for Questions Quora is a great resource for discovering what trends and topics people are interested in right this second. To find popular questions people are asking about topics in your industry (and whether they’ve been answered!) do a quick search. First, type in your keyword in the search bar. A list of topics will pop up underneath. Click on any of these to go to an overview page. You can also click on the bottom text that says “Search: [your topic].” On this page, you can filter results to see the questions asked and which ones are most popular. You can also see how many people are following questions – this can help you determine which topics might get a better response. Any of these questions would make great blog topics to address, especially if you have unique answers. 7. Use Keyword Explorer If you want a quick way to brainstorm blog ideas, head to Moz’s Keyword Explorer and do a search. An easy way to grab blog ideas is to search for a specific keyword and then check out the “Keyword Suggestions” page. On that page, go to the first drop-down box and select “are questions” to only display keyword suggestions that are in question form. You’ll end up with … Read more