Posts Tagged ‘ideas’

21 Sources For Blog Ideas

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Where do you get your blog ideas? If you are a successful blogger in your niche, then I’d be willing to bet that you don’t get your ideas for posts all from one source. There are plenty of places to go online to get ideas for your blog posts. No matter what industry or niche you serve, these 21 sources for blog post ideas are golden opportunities.

  1. Twitter – Who do you follow? Check out their links. There’s probably gold in those tweets.
  2. Google Alerts
  3. Your RSS aggregator – Do you subscribe to the most popular blogs in your niche? You should.
  4. Blog Catalog
  5. Google Wonder Wheel
  6. Google Trends
  7. Twitter Trends
  8. Your Facebook wall
  9. Your corner of the world – No matter where you are or what you are doing, listen to what’s going on around you. A simple encounter with the different or extraordinary can often be turned into a blog post.
  10. The news – Keep up with current events.
  11. E-mail newsletters you subscribe to
  12. Forums you’re a member of – What questions are people asking?
  13. Your own blog’s comments – What questions are people asking?
  14. Article directories – Which articles are most popular?
  15. Keyword research tool
  16. Google or Yahoo! Groups
  17. Q&A websites like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, and Quora
  18. Television – Are there talk shows, reality shows, or other programming related to your niche or industry? What are they talking about?
  19. Radio
  20. LinkedIn Answers
  21. Niche social networking sites – Have you found one that serves your niche? What are people talking about there?

Ideas for blog posts are all around you. You just have to know how to capitalize on them.

Do You Have An Internal Company Blog?

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Lee Odden wrote a post about why business blogs fail. I’d have to concur that those are five of the most common reasons why business blogs don’t make it. He also offered this suggestion as a starting point:

As blog consultants, we encourage companies to start their own internal blogs and see what’s involved. That way they can appreciate the challenges of developing a successful blog.

I’ve never thought of that, but that’s a good thing to do. I’d also suggest finding other blogs within your niche and commenting on them before you start your own. Understand what a reader of blogs encounters so that you can make your blog more reader oriented. If you understand blogging from a readership perspective then you’ll be a much better blogger.

When you do start blogging, brainstorm for ideas before you start. Write down your top 20 most important keywords. Under each keyword, think of 10 potential posts. Write them down using the keyword within the title of the idea. That is a potential post title. If you do that then you’ll have 200 blog post ideas before you ever start blogging. Do this for your internal company blog, which is just a practice blog for now. If you can’t keep an internal blog going for 200 days then you’ll never be able to manage a public company blog long term. In that case, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t blog, but it may mean that you should look for a blog ghostwriter or someone who specializes in managing commercial blogs.

5 Blogging Post Ideas

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

Blogging can get old sometimes. You´ll find that after a while of writing frequent posts, you simply run out of things to say and find yourself suffering from blogger´s block. Unfortunately, this is a pretty common occurrance and most often affects bloggers who have been blogging for 3 months or more. Fortunately, you don´t have to write incredible masterpieces every single day. Here are 5 post ideas that will get you over the hump and tide you over until you are ready to start writing the heavy duty posts again.

  1. Linky Love: These are popular Sunday posts, you will notice. If you simply can´t think of anything to say, don´t worry, let someone else say it! Link out to blog posts that you find interesting and useful. This could be done in a resource list style to make it more interesting.
  2. Tutorial: Simply tell your readers how to do something that you are good at. Or can research. Tutorials are easy to write and often quite well received, especially if you select a good topic.
  3. Lists: This blog post is actually a list. You can use numbered items, bullet points or simply bold the first sentence or word of each item. Lists are ideal for any type of blog and are good social media magnets.
  4. Q and A: If you have been running your blog for any length of time, you have probably noticed that people are asking you a lot of questions, either in the comments or via email. When your brain is fried, this is the perfect time to just answer questions!
  5. Resource List: This is sort of a combination of a list and linky love, but it can be a very good way to keep your readers happy when you have 0 inspiration. Choose an area to research and then just find as many resources as possible online and review them.

And, one last bonus idea: Do a product review for something that your readers might find helpful!

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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