Tuesday 4 September 2012

A Comprehensive List of 20 Post Ideas for Your Blog


Bloggers and online publishers often publish tens of hundreds of articles in a week, churning out write-ups and posts from dusk till dawn every single day of the week. However there comes a time when coming up with ideas for a new post becomes a bit of an issue, and inspiration is hard to come by. You find yourself not knowing what to write on, or what to write about and totally bereft of ideas. And writing a blog post goes from being an effortless to a daunting process.

Fret not! Here is a list of post ideas (listed here in no particular order) that might just give you that extra bit of inspiration you so desperately need in times like these:

1. Beginners Guides: Guides, ‘how-to’ posts and instructional posts have to be some of the most easiest things one can possible write on. Even if you’re new in the field, you can always do a ‘beginner’s/newbie’s guide to…’ type posts.

2. Reviews: Pick any product or service – just about anything that you see or you use – and do a review on it. Doing reviews are easy, and if you’ve read even a few reviews, you’d know how they’re structured: start off with an introduction of the product, its history, its purpose, what it does, its functions, performance (benchmarks, if applicable) and of course a list of pros and cons. Choose something relevant to your niche and relevant to the subject matter of your blog.

3. List-type Posts: Posts such as ’10 ways of…’ or ‘5 Amazing Tricks to…” are usually very popular, and super-easy to write as well. Make a rough list of things you might want to include in the post, add to your list along the way, and write your list-based post which takes your audience through the process of doing something in a step-by-step manner.

4. Comprehensive Guides: If you’re an authority on a certain topic, and know it well enough, it might be a good idea to do a comprehensive and thorough guide in it for your readers. Something like an ‘A to Z post on making money online with your blog’. It is a fact that these posts are immensely popular, as they provide easy access to complete information on a particular topic, all from a single place.

5. Update an Old Post: Take an old post – any old post from your blog – that you published a while back. Check to see if it can be updated; chances are, it will probably in need for an update. In all probability, a lot of new developments and changes are likely to have taken place since this particular post went online. You could call it an update post or a 2.0 post, and provide your readers with updated information on a topic that you’ve already covered in the past.

6. Interviews: Interviews are a fantastic way to generate some valuable content for your blog, effortlessly! Get in touch with experts, thought-leaders or authority figures from your niche, come up with a set of questions, meet these people in person or conduct an interview over phone, Skype of email in order to get their feedback and put it up! If it’s a video-based interview, you might also want to attach its transcription along with it.

7. Pros and Cons: Take any product or service out there, and discuss its ‘pros and cons’ in a balanced, unbiased manner. Make a list of all its advantages and disadvantages, or a list of the good and bad things and make a post out of it. If you’ve used this particular product or service extensively, this will probably be one of the easiest posts you ever do.

8. List of Best Posts: Think of this like doing a ‘round-up’ on the week/month/year’s best posts. Pick up the best posts from your blog, from the internet (for instance from other blogs that you follow that fall in your niche), and compile a list with links to each post (no-follow links!). This can be a great way of providing your readers with the best of the internet, all in one place.

9. Industry News and Trends: Share your thoughts on industry trends, the happenings in your niche, your thoughts on some of the biggest headlines and stories that rose to prominence by getting a lot of air time. Compile a list of such news items, and share your thoughts on each one of them. Speak of what impact each might have on the industry, and where it’s headed.

10. Advice or Guidance: Use your blog to share advice and provide people guidance, assistance and/or counsel. Ask your blog audience and blog subscribers, as well as Facebook and Twitter followers if they have any concerns or questions re: anything in your niche, take the best questions and provide your visitors with the information and guidance that they might need.

11. Market Your Products and Services: If you’re going through a bit of a dry spell as far as putting up new posts is concerned, now might be a great time to maybe do a post on your own products of service by reminding people about them. Market them through a post on your own blog, a guest post on another blog, a sponsorship, a social-media campaign, or even a blog contest.

12. Address Problems: Problems in your niche – concerns such as environmental issues usually make for some interesting topics. Is there something that concerns you, and probably needs to be addressed? Use your blog to do just that.

13. Share Something Personal: Behind-the-scenes pictures, you hanging out with your friends, with your family, on a vacation, watching a game, etc. Sharing something about your life can be a great way to really connect with your audience.

14. Case-Studies: Did you recently provide services to a client, which yielded surprising results? Share your observations and the results in a post.

15. Customer Inquiries: This is similar to point no. 12 above. Has a customer (or someone else, for that matter) sent you an inquiry, or posed an interesting question? Do you feel that it would be worth sharing it with your visitors as well? Perhaps doing so will help quell any misconceptions, or simply prove to be useful for your readers.

16. Setbacks: Have you ever had a setback, or made a mistake in your career, or during the time that you’ve worked in the industry? What were the outcomes, and what did you learn from the experience?

17. Build Upon a Guest Post: Do you regularly have guest posters post on your blog? Take a recent guest-post, and write about it by building upon it. Take the conversation ahead. Add your own input to it, and share your own thoughts about it.

18. Picture Post: Post a series of photos and nothing else. Let the images do the talking. This will probably be an extremely niche post, only applicable to a select blog types, however if you think it applies to the content matter of your blog and that you can find images to do such a post (or create your own), go right ahead!

19. Polls: Websites such as PollDaddy and SurveyMonkey (and even Google Docs, for that matter) allow you to easily create polls (within seconds) and very easily put them up on your blog (as simple as copy pasting some code). Do a poll related to a hot topic in your niche, or something related to one of your recent posts.
20. Live Blogging: Live-blogging an event can be a great way to mark your authority on a certain topic, while at the same time provide your readers with updates to an event, occasion or occurrence in real-time. Cover the said event by providing your readers with live text-based updates, as and when things unroll and something happens, such as a live blog covering football games, or an Apple keynote/product launch.

2 comments:

  1. This is a really good list. Numbers 5, 6 and 8 are the three that really hit home for me. Number 8 more so because it will allow me to reach out to people in the car detailing world while giving them a cool backlink on my PR3 site. (www.thesocalway.com)

    Thanks for the post ideas.

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