Accord­ing to The Google Dic­tio­nary Inspi­ra­tion is:

A feeling of enthusiasm you get from someone or something, which gives you new and creative ideas

I like look­ing up dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tions. It is a great way to actu­al­ly focus on the core mean­ing of a word – and also it is one of my inspi­ra­tion tech­niques, but not one of the one’s I want to focus on today.

In this post, I have come up with nine of my best strate­gies for com­ing up with blog post ideas. My strate­gies for get­ting inspiration

But first, I am assum­ing you have already worked your NICHE and got the more obvi­ous posts out of the way. (Done the inter­views, cre­at­ed the lists, estab­lished your­self as an authority)

Unusual, creative and fun ways to come up with amazing blog post ideas on demand.

Assum­ing this and you have woke up one morn­ing and are star­ing at a Blank Screen these TIPS should help:

1) Review Your Blog Comments

By far the best way I find for com­ing with new ideas for blog posts is to review my blog com­ments or the emails I get so see what my read­ers are look­ing for, need help with. Every time you get a ques­tion – answer­ing that ques­tion is a poten­tial Blog Post.

But what if you don’t get many com­ments? – Then offer to do guest posts for oth­er sites with more traf­fic or bet­ter still get inter­viewed by anoth­er site. Not only does it build your author­i­ty sta­tus – the feed­back will give you inspiration.

Want a Cheeky Sug­ges­tion? Go to oth­er blog­gers in your niche and see the ques­tions they are being asked and the com­ments they are get­ting with their blog posts, that will give you ideas.

Also, review your pre­vi­ous posts – not just the com­ments. Is there an angle in the com­ments that you can explore? Has your views changed since you wrote that post? Write a “I Was Wrong About ……..” post

Or if the post was a LIST – does it need updating?

2) Forums

Forums have an almost ever­last­ing sup­ply of Blog Post ideas. What is more, if you pick the right top­ic and there is lots of com­ments you almost have the whole post writ­ten for you. OK, maybe a slight exag­ger­a­tion as forums usu­al­ly have even worse spelling and gram­mar that my dyslex­ic style, but with imag­i­na­tion and a good title you are of to a fly­ing start.

Also, forums often focus on prob­lems or issues – that you can blog about and answer.

Every blog­ger should have the top forums in their niche book­marked and vis­it­ed on a reg­u­lar basis.

3) Talk About Your Mistakes

Every mis­take is a learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty – not only for you, but for your readers.

Also every time you admit a mis­take you make your­self appear more authen­tic and per­son­able and sin­cere. Come to think of it here is a great title for an A‑List Blog­ger to blog about:

Blog­ging Mis­takes I Made When I First Got Started

The impor­tant thing here is to relate what you learned, what you would do dif­fer­ent­ly next time and to inspire your readers.

4) Go For A Walk

Or in my case, go for a bike ride….

OK, so you are strug­gling to come up with ideas and the more you THINK the more you are STUCK?

I am nev­er about giv­ing up but some­times we just have to obey our bod­ies. If you are tired, have a nap. If you are Fed-up, go for a walk

Actu­al­ly, my father says he has nev­er ever had a real­ly GREAT IDEA in the office — plen­ty in the show­er or while out walk­ing, but no extra­or­di­nary ideas have ever come to him in the office

Antho­ny Rob­bins says that “motion puts the ‘e’ in emo­tion” and that by phys­i­cal­ly chang­ing our state we can instan­ta­neous­ly change our frame of mind, mood or emo­tion­al state. Read more on this at: Change Your Phys­i­ol­o­gy to Change Your Frame of Mind

Chang­ing your envi­ron­ment, doing some­thing dif­fer­ent and hav­ing FUN is a great way to unleash the cre­ative brain cells. I have met a writer who gets inspi­ra­tion for writ­ing by Danc­ing! Do what­ev­er works for you!

5) Get Off The Computer

OK, sort of relat­ed to pre­vi­ous one – but let’s take it a step further…

If you are some­one who is always on the com­put­er – do some­thing rad­i­cal like stay­ing on the PC for 24hrs. I think you will be quite amazed at the ideas which will pop into your head, just because you changed your environment.

Blog­ging is a marathon, not a sprint. So often when we get start­ed we write a post every day or sev­er­al times per week – but just as in run­ning a marathon, it is bet­ter to PACE our­selves. Set goals for the num­ber of posts you want to do, but make them realistic.

6) Go To Events

Attend events relat­ed to your indus­try / niche. As many of you know, I reg­u­lar­ly attend sem­i­nars, mas­ter­mind meet­ings etc. Every one of them gives you things to blog about – from sim­ply review­ing the event or list­ing for exam­ple “10 Things I Learned at The ‘Your Niche” Seminar”

Also, go with a dig­i­tal cam­era and Flip Cam­eras in hand. Record a video with a speak­er – even if it is only a cou­ple of min­utes it makes great con­tent and being asso­ci­at­ed with the speak­er builds your author­i­ty. Most videos are less than 3 mins – but valu­able con­tent that your read­ers will love. (I am also in the habit of tran­scrib­ing videos — the search engines love the content)

The oth­er great thing about sem­i­nars etc is that they give you inspi­ra­tion – every time I go to one I come back with pages and pages of new ideas.

7) Use Twitter / Social Media To Get Trending Topics

What are your fol­low­ers Tweet­ing about? What are the indi­vid­u­als you are fol­low­ing tweet­ing about?

Any­thing HOT on Trend­ing Top­ics that you can jump on with an angle for your niche?

Google Trends is a great places to find inspi­ra­tion. I am not say­ing copy oth­er arti­cles or posts, but if it is some­thing relat­ed to your niche then you can blog about it with author­i­ty. You can even link to the orig­i­nal arti­cle and give your take on it, what you agree with, what you don’t agree with etc.

8 ) TV, Books, Magazines, Movies, Other Blogs

All of the above have no end of inspi­ra­tion and ideas. As you read, think, would this be of inter­est to my read­ers? Or how can I put a slant on this that make this more inter­est­ing to my read­ers? Mag­a­zines, in par­tic­u­lar, are always pub­lish­ing lists – I am not say­ing you copy those lists, but chances are you can find an ‘angle’ that allows you to pro­duce some­thing orig­i­nal and unique.

9) Keep a Swipe File of Titles and Headlines

See a Title you like – then save it in a swipe file. Some­times a Title alone is enough to spark of an idea for a unique blog post of your own.

You will not copy the Title exact­ly – but rather adapt it to reflect your niche.

Finally: With Blog Post Ideas – Always Go for Quality, not Quantity

I have a lot going on in my life and my blog­ging busi­ness has opened up so many oppor­tu­ni­ties for me – but one thing I try to always remain dili­gent on is to go for QUALITY Blog posts over QUANTITY.

It is actu­al­ly quite easy to slap up some post or re-hashed arti­cle that takes all of a few min­utes to pro­duce but DON”T do that. To keep your vis­i­tors com­ing back, link­ing to you and rec­om­mend­ing you, you need to be cre­ative. So put the effort in to come up with some­thing some­what orig­i­nal and ben­e­fi­cial to your readership.

Even a short post takes a cou­ple of hours for me but longer posts can be in my Drafts for days as I come back to them, tweak them or change them.

Actu­al­ly here is one final tip – even when you think you are sat­is­fied with the post, do not pub­lish it. Leave it overnight or for a few hours and come back to it. You will be sur­prised how often that so called ‘fin­ished draft’ gets fur­ther improved or inspired as you re-read it or had some more tweaks occur to you in the meantime.

Hap­py Blog­ging – let me know your thoughts and your ideas for blog posts and what inspires you in the com­ments below.

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