What to Blog About? That Is the Question

Writers look upon it with dread, knowing that the day will come eventually – the day they can’t seem to get inspired about any writing project. If your blog is a major component of your site, you need to solve this problem immediately, before it damages your credibility or impacts your relationships with clients.

The good news is that there’s a ton of info out there you can use to jump-start your writing process. The trick is to diagnose your problem correctly before you go about trying to solve it. Are you struggling to come up with a topic for your latest blog post? Inspiration is usually just a website away. Are you stuck on a particular project and looking to give yourself a jolt? If you can postpone the project by an hour or two, writing a quick blog post on a different topic may get your motor running. In either case, the solution is similar.

Five Avenues to Writing Progress

To-Do List

First and probably foremost in your arsenal of possible topics is your current to-do list. Whether you’re a full-time blogger or your blog relates to your profession, you can find plenty to write about just by taking a look through your past and future task list. In fact, sometimes a blog entry can be a great way to get a project started. So you’re planning to launch a marketing campaign? Use your blog as your sounding board, and write down how you plan to proceed. You’ll probably come up with ideas for your new campaign that you never thought of before. Are you updating or revamping your website? What have you found is the best way to go about it? Why? The possibilities here are endless and are only limited by the scope of your to-do list.

Search Engine Analysis

Have you ever been looking for information regarding a particular topic and come up empty? Or were you presented with results that didn’t completely relate to your query? This is your chance to fill an empty space.

Search Engine Referrer Data

If you use website analytics (and who doesn't), it’s always a good idea to frequently examine search engine referrer data for the latest queries to get an idea of why people are coming to your site and what they’re looking for once they get there. If some visitors are landing on a page that doesn't answer their question, write new post to give them an answer. Hopefully, search engines will return that new post next time someone enters same query.

Top Lists

Since that essentially characterizes this post, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include it. You see these things all over the web: top ten internet marketing trends, top five ways to make a pot of chili – it seems like if there’s something to be done, there’s a list somewhere of the best, and sometimes worst, ways to do it. You might be thinking that the prevalence of these lists makes them unsuitable for a blog post that gets noticed, but that’s not necessarily the case. There’s a reason they’re so popular, and they’re great honeypot for backlinks.

Current Events

Last but not least, current events in your industry make for incredibly easy blog posts. Rather than simply rehashing the news item, editorialize, and give your readers your thoughts about the issue. Find something that excites you, inspires you or irritates you beyond words, and let loose. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can write a post this way. If you have a general purpose blog, Google News makes a great launching pad for posts like these as well.

Some of those might seem like basic, common-sense items, but many people overlook them. Just make sure you have a pen and paper or some other method of quickly jotting down ideas handy as you do your day’s work, approach your tasks with possible blog posts in mind, and you’ll see that list populate right before your eyes.

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