As some famous person once said the worse type of businessman is someone that aims low and still misses.
Worst still is the blogger who vaguely knows the target is over there somewhere and then makes a half hearted attempt at hitting it, if they knew what it is or what it looks like.
There are Five Types of New Bloggers
- those who know what they want to write
- those that are writing to promote their business
- those that are writing to promote a cause or raise an issue
- those that want to write a blog, but don’t know what to write
- and people who like to write, but are unfocused
I Want To Write a Blog, But I Don’t Know What to Write
This article looks at a common problem of many bloggers. I want to write a blog, but I have no idea what to write.
Categorize Your Thoughts
If you haven’t got a clue what to write about on your blog, then the first stage is decide on a category or set of categories.
Some Techniques You Can Use
- Research: You need a pen and pad. Spend a couple of hours surfing the web and write down the titles and topics of some of your favorite websites. These could be topics that you are interested in.
- Networking: What are things that people ask you to help with? What topics do people ask your opinion on? When you’re socializing with family and friends, think about which subjects interest you and which ones bore you.
- Tools: Using a keyword research tool, like Long Tail Pro, is also very helpful. I use this tool to find topics that other people are looking and I simply write about those topics.
- Reading materials: The items that you end up reading are potentially good topics.
Generate Ideas Using a Mind Map
Mind Mapping can be done manually. You will need a large piece of paper. Turn it so that it is landscape. Write your category name in the center.
Use lines to generate sub-categories and related topics. Then break down the sub-categories further. This should give you a good number of potential post subjects.
If you would rather use mindmapping software, I recommend Mind Meister. Here is an example of a mind map that my wife used when looking for niches using Mind Meister.
“We were talking about kippers” (smoked fish). This was a writing technique taught to me by my father. When going into an English exam and you know that you’re going to write a strange first line – you know you’re going to get a good grade.
So if you have a write on the topic of “my summer holiday” or “my best day ever”, then starting with the line “we were talking about kippers…” gives you a great advantage over the other kids who will mostly start with “my summer holiday was…”.
You can generate your own unusual phrases and see if that will help you generate a post idea.
Alternatively get an old book of famous sayings, pick a saying at random and see if you can generate a post from the saying.
With some practice, some things from this article will work.
Over to You
What do you think? Any tricks for generating posts? We all want to know.