I don’t know what to blog about
And I really need to stop worrying about what to come up with for your next post
If this is the case then you need to follow below
My brainstormed, well researched guide I am going to show you
What to do if you don’t know what to blog about
Everyone planning to start a blog
Thinks first on how to come up with blog posts ideas
Sometimes they don’t want to start
Because they are afraid of running out of ideas to write about
How to plan for what to write about in your blog?
I know how you feel about your blog
When I started this blog, I was exactly like you
Thinking about what I should write about
Which can fascinate my audience
I started with one blog post
Then I got stuck wasting time doing nothing
As I did not have any idea what to
Write next on my blog
Then I realized that I have to create a strategy
That makes me laser focused on what my audience really want to read
Plus you want to make sure that you have enough ideas to keep you busy
Anyway I will tackle the following list below as shown in table of contents
Look for the highlighted in yellow notes to realize how each point brings for you
Something to do if you don’t know what blog about
Speak about your Passion
While it is very hard for you to write about what others like
We are all created by default to show our own interests to others while we can still feel what they like
We cannot force ourselves to be Interested on something we have never liked before
What fascinates others in a well known niche that really makes money like Weight Loss
It does not mean that it will interest you and you should pursue that niche
There is nothing wrong about writing on what really interests you
What interests you definitely should be interesting to others around you unless it is not nerd
If what you really like falls under those niches below
How to make money
Health and Fitness
Personal finance
Beauty and fashion
Relationships and personal development
Lifestyle like survival, gardening, Women’s lifestyle..etc.
The list above covers Health, wealth and relationships
These are universal interests for all People around the world
If you have an interest in one or more of the above
It can be very easy to attract audience
Don’t say then I don’t know what to blog about
The only challenge you will face is to create a broad or very specific niche
For example under Fitness
You can go with Yoga
This is a broad niche
While under Yoga there are materials, books and techniques
Those are sub niches
There is nothing wrong If you go with a broad niche and then based on your audience interaction
You can decide which sub-niche you want to tackle
Now again how pursuing your passion can be eclectic in your writing
Well, let me use a niche like gardening as an example
You have a passion and knowledge about Gardening
Now what to do with your passion?
Break down all the elements adhering to your gardening niche
Like Sun, Moon, Light, Seasons, Water, Air, Wind, Soil, Fertilizers, Seeds, Pot, Planters and Containers
Then analyze them with W questions (What, How, When, Where and Who)
Also Mix two or more elements together and repeat the W questions
These are just what I thought on top of my head
It took me a minute to come up with the above list
I did not use my best friend Google
You can use each gardening element to create not few blog posts but a complete book
Seriously, for example for the Soil
You can write about what type of soil to use
How to know the right type of Soil where to buy the best Soil or fertilizers
Now think about combing two or more elements together and come up with questions
How can Sun affect your Soil when to Water your plant during different Seasons
Remember I am not into gardening
Please don’t pick up on me
Focus on the fact that you have got a passion
And don’t say I don’t know what to blog about
What people ask you for advice?
It works most of the ways based on your degree or education
If you are someone like me who works in informational technology (aka IT) job
People will ask you to fix their laptops
It is not a nice experience especially you will do it for free
But while they are always asking you to fix something
Most probably they will come to you seeking advice
Like best laptop to buy, difference between 2 different phones or
Should I buy Android or iPhone phone
Keep that in mind and don’t say I don’t know what to blog about
If your education or current job is really a passion
Unless not having any other craving passion then use it to build your blog about it
I found it difficult to pursue a blog about technology
Because I love internet marketing
What do you know or like to read about?
I read books about internet marketing more than technology
But at least, it turned out that although I would really like to make money blogging
I found deep inside that making money is not my first desire
In my case I love to try everything new when it comes to online marketing
The idea of seeing something working for you can really be measured by making money out of it
It took me a while reading different books until I realized by analyzing my reading trend
Look at the last 5 books which you read
If they are all into one subject then you must have a passion about it
Don’t say now that I don’t know what to blog about
How to find topics to write about
Find popular ebook on Amazon
Go through its table of contents
Take blog ideas from each chapter
I found that I would read any book for Seth Godin or Dan Kennedy (the later created a NO B. S. series)
Although they teach the core of marketing
They managed to write in a style that really makes any internet gurus learn from their teachings
Think about your target audience
Think about whom you want to speak to whom you want to teach
If you read this advice that says you must create a Persona
I never gave it attention
Until I had this incident (written below) that made me a deep believer in creating my Persona
First what is a persona?
When you write anything on the internet
You must be thinking about someone like you reading and understanding your words
What if nobody understands what you write, you either think that they are all stupid or
You have to write it in a level of details that makes your target readers understand most of your writings
You start to create a fictional user or group of users
Who if possible give him/her a name (in case of thinking about one user)
That has a level of education (completed high school or college ..etc
Works in a certain job and has an issue which you are writing about
Like how to do basic troubleshooting for laptops
If you find your persona then you don’t say I don’t know what to blog about
Why you need a persona?
Now what made me believe in creating persona
I thought of creating Persona as a useless advice
Until a family member asked me to check her laptop as it was very slow
I started checking all unused programs
I asked her if she knows how to uninstall programs
She did not know so I explained the term and I uninstalled few unused programs
Then I found 20 GB of old movies and another 50 GB of music she was not interested to keep
Then she asked why I deleted them and didn’t use the uninstall programs to safely remove them
I did not have the persona on mind yet while thinking about my level of details for explaining things
But I knew I will never go in details to a certain level like that
If I am writing about Technology
Let’s say how to boost your laptop performance and speed
I will never think to explain the difference between programs and files
And never be interested on targeting those people
I am very patient to teach people around me what I know
If someone does not understand what I am saying
It makes me challenged to use my words to break down
The technicality into something anyone can understand
Problem is that targeting very basic beginners In niches like Technology or How to do things
Makes you obliged to go with Videos multiple series of videos to show them
As if they are sitting with you
That’s what I learned from the above experience
I am writing how to do technical things
I would rather create videos on YouTube
Which I was not comfortable doing it but I finally did it
What I learned from using personas?
I decided to have my Persona as an advanced beginner
I can never imagine that I could write a version of
How to build a blog for someone who doesn’t know how to use a computer at all
The level of details for your target audience helps you if you say I don’t know what to blog aboutThe level of details for your target audience dictate what you should blog about Click To Tweet
Use Google suggestions
Google suggestions also known as Google Autocomplete
Don’t ever take this lightly you have Goldmine here
Maybe you need to combine it with searches related to which shows at the bottom of your search result
Combine it with People also ask for
Don’t tell me you will not get great ideas
If you say I don’t know what to blog about
Plus switch to Google images as per the screenshot below
You will spot many blog posts ideas
You have “Google Suggestions”, “People also ask for”,
“Searches related to” and “Google Images”
Believe in yourself and come up with your own technique
Nobody will be able to teach you how to be innovative
It is an iterative process that only gets improved if you don’t give up and keep exploring new things in blogging
Use Google Keywords Planner
Keywords planner is part of Google AdWords
You don’t need to advertise on Adwords to be able to use Keywords planner
With this tool, you will get up to 800 keywords Sorted by monthly searches
These numbers are not accurate
Anyway it doesn’t matter as you are looking for ideas
At least look for keywords with high searches
As you don’t want to build ideas on something people don’t search about
Your keywords to target are what you should build your blog posts around
If you say I don’t know what to blog about then blog about these keywords
Sort by average monthly searches to
Collect keywords for your blog posts ideas for
Search volume greater than 1000 searches a month
Use Google Analytics
I always imagine Google Analytics as my best friend whom I go to when I am down
Before using Google Analytics
I thought I would expect to see traffic coming to my pages
Based on my own imagination for blog posts I expected that
It would impress with visitors
I found blog posts that I wrote recklessly
Getting more visitors, I realized that my audience have passion in certain area
To find which blog posts are getting the most of your audience attention
Just go to Behavior, Site Content then All Pages
Not only that but also sometimes you find keywords searched and
Irrelevant blog posts are served which can trigger the necessity to fill in the gaps by writing contents for these keywords
To find which new blog posts to create based on search terms or Keywords
Just go to Behavior, Site Search then Search Terms
Use Google Trends
Google Trends is very useful, make sure you select United states
Write keyword(s) and look at the bottom
You will see a list of related queries
For example, I put “Affiliate Marketing”
I found two searches that triggered great blog posts ideas
I found “How affiliate marketing works” with 400% increase of searches and “Is affiliate marketing worth it” with 300%
There are people here that look like they tried blogging or any sort of making money online through affiliate marketing
But with no luck so they became desperate to know the right way of building an online blogging business
You can build an email list at the end of a blog post that answers every single question about affiliate marketing and if it is worth doing it
The email list will build a trust with those people who are hunger of learning the right way to do
Affiliate marketing (advice don’t promote anything to them)
Focus on building trust with those people through only pure knowledge that you can provide to them
One more funny thing for you to check
Switch United states to Worldwidevfor the term “Affiliate Marketing”
Almost it did not change while for another term like
“Start your own blog” with United States, you will find one term which is
“How to start your own blog”
While with Worldwide you will get “How to start your own blog for free”
This proves one thing
Always consider to check trends for your target keywords and sort your effort to write on the rising trends
Use Quora top asked questions
This question itself is asked so many times on Quora
Unfortunately Quora as site based on people asking any type of questions
They don’t have the feature to categorize top asked questions based on topics
You have to search Quora for top asked questions and keep reading
You will get the sense of what makes few questions as very top voted
I will give you an example for blogging about blogging
It is not about how to start a blog
It is about what is needed to grow a web startup’s User-base from zero to one million?
The above question will always get tons of people to always keep asking
They will never get fulfilled of their thirsty to read more answers to it
You know why? because if you have your own blog and still makes no or very little money
Then you start doubting what could be wrong
My point is that the cornerstone of any niche
It is about finding the hidden questions in that niche
You can only find it by checking Quora, Reddit or even yahoo answers
If you find those hidden questions then you don’t say I don’t know what to blog about
My caveat for Reddit because inserting hyperlinks is completely prohibited
This means when you see an advice coming from someone who really cares
Find Tools to Ask and Collect Questions
FaqFox can help you generate questions by analyzing competitors’ blogs
Just type a keyword in one text field and site you like to check in the next text field
It will scrap them for all questions related to this keyword
Remember nothing wrong with collecting
All questions famous blogs in your niche already asked
You answer them from different angles
AnswerThePublic is very similar
It only expects from you to type your keyword
It will generate hundreds of questions
See if those questions trigger any idea to build a blog post about
I always challenge myself to take few questions
From AnswerThePublic that I feel
It would resonate with my audience
Use Related Forums for your niche
If you say I don’t know what to blog about
Just search on Google for forums in your niche by typing
Keyword + inurl:”/forums/” or Keyword + “discussion board”
Try also Keyword + inurl:”showtopic.php”
Usually you will find sticky posts
Where due to their popularity forums’ owners decided to keep them on top
You will find answers to so many
How to questions better than
The top 10 on Google
Here is a trick which I found recently
I noticed few members in internet marketing called WarriorForum
Those members have thousands of post reply
One of these members was discussing his way of getting traffic by sharing his Google Analytics account
Obviously some of his traffic are coming from the forum itself
This means that if you follow members with high numbers of replies
You can collect a very good number of blog post ideas
Also if you add your own comment
Definitely you will get traffic (although this post is not about getting traffic
But I just wanted to list this traffic trick here)
Use Pinterest
Pinterest is a hybrid type unique social media tool combined with Search engine one
You can type your keyword
Pinterest will display best pins according to its algorithm
Go there and collect ideas
It is unique because its search engine is different than Google
I collected so many ideas before where I thought I had enough data and knowledge
When searching Google only but I found that by using Pinterest, I find more ideas completely not shown on Google
Create a board to save any pin
Where you feel like it is sparkling a new idea for you
Practice using Pinterest as a user and you will get many ideas
Use YouTube videos
YouTube is the second best search engine after Google itself (a fact)
To get the most out of it, just type your keyword
Be patient and listen to the top videos
Especially If you are writing a list post
You can collect the best lists from Google
Then switch to Pinterest
Then listen to YouTube videos
You will be surprised to HEAR lists that are completely new
Use your competitors’ best content
Analyze Social Media sites using Buzzsumo to investigate
What makes a specific blog post goes viral or analyze domain names from your competitors
To see which blog posts resonate with people
You can also use SEMrush to see how your competitors are ranking and what they are ranking for
Find gaps in your competitor’s blog post
That is showing on Google first page top 10 results
Write something that is not only better but the best
Write reviews on books, products or courses
So many books I buy and read just because I got a recommendations from well known bloggers
Books are covering all niches
You can find a great book to read
Come up with summary that fits in a blog post or take set of ideas from all chapters
Remember with Amazon books above, you don’t actually read the book
You just skim through the table of contents
Be honest if you used/read the recommended book or
Tried this product or that course otherwise
Readers can tell if your review is honest or just
A fake review to earn affiliate commissions
Create Lots of Beginners Guide
Beginners guide is very useful when building trust with your audience
Although it takes time to build one but they see you as an expert
The challenge when creating a beginners guide
How do you know if you are really targeting beginners
When thinking about writing beginners guide
I always check the “How To” in Quora
View the answers and see which ones Is getting more votes
Create ultimate guides
Ultimate guide focuses mainly on covering the niche itself
I encourage you to create at least one ultimate guide in your niche
Start with this ultimate guide and then
Add to it separate details as links to new or existing blog posts
You can publish your ultimate guide
Then add to it more contents later
If you hold on publishing your ultimate guide until you make it thorough
I am afraid you will never publish it
Create how to blog posts
How To works well with Ultimate Guide like peas and carrots
Don’t create “How To” if your ideas are not in order
This can be a List type blog post
Also videos are best tool to illustrate the “How To”
Don’t be afraid to take videos for yourself
If you still not comfortable then you can screencast your text and use free text to speech software to read the contents which you want to say
Create why blog posts
I remember my 3 years old son saying WHY to everything
When I think about it
I realized that the “WHY” question creates challenging environment for me in my brain
It makes me eager to answer this question honestly
I will tell you a secret where I have so many WHY questions
Where I am still having them as a draft copies to create blog posts from
Use Trello or SimpleNote (open Google and search for Simplenote) on my iPhone, also available for Android users to collect reasons
I find reasonable to my WHY questions
Never accept unreasonable answers to any why question
Create lists blog posts
Lists blog posts are irresistible for anyone not to click on
It acts like a title bait
I cannot resist seeing “38 tips to” or any number
You can collect other lists from different blogs to come up with a longer list
I always strive to think about adding my own list ideas
Don’t ever add the number in the link URL
As you may go and edit your list post and add new items to it
Conclusion
All the ideas above work great if you say to yourself, I don’t know what to blog about
Especially if you are stuck and not writing anything for a week or more
This is a sign that you finished your last blog post and wondering what to write next
Remember you don’t have to follow it to the tee
At least cover what your audience want to read about
Also by experience, you will never be able to write a Perfect blog post from the first round
There is lot of room to come back again and edit nothing is wrong about it
Finally if you don’t know what to blog about, I hope I explained it better
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