I’ve been writing on this blog for around 8 months and I usually don’t miss a day, sometimes I even write more then once (or even twice). A few people have asked me where I keep getting my blog topics from so I thought I would share a few ideas with all of you. First of all I’m assuming your blog covers a particular are, for example, this blog is pretty focused on online marketing and social media type stuff. If your blog is about anything and everything, then you really should have no problem at all. BUT! if you are like the other 99.9% of bloggers out there who do have a particular topic then it can be challenging to keep cranking out new content.
Here’s what I do.
First of all I read industry related blogs such as techmeme to get a good glimpse of what the top stories are. You need to find the “techmeme” of your industry.
I also take a look at the Google news page and also the NY Times and CNN to see what’s going in the world
I’m a big fan of the Adage Power 150 list of blogs, and usually find something interesting on there, there are over 600 blogs listed all in the marketing/social media/online marketing/ advertising space so this is really a fantastic resource (yours truly is on there as well!)
I use my RSS reader to subscribe to many of the blogs I enjoy and that’s also usually more than enough content for me to ponder, I subscribe to around 30 or so feeds which I find to be plenty.
I also really enjoy using alltop.com as a great reference for particular topics. All you do is visit the site, pic your topic, and you are presented with around 50 top related blogs which all have to do with your particular area. For example I read socialmedia.alltop.com and marketing.alltop.com to get a good idea of what the hot button issues are. I like to diversify my reading though and also read non tech stuff, like art and history. Think of alltop as an online magazine rack, it’s a great resource, use it.
You can also use Google Alerts or Google blog search to search for and monitor specific topics as they pertain to your industry.
Then I draw upon life experiences, encounters, conversations, etc. If you think about how much you know or have experiences you can actually come up with quite a lot.
Of course there are always lists of topics, like the one that Chris Brogan created, but I prefer to write topics or ideas that I come up with. The above ideas are really more then what you need. I don’t keep a reserve of posts that I put up (as many bloggers recommend you do) and that’s simply because I always have something to talk about, sometimes I will write a day or two in advance but that’s about it. I like the pressure of having to think/create something, but that’s just me
What tips/ideas can you recommend for coming up with new blog topics, how do you do it?
Thanks for reading
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