It happens to every writer from time to time. They sit at their keyboard, or if they are old school, with their pen in their hand, and their mind is a complete blank. No inspiration. No ideas. Nothing.
If you are responsible for creating and writing blog posts for your website, it will surely have happened to you too, and if not, you are incredibly lucky.
For the day that your mind does go blank, and for everyone else who might struggle to come up with ideas for your blog posts, here are no fewer than twenty-one of them.
Now you could take these and make one post a day for the next 21 days, or you could be wise and realise that you have blog post ideas lined up each week for the next 5 months or so. The choice is yours.
- How To: Explain to your audience how to achieve something, complete a task, or make a change that will benefit them. There are bound to be dozens of possible ‘How to…’ posts you can write for your niche.
- Research: Create a post that outlines some research you, someone within your business or an expert within your industry has completed and share the findings with your audience.
- Statistics: Every niche and business category have statistics that relate to it. Write a post where you share relevant statistics, either on a broad topic, or a very narrow one.
- Quotes: Over the years there have been some quotes that have gone down in history. Research for quotes that have bearing on the type of business you are, and which offer your readers sound advice.
- Interview: Ask a business associate, a colleague, or even a member of your staff if they mind being interviewed about their career, their experience within your industry, or their opinions about your business sector.
- Satirical: Everyone loves a laugh from time to time, and there is no rule that says every blog post you write has to be serious, so crack a joke or two, or tell a funny story.
- Survey: Surveys are a win-win because people love to be asked about, and give, their opinions, and the answers can allow you to make some planning decisions for your business.
- Ultimate Guide: You can create a post that is an ultimate guide to anything within your business such as products or services, and it will help your audience to better understand them.
- FAQ: This is an extremely popular post where you answer lots of the most commonly asked questions from customers, prospects and those who interact with your website.
- List: People online cannot get enough of lists, and it is probably because they are extremely easy to read and follow. You can list facts, statistics, industry events, in fact just about any subject is a potential list.
- Case Study: This is a great way to highlight existing customers who have had success with your products, or for whom your services took them from a difficult situation to one which was solved.
- Inspirational: Try to relate a story that will appeal to the mindset of those reading your content and hopefully make them more motivated to act.
- Get it Off Your Chest: We all need to vent from time to time if something annoys us, so feel free to have the occasional rant with the caveat that you keep the language PG, and you do not throw insults about.
- Product Update: You are in business to sell products presumably, so make sure that you occasionally promote one of your products by discussing its benefits to those who might be reading and possibly ready to buy.
- Behind The Scenes: Why not give your audience an insight into what happens within your business? You could make this a post with photo images, or better still, a video post.
- Industry Trends: Whichever business niche or category you are in, there are always going to be new developments and interesting things happening that your audience will want to know about, so keep them updated on them.
- Personal Experiences: People like to know that there is real person behind the website, so make it a point to include the occasional personal story that links with your business, such as how you started it, or speak about a family member who has inspired you.
- Multimedia: Occasionally you should give your keyboard the day off, and simply post some interesting photos or videos which will interest, inform, and entertain those who are fans of your blog.
- Series: Write a series of posts that ensure the audience keep wanting to come back to see what the next post in the series contains. It could be a series explaining how to do something, or a series of tips.
- Freebie: This might require some imaginative thinking, but you can make a post where you give something away for free. Whether it is a product, a service, or simply a downloadable guide, your readers will appreciate you for it.
- Competition: This is even more fun than the freebie, and logistically easier. You run a competition or prize draw where the winner and maybe a runner-up win one of your products or a prize related to them.