23 Great Ideas For Blog Posts

Photo by Powi

After you have been blogging for a while, sometimes you run out of inspiration. Here are some ideas to get you going again.

1. Write a book review.

   Read a good book about your topic and write a review on it. As a bonus, you can link to the book on Amazon.com and get some commissions for selling the book.

2. Review a product.

   Pick a product that people in your niche will be interested in. Make sure it is something you use yourself. There are a lot of products you can link to on Amazon.com, or look for another affiliate program.

3. Review a popular blog or website about your topic.

   If your readers are not familiar with your subject, or if they are new to the web, they may not know about all the resources that are available. They will be happy that you told them about it.

4. Make a list of available resources.

   Find a lot of good, helpful sites about your topic. Make a list of them with a short description of each, and of course link to each one. This is the type of post that people like to bookmark or link to.

5. Explain something about your subject that might be confusing to newbies.

   This is the type of information that people could be searching for, and they just might find your site when they do the search.

6. Tell why or how you first got interested in this topic.

   This will let your natural enthusiasm show through, and it will encourage beginners, because you will be recalling when you were a beginner too.

7. Do a review of a relatively unknown but good blog in your niche.

   Your readers will be glad to discover a new blog, and the author might be so happy for the attention that they link to your blog too.

8. Take a stand.

   Take something that is controversial and tell how you feel about it. Just be careful to be respectful to both sides. You don’t want it to turn into a flame war. Besides, it is just more professional to state your opinion in a calm, objective way.

9. Tell about some mistake that you made and what you learned from it.

   This will help your readers to avoid making the same mistake, and will make you seem more human to them.

10. Do a case study.

    This is always very popular, because it shows some real-life application of principles. For example, for a gardening blog, you could do a case study on your own garden – what you did, what the results were, etc. Pictures would be great with this too.

11. Conduct an experiment and tell the results.

    This is another very popular format, especially if the experiment is about something that people have always wondered about.

12. Do an analysis of something.

    I think it was John Chow’s analysis of the biggest known Adsense earners that really made him popular. Of course, he came up with a catchy title for his post, which helped it spread even further.

13. Find some offbeat or weird website on your topic and link to it.

    If you do this once in a while, it will lighten up your blog with some humor or human interest.

14. Find a good video about your topic on YouTube, and embed it in your post.

    Add some commentary of your own. A video is a nice change of pace.

15. If you are a little more adventurous, create your own video post.

    The blog 45n5 does this often, and it helps his unique personality to show through.

16. Be different. Do something unexpected. State something which goes against popular opinion.

    The mention of 45n5 made me think of this. It is something he does often, but he seems to do it in a good-humored way so that people don’t take too much offense.

17. Find a big topic and do a series of posts about it.

    People seem to love this. At least, they will keep coming back if they get interested in the series.

18. Run a poll. After it is done, discuss the results.

    I have never actually done this, but it seems to be popular. People will probably come back to see the results of the poll.

19. Interview someone and post the interview on your blog.

    If you pick someone interesting to interview, you could get a lot of links. The interviewee will probably link to you too. I think people often are more agreeable to interviews than you would think, especially if you don’t waste too much of their time.

20. Take something technical and explain it in a step-by-step way.

    It helps to use screenshots or pictures of some kind. This works for other things besides computer stuff, too. For example, in gardening, how to plant a bulb. I know a picture would help me, because I always forget which end of the bulb is supposed to point up.

21. Tell about a personal experience.

    This is often the best kind of post (if it relates to your subject matter). It makes your point more real, and people always have an easier time of making something interesting if it is a story about themselves. Just make sure it relates to your topic in some way. People don’t want to read about your cat, unless it is a cat blog! If it is a cat blog, the more cat stories, the better.

22. Use humor.

    Cartoons are great. Once I posted a cartoon on my site (the cartoonist said it was ok, as long as you linked back). Somebody linked to my post on StumbleUpon, and I got visitors for a long time afterward. People just love cartoons! In fact, maybe I’ll post that one here… hmm… Make sure you have permission though – or draw your own cartoon.

23. Make a list.

    An example is this post. Lists are very popular, and seem to get bookmarked and linked to a lot.

I’m sure that if you put your mind to it, you could think of even more creative ideas. So don’t get into a blogging rut – vary the type of posts that you do.

P.S. Note for writers: You may be interested in 23 Little-Known Sites That Will Pay You For Your Content.