Article Ideas for Blogs – What Should I Write About?

I’d like you to do a quick exercise for me. I’d like you to search Google for a successful blog. Any blog. It doesn’t need to be a blog of interest or anything you’d ever consider reading. Just a blog.

Once you locate one, I’d like you to scan through the blog to find out how many posts it contains. Most likely, you’ll find the number of posts to be in the hundreds. Go ahead and repeat the exercise. Find some more blogs and then count how many posts they contain. Again, you’ll find that successful, high ranking blogs generally contain hundreds, if not thousands, of posts.

Now ask yourself, “If I were to launch a blog today, would I have the mental capacity to come up with hundreds of article ideas right off the bat?” No, of course you wouldn’t. That would be ridiculous. No one can do that. It’s insane to think someone could.

The Secret Behind Blog Article Ideas

That’s what this post is about – the insanity of thinking that you’d somehow magically be able to conjure up article ideas for a blog – even for a niche you’re wildly interested in. But if no one has this magical ability, the question becomes, how does a blogger develop blog article ideas at all? That’s what the rest of this post is about – how the pros develop their article ideas. There are a few sneaky little secrets that I’ll share with you that might just have the potential of launching your blogging career on a very lucrative trajectory now and well into the future. Would you like to know what these secrets are? Keep reading to find out. They’re stupidly simple. I should know – I’ve been using them for years. I’ve actually used one of them to write this very post.

Why You’ll Likely Fail at Blogging

I’d like you to read this snippet of a blogging related question I found on Reddit. It’s quite telling.

“I’ve had the privilege of mentoring a number of aspiring bloggers, setting up their websites, and sharing my knowledge on everything from SEO to crafting compelling content. At first, they’re always pumped, eager to dive in and start creating.

But then reality sets in. They’re faced with the daunting task of actually producing content, and their enthusiasm quickly wanes. I’ve lost count of how many blogs I’ve helped launch, only to see them collect dust. I’ve had clients spend hours agonizing over trivial details, like the perfect font or color scheme, while neglecting the actual content.

I’ve got a virtual graveyard of abandoned blogs that I occasionally check in on, and it’s disheartening to see that many of them still have the default WordPress post. These are people who begged for my guidance, and yet, they couldn’t sustain the effort.”

This post was initiated by a user called BillyTheMilli and it garnered exactly the types of responses you’d expect. Agreement. Pretty much every single user who responded agreed with the OPs sentiment. The funny thing is, I agree as well. I actually chuckled as I read through what was written because it was just so true. Out of all the bloggers I’ve ever known, I’m the only one who actually still blogs to this day. Every single other one has either never begun past setting up his or her website or quit after the first few posts were written. As other users mentioned, the entire ordeal is not only disheartening, it’s exhausting.

I’ll answer the question of why beginner bloggers have a tendency to fail. It’s generally because blogging can turn into actual work, but not only that, it’s because people run out of things to write about. Trust me, if a beginner blogger sat there looking at a list of 300 article topic ideas, they’d surely be a heck of a lot less likely to give up on their website so easily.

Common Suggestions for Content Creation

If you browse blogs about blogging, such as the one you’re reading, you’ll find many suggestions for how to create the best possible content. You’ll find posts about which blog niches can make you the most money, how to become a successful blogger, and even how to blog with confidence. The problem is, those topics don’t help much when you’ve moved past all of the theoretical stuff and you merely need ideas about which to blog. It’s like, “Okay already. What should I actually write about?!?!”

Most people, including myself, will tell you to keep your quality up.
“That doesn’t help if I’ve got nothing to write about.”

Others will suggest that you find a niche you enjoy.
“Been there, done that. Still have nothing to write about.”

The remaining folks will instruct you to think of topics that inspire you.
“At this point, nothing inspires me because I’m so depressed about having no good blogging ideas. What to do?”

I can clearly recall two cases of having friends fail miserably at blogging. One told me, after mommy blogging for about a year, “I’ve got no more writing ideas. I don’t know how you do it.” “Ah ha!”, I thought. “If you only knew my secrets.” The other friend never even wrote his first post. He went ahead and set up a blog all the way to the point of writing a mere sentence in a pseudo post. It went something like this: “To write or not to write. That is the question.”

Both of my friends suffered from the same affliction. They thought blogging was going to be easier than it really is and they both fell flat when it came time to think up ideas about which to write. What a shame because both of my friends are very intelligent and interesting people.

Blogging Content Creation Secrets

The three content creation idea secrets I’ll share with you below are secrets I’d tell my best friends. They actually work because they don’t contain theoretical fluff. They’re things you can use today to begin writing tonight. They’re what I use to write nearly every day on my multiple blogs. And they all revolve around one single premise: don’t reinvent the wheel. There have been billions of people living on this earth before you ever arrived and so much has already been done. Don’t hurt your brain by attempting to think of something out of thin air. Use what’s available to you.

Secret Idea #1

You’re currently reading a post that lives on my blog. It’s a blog about blogging. Every day, I write posts about blogging, bloggers, and blogs, and everything that pertains to each one of those things. Why do I write about these topics? Because I enjoy doing so. Do I rack my brain as I sit in my chair developing article ideas? Certainly not. Well then, how do I come up with all of my wonderful post ideas? I’ll tell you.

The question really is, am I the first person on earth to ever write about blogging? No way. Not even close. There are thousands upon thousands of blogs out there that cover the same material that I’d like to cover. If it’s already done, why do I write about it? Because I quite simply think I’ll do a better job at covering the material than they have. So here’s what I do:

1. I search Google for blogs about blogging.
2. I find said blogs and I bookmark each one for later use.
3. When I need an idea about which to write, I scan through a few of the blogs I’ve bookmarked until I find an interesting title.
4. I peruse the post, close it, and then do my own research into the topic.
5. I write my wonderful post.

And there you have it – a library of countless blog post ideas, sitting at my fingertips. Am I stealing ideas? Probably. Am I stealing any content. Nope. None. I merely take the concept and run with it. I do all my own research and write my own content. The most challenging part actually was coming up with the post idea and I made that so much easier by using what was already done for me – the thinking. Consider this; it’s sort of like a car manufacturer making a car. Another company surely has already made a car. Can a new company make a car too? Yes, and many of them have. There’s no reason they shouldn’t. Just because someone has already made a car, that doesn’t forbid anyone else from doing it again. Just don’t make the same exact car. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of competition.

Secret #1: Find other blogs in your field and bookmark them. Read through them to find ideas about which you can write.

Secret Idea #2

I actually used this tactic for this very post.

Did you know that Reddit has a category for blogging? It does and I review it often. I have the page bookmarked along with a bunch of others from other popular forums. In this Reddit category, there are endless questions that bloggers would like answers to. One such question I recently read had to do with ideas for writing articles on blogs. Do you see what I’ve done with just the idea? Or the question? I’ve written my own post that offers my own solution. And here we are. Question answered. This is what you should do:

1. Locate all of the most popular forums online (Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow, etc…)
2. Find categories related to your niche that contain lots of content for your review.
3. If categories don’t exist, search Google for something like, “Quora your keyword” and then scroll through the results.
4. Either way, you’ll have more ideas about which to write than you know what to do with.

Just imagine that you’d like to write articles about sailing, but can’t really think of anything great to write about. Now imagine scrolling through the hundreds and thousands of questions people ask the internet about sailing. I don’t you’ll have nothing to write about after doing that.

Secret #2: Browse the internet’s most popular and active forums to locate what people in your niche are interested in. And then write about those things.

Secret Idea #3

That last suggestion is very handy. It’s what I suggested to my friend who was the mommy blogger and it’s what I do for my own personal blog. After I informed my friend that this had been my tactic for the longest time, she nearly fell on the floor. “That’s it!”, she exclaimed. She had never considered that it could be so simple. This is what I told her:

1. Take a picture.
2. Write about it.

And that’s it. Think I’m joking? I’m not. Take a look at this post I wrote about connected farms in New England. I was driving down the road one day and I saw an interesting looking house. I stopped to take a picture of it and then I drove home to write about it.

Now take a look at this post I wrote about the Curtis Island Lighthouse in Camden, Maine. I visited this lighthouse during the spring and took pictures of it. Then I wrote about it. It’s called inspiration. Right this very moment, you could walk outside and take a picture of a tree and then write about it. Discuss the species, where it thrives, and what it’s good for. Have at it. You could also take a picture of a building or a person or an animal. Write a story about what you’ve photographed. And again, don’t start from square one; look at what other people blog about. Review how they produce their content. Get used to creatively writing. Use your photos as writing prompts.

Secret #3: Take pictures and then write about them. Even a barber shop in town is bound to hold a rich and interesting history. Photograph it and then share its story with the world.

Conclusion

Nothing I’ve shared in this post today is new. All I’ve done is looked around the internet for an idea and then expressed my opinions on the idea. It was easy, really. From concept to completion, this post took about two hours to complete. And now it’ll be sitting on the internet for all of eternity, waiting for people to read it. The best part about it is that I honestly think the information will help people because what I’ve shared are ideas I use myself. I’ve been writing online since 2005 and have written thousands of posts. Some posts I’ve conjured up myself while others have stemmed from the minds of random bloggers. Either way, the ultimate posts have been fun to write, easy to read, and worthwhile. At least I hope they’ll be worthwhile.

If you have any comments or questions regarding what I’ve shared above, please leave them down below. I’d love to help out any way I can. Thanks for reading!