How to Nail Great Blog Ideas for Your WordPress Website

Before you go ahead, please realize there’s a huge difference between generating amazing blog ideas and creating amazing content for your WordPress site. You need top-notch posts for a winning content marketing campaign, but how are you to generate amazing content without great blog ideas to begin with?

That’s the big question, now isn’t it? How do you generate great blog ideas that keep the fire burning on your WordPress blog, and your bank balance growing? How comes some guys know just the blog ideas to pursue for maximal impact often times resulting in virility?

How to Generate Great Blog Ideas Instantly

If you are wondering how to get the best blog ideas to break out of the rut, overcome writer’s block or simply add life to your blog, take a breather (and a sip of whatever you have) as you came to the right place. We all need some inspiration at times, so welcome and feel at home (we’ve even linked to a helpful article for each tip – if you want to read more just click on the pictures!).

1. Ask Your Readers

Yep, you really just don’t know the value of the feedback your readers provide. You can generate a ton of amazing blog ideas simply by asking your readers what they want to read. Yes, just ask, but if that doesn’t sound like you, you can device clever methods such as simple surveys.

For instance, I once added an extra field to my email sign up forms, and asked subscribers to mention their greatest challenge with content marketing. Between you and me, I collected enough blog ideas for months and something a little extra for the newsletter.

Ask and you shall receive and use every method at your disposal. Luckily, there’s social media nowadays, meaning getting great blog ideas is just a conversation away. Engage with your readers to create relevant content that resonates with their problems.

2. Brainstorm

This might sound like one of those “coincidence” things, but it actually happened yesterday. A close friend known as Duncan (See? He’s actually real) came over to visit, and we got talking about a side project I’m working on. Within no time, we were brainstorming away, which resulted in a couple of blog ideas.

I was so excited about the revelation I mentioned in passing that I am working on a post about nailing blog ideas for your WordPress site. So we brainstormed so more, and generated even more ideas, some of which have nothing to do with content, but other aspects of the side project.

Have a team in place already? Great! You can brainstorm ideas and use tools such as Trello among others to manage the process. Brainstorming requires just one extra brain, so please just brainstorm and enjoy the conversations you have with the people around you.

3. Check Your Comments

We all dream of publishing posts that pull a lot of comments, and a few things can compare to the feeling of getting your first few comments. It’s exhilarating since you can tell guys are giving a hoot about you.

But did you know, just like directly asking your readers, you can gather a lot of blog ideas from your comment area? Which pertinent questions are the readers asking? Which pain points are they expressing in response to your post? These are all ripe avenues to derive great blog ideas.

You can extend this approach to other blogs within your industry, and check out their comment sections as well. What are the readers asking? What’s bothering said readers, and can you offer a solution via your content? You definitely can see just how the comment section is a rich source of relevant blog ideas, right?

Aside: If you’re inclined, you can show off your expertise by answering the commenter’s question right there and then. Look at that. You build authority and gather blog ideas at the same damn time, on your blog or elsewhere! Now I know why comments are so darn precious.

4. Define Your Target Audience

How the hell are you even creating content to begin with if you have no idea who it’s intended for? You probably can’t nail the best blog ideas because you haven’t defined your audience yet. What does your ideal customer like? What are they likely going through, and how can you alleviate this pain?

With a crystal-clear picture of the person you are trying to reach, amazing blog ideas will come to you. And since you will create highly-targeted and personalized content, your posts will work wonders on your readers as well as search engines.

Take time to understand your prospect. What are their motivations? Why are they on your site? Do they have a need you can meet with free content? You know, stuff like that. Truly, this is one of the best tips you can take away today. I used to write out of the blue, just to fill up my blog with content, but the results were dismaying until I defined a target audience. It’s easy.

5. Engage Keyword Research

Along with defining a target audience comes keyword research. So you now have a clear picture of your audience in mind, and a couple of keywords that describe their pain points. Perhaps even the exact keywords they use to find your website. Point is, you need keywords, so get keywords.

Use these keywords to generate more keyword ideas, which creates fertile grounds for targeted blog ideas that have just the impact you desire. The AdWords Keyword Tool is a lifesaver in this regard. Just plonk your keywords into the tool, and watch the magic happen.

There are other countless keyword research tools out there, including Moz Keyword Explorer, KWFinder and SEMRush, meaning you can generate as many blog ideas as you need and bolster your SEO in the process. Great SEO involves astute keyword research.

6. Follow Conversation on Social Media

Real-time conversations on social media are a great source of blog ideas for your site. Just search for questions, discussions or even news about any topic in your industry, and you’ll never run out of great blog ideas ever again.

Take Quora or Reddit, for instance. Readers from all walks of life frequent these sites in search of answers on practically any topic under the sun. As the guy looking for great blog ideas for future posts, you can clearly see this single tip carries a lot of weight.

Just search on Twitter or your favorite social media site, and you will probably get more blog ideas than you can ever use. In fact, blog ideas are hiding in #hashtags, @mentions, shares, images and so much more. Just pick the ones you like and run with.

7. Google Auto Suggestions: Quick Fire Tip

Nowadays, Google predicts your search queries as you type ‘em. This nifty autosuggest feature is basically a “sampling” of the stuff people want. It’s a quick source of blog ideas for practically any topic you can imagine. Plus you get better search rankings because, again, it’s the stuff that people want.

Just fire up our favorite search engine, good ol’ Google, and type away. Autosuggest kicks in immediately with a list of topics. After picking your favorite topics, you can change up the headlines a bit to suit your various needs.

For instance, if I typed “How to Create a Blog” and this feature gave me a couple of ideas, I could turn around and bend the ideas however I want. You can come up with many ideas easily and quickly using Google autosuggest. I mean, come on, they made you a great tool, so why let them down?

8. Hire/Host Authors

A one-man operation has its perks but you simply can’t argue with economies of scale. You can produce a lot more blog ideas and content if you run a multi-author blog as opposed to a solo operation. You can pay writers, welcome guest bloggers or do both.

Andy of Newsforshoppers created an online magazine that helps consumers with online shopping. He did all this using a revenue-sharing model and a team of dedicated journalists who keep the website fresh with content.  The writers get 70% of the adsense money their posts make, and Andrew never has to worry about blog ideas.

Many other websites use this model, and it’s effective to a fault. You focus on the other aspects of running your business, and let somebody else take care of blog ideas and content generation. This applies too if you’d like to publish all content under your name or a moniker such as “Editorial Staff”.

9. Interview Experts

Who doesn’t like to read (or listen to) what an expert said on some topic of interest? Expert interviews are great blog ideas in themselves, not to mention the amount of wisdom you can gain from the responses. Interviews are easy to come up with and create, but can quickly build credibility and trust.

Reach out to experts within your industry and ask these guys to answer pertinent questions relevant to your readers. Publish the interviews whenever, especially on the proverbial day when you simply can’t get your creative juices flowing.

You don’t have to think long and hard about the interviews, you simply need to come up with a question, or a bunch of questions. Send out the questions to your choicest experts and compile their responses into compelling posts. Or try to find guests for your own podcast. This not only adds new content to your blog but also a variety of media forms to entice new readers/listeners.

10. Joyride on Trends

Trends are a great source of blog ideas that go viral. And since trends revolve around what’s hot at a specific time, they provide fodder for news posts. All the same, trends are as good as they are hot. If you don’t act quickly, you just might miss your chance to snag some viral traffic.

Best part is there are countless tools out there that help you to stay on top of the latest news and trends in any industry. For starters, we have Google Alerts, which notifies you every moment there’s mention of your keywords. You can create multiple alerts, but don’t overdo it, or you’ll drown in mail.

Trends can also inform you about the shift in people’s interests over time, which is a great way of predicting what’s next. If you gather enough data and play smart, you can easily create evergreen content that works today, and in the future.

11. Keep Bookmarks

Inspiration lives everywhere, and an article about space exploration could spark your genius just as easily as a thrilling post within your industry. Whenever you find some information that could come in handy at a future date, it makes sense to save a bookmark.

Browsers allow you to segment your bookmarks, meaning you can have multiple folders for your various needs. The only downside with bookmarks is it can all get messy when they rack up. Plus you’d have to keep digging deep just to find an article.

The main pro, of course, is you have a widening pool of blog ideas at any given time. This means you only need a serious amount of coffee stimulants to write that extra post you need to keep the wheels turning.

12. Live a Little

And by this, we simply mean stepping away from that darn screen for a moment. Life is for living, not living uptight if Jay-Z’s words are anything to go by. You need to let go a little, and just be. Enjoy a cup of coffee with a friend, go to a movie or skiing with your family – just do something other than write.

You agree writer’s block hits the hardest when you’re burned out. When you have no idea what to do with the blank page staring back at you, all other blog ideas simply vanish into thin air. Poof, just like that. It’s at these times you need to realize you’re not part of life, but life itself.

Go get a fresh breath of air, travel a little, read something, indulge in a hobby, spend time with the people you love – simply do anything to give yourself a much needed break. Poor you, you probably can’t come up with an idea to save your own life because of all that weight on your shoulders. Play a little, or be dumb.

14. Make an Idea List

This is the bread to the butter that’s the above point. Saving bookmarks is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. Plus, you need a browser to save your bookmarks. But, as we’ve already mentioned, you can find inspiration anywhere.

A great blog idea could strike at odd times, and you might just believe it’s committed to your shaky human memory for all eternity. Please don’t fool yourself mate, have a notepad ready to jot down ideas. If you hate paper, how about apps such as Evernote?

Forget inspiration sneaking up on you whenever, did you know you can actually trick your mind to generate ideas like clockwork? Yes, indeed you can. Take out a piece of paper and write down 10 blog ideas off the top of your head. Throw away that piece, and make another list of ten. Repeat daily.

15. Never Steal, Borrow

Visit popular blogs in your industry, follow them on social media and see what’s hot. Popular blogs usually have teams of writers, who come up with ideas on the regular. Popular blogs also have great editorial teams and the whole shebang meaning most of the work is already done for you.

You can collect some of the best ideas from popular blogs within your niche. It’s your job to create fresh and original content from said ideas, otherwise you’d be stealing somebody else’s work. You can definitely find motivation, or even a slightly different take on a popular topic on any blog.

Borrow the ideas, and build your own work around the topics. Just don’t steal the content because it might mean facing the bitter end of the law and the likes of Google. After all, why reinvent the wheel?

16. Organize Contests and Giveaways

Oh the freeloader in each one of us. God, we do all sort of things for free stuff. But if there’s something we love just as much as freebies, it is the chance to throw down in a competition of sort. We’re quite the competitive species, aren’t we? But it’s probably just Mother Nature having her way.

Anyhow, I have had the chance to participate in a couple of giveaways and contests and the results were amazing every single time. For starters, they make for great blog ideas, contests and giveaways, as all you need is something to give away.

When your well of ideas is running dry, you can always count on contests and giveaways as pick-me-up kind of posts. They do quite well as far as traffic and lead generation goes, and considering you don’t have to stay up all night setting up a contest or giveaway for your blog, we can say you’re all good buddy.

Over to You…

I won’t insult your intelligence by making claims this is a complete guide on how to come up with great blog ideas. We cannot refute there are as many approaches as there are human beings on this planet, meaning there’s still plenty of room to grow this list.

Before you go, would you mind sharing how you generate great blog ideas for your WordPress site? Which tools, if any, do you use, and which tip resonates with you the most? Thanks in advance and all the best nailing all the best blog ideas 🙂