 Image by Jilbert Ebrahimi: https://unsplash.com/@jilburr Without ideas for your blog posts and, in general, your blogging activities, blogging business, you probably will become dry over time. It's really, really important for you to have those ideas. As James Altucher says, you have to become an idea machine over time. Here is the plan for you to do this. It's quite daunting, right, to write regularly, perhaps daily, on different topics to your audience and to come up with new information, new exciting information, not to repeat yourself too much. Although, repeating yourself is not necessarily a bad thing, because a lot of people consume your information in different ways, in different time, in different periods, in different length, using various audio, video, or text tools that they need. So it's really not a bad thing to have a presence in text, audio, and video when we talk about sharing ideas with your audience. 1. Write 10 Ideas a Day How to have this idea every day? One of the easiest ways to think about this is to write down ideas every day. Make a list and carry your notebook for ideas with you all the time. For example, I have this small notebook which fits in my pocket, and I carry it with me all the time, all day long. Ideas for blogging would come to me when I take a shower, when I take a walk, anywhere in my day. It's so powerful to have those ideas coming to you, but if you don't carry this notebook with you, you will forget. You will forget that even you had a great idea. Perhaps you don't know that it's a great idea or a bad idea, but for now, I would recommend you write 10 ideas a day, a list of 10 ideas a day. The way to do this is very simple. You think about the topic that is relevant to you in your area that you can use later on in your blogging business. One time a day, just once, you make a list of ideas related to this topic. For example, it could have anywhere from 10 to 20 ideas, actually. As you are writing idea number one, two, three, it becomes easy, but somewhere around idea six, you might get stuck. Then, you have to think more deeply about it. The deeper you think, the more sweat you use in your idea muscle, because your brain really is some sort of muscle. It needs to have exercise, and coming up with ideas, actually, it's a great exercise for the brain. Those ideas can be about really anything, not necessarily connected to your blog. Since you are a blogger and have a specific topic, specific area, maybe it is very valuable for you to, for a certain amount of time, maybe for a month or maybe three months or maybe half a year, notate any kind of idea that comes to you about your blogging area. Then, you can expand on it in your blog post. It is that simple. You can do this the next day or even the same day, which means that you could even write 10 blog posts per day if you want. If you want, you could have the best idea, you choose the best idea and write a blog post on that, or you could write one long-form blog post based on the points from your idea notebook for a certain day. I know it might sound like a burden to you right now, but you have to believe me when I say this, it will pay off to you in no time. You will soon discover that ideas will flow to you sort of like from your muse. You will get inspired to write more creatively this way, more interestingly. The way to do this is always to notate at least 10 ideas a day. 2. Make an Outline Another way to have ideas for blogging is, of course, through making an outline. Any kind of book, any kind of teaching, any kind of training must have an outline. Even my talk today and training for today has a specific outline that is notated in my notebook. I'm following my outline. Here's a very simple way to add this outline in your blogging process. Think about 10 related topics to your blogging area. Let's say you are trying to help people to have a better lifestyle, a healthy lifestyle perhaps, develop good and healthy habits. So, what kind of topics could you come up with? 10 is a good number. You could have an exercise, mental health, physical health, emotional health, spiritual health. Those are different areas, and you could even expand on that. You could think about how to develop those habits, how to keep the habits, what are the mistakes people make in developing the good habits, what are the greatest challenges people meet on the way to their goals? You see how many ideas I came up just in a few moments. This isn't even a general topic, but you could be thinking about your own area, your own expertise, and you could easily come up with 10 different topics from your area. Then, another step is taking those 10 topics and go deeper into each one by making a list of 10 subtopics. 10 by 10. This kind of outline, when you have 10 by 10 outline, is immensely helpful whenever you're setting out to write more blog posts, more trainings, e-books, teachings, anything you like, coaching. Use this 10 by 10 outline, and you will never run out of great ideas for your blogging. 3. Quora In today's world, you could also look for ideas for your blogging in Quora. Quora is a very popular platform for people not only to share the information, basically to have a blog on their own platform, but to actually ask questions, Quora, and provide answers. Whenever I get stuck, I check what kind of questions do people ask in my own area on Quora, and I will see a lot of great information, a lot of questions that previously I didn't even think about. You could answer simply those questions. That's a beautiful post right there. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be short. Just an average amount that you feel comfortable about. Some of the posts will become longer, because some of the questions that your readers will be asking on Quora will be deeper, so you want sometimes to go deep, but do not neglect Quora. It's a very, very powerful tool for coming ideas for blogging today. 4. Ask Your Subscribers If you have some email subscribers who subscribe to your blog to get the updates or even a special newsletter that you're providing, then you could actually send a simple email asking for their help, from the subscribers. Basically, asking them what are they struggling with, what their goals are in the next few months, and how you could help them. Believe me, some people really will write you back and will be very grateful for you to ask. In a lot of cases, a lot of people who are working online, either on blogs or something other than blogs, they don't even consider asking their audience. They just produce content and broadcast it like from TV, but they don't get the feedback. They don't bother to ask. When you ask personally what kind of questions people have, what kind of struggles people face today in their own area, they will be very, very grateful for you. You could actually create a lot of blog posts and trainings just simply from your subscriber answers. Imagine if you have 10 people who answer you. 10 people answer you, and each of them has maybe three things that they are struggling with, so you have 30 topics already. If you go deeper with this, if you divide each topic that they're struggling with into 10 subtopics, you will have 300 topics for your training program, for your coaching program, or even for audiobook. So make sure you frequently communicate with your subscribers and ask questions. 5. Forums Another way to find out what your readers will want to learn more is through forums. Just simply go online and type your area, your niche, keywords and add forum at the end. For example, weight loss forum or vacation planning forum or fashion forum. Anything you want. Believe me, you will find tens or even hundreds of forums online today. When you go to your few top forums in your niche, you simply read the top questions people are having in their own area. These are the questions that needs to be answered by you. You have to take out your idea notebook and write down the questions. Write down the questions and simply provide the answers, either in your blog post or in your other training that you want to come up with. Forums is one of the greatest places you will find the actual real help people need with. You could also go to Google keywords tool and check for your keywords in your area, but today, when we look for help online, we are not typing simply a phrase related to our area like weight loss. This is an area, right? This is a keyword. We are writing a question into the search engine, a very detailed and specific questions, sort of like how to lose two pounds a month. If you see this kind of question on a forum, that's the right question to answer in the blog post or on other training that you will provide in your blog. 6. Blog Comments I also find that when you read other people's blogs or your own blog comments, you might find great questions, also, people ask. That's a great resource for coming up with ideas to write about. Simply check your own blog comments or go to the relevant blogs of your niche and become a reader there and check the latest or more important blog posts, which will have quite a few comments. In many of them, people will ask questions. Not only get personal feedback about that post, sharing their own experiences, but a lot of people will ask further questions which would come up from the topic of that particular blog post that they're reading at the time. So, how do you find those blogs, first of all? You have to enter your area of expertise into your search engine plus the word blog. Let's say I'm writing about basically relationships, how to basically help couples to have better relationships. So maybe I would type into search engine relationship for couples, and at the end, I would add the word "blog." Relationships for couples blog. Or if you are teaching, let's say, tennis, you could add tennis blog or tennis training blog, sort of like this. A lot of blogs will come up on the search engine. You don't necessarily need to research all of them, just a few top of them. Look at what's on the first page, generally, first 10 results. Try reading those blogs. Not only try to see the comments, but I recommend you subscribe to those blogs. Later on, when you read those blogs, regularly we receive their own updates from the blog posts in your own area. You have great ideas just by reading blog posts in your own area that you subscribe to. If you want to become a successful blogger, you not only have to write a lot but also subscribe to many, many blogs, as many blogs in your area as you can find, because you want to be on top of things. 7. Facebook Groups Another way to find ideas for blogging is to have a Facebook group and to look at what kind of information people are asking in a Facebook group in your niche, in your own area. So, go to Facebook and type the keywords of your area plus the word "group". You will find a lot of profiles there, but some of them will be related to your area and some of them will be groups, public or private groups. If the group is public, you could right away join this group and start researching the questions that people ask each other. If the group is private, you should ask for permission to join. Usually, a few hours or days might pass between this moment when you ask for permission to join and the moment you become approved. Once you're approved, you will discover a lot of valuable information there, not only questions but ideas for your own blogging posts. Facebook groups are tremendously valuable, provided that they're real groups and not spamming groups. Sometimes in any area nowadays, people come to spam others by submitting irrelevant information. Basically, self-serving links, which perhaps may or may not be helpful to you or to your purpose. If you find a very powerful closed group, private group, and if you prove that you are worth it in joining this group, then, of course, this group will be an amazing tool for generating ideas for each other, for the blogging success. 8. LinkedIn Groups Another group that will be very valuable in your blogging business is LinkedIn groups in your area. If you join LinkedIn group for your niche, you will find lots of useful questions people are asking. It's sort of a more professional forum, of sorts, because other social media platforms, people are posting more personal information, but on LinkedIn, they are more professionally minded and professionally oriented. They will need your expertise much more than, let's say, on Facebook. When you join a LinkedIn group, dig deep and look for questions that people are asking. This will help you to come up with great blogging ideas in the future. 9. Read a Lot When you think about blogging topics and you're trying to come up with wonderful ideas to blog about, it's not only important to notate the ideas down in your idea notebook, but you have to read a lot everyday. If you want to become a successful blogger, you have to become a very prolific reader as well. Generally, successful bloggers recommend that you read as much varied material as possible, either related to your area of expertise or not, it doesn't matter. For example, every day, try to read at least one chapter from different four books. One book might be your area of expertise. Another book might be a good fiction writing. The third book could have inspirational content that you admire that would motivate you. The fourth would be a fun book about maybe games or something related to your hobby. Those four types of books are very important. Your career, your hobby, fiction, and inspirational books. If you read at least a chapter a day every day from those four books, you will not have a shortage of ideas at all, because you will literally become an idea machine, as James Altucher says all the time. Why it is important to read various books, not only related to your career or blogging expertise but also a good fiction, let's say? A good fiction will help make your writing better, actually, because subconsciously, when you consume a good book, when you read a classical book or a good thriller, let's say, you will actually learn so much great expressions that will make your language more colorful. That way, you can communicate much better with your blog audience. Why do you need a book about inspiration, the thing that inspires you, such as spiritual book or any other motivational book that you admire? Simply because it really helps you stay optimistic about life, to stay very positive about the future if you read just a few pages from such a book every day, like one chapter. Believe me, you could come up with great ideas for your blog just from the simple inspirational book that you are reading right now, so this is very powerful. You might ask, "Why do you need to read a book related to your hobby?" Let's say you like to read comics. Why do you need comics as an adult? Comics, of course, is a wonderful pastime. It transfers you to another dimension, to another world of fiction, but with pictures. It connects with another portion of your brain, and it's very, very pleasant. It's like watching a movie, a great movie, but even better because this pleasure lasts longer than a movie, right? So you must not forget your own pleasures, your own hobbies, and think about it a lot and read about it. This way, you can come up with amazing ideas to write on your blog very easily. 10. Combine Ideas If you're struggling to come up with ideas for your blog, I recommend you also combine some of the ideas. Combine some of the ideas that are not necessarily apparent from the first time. Let's say what other people have combined. What did Uber combine? Uber combined a taxi service and combined car sharing experience. People who have cars and have more time, they could earn more money by having people to take someplace in their own cars. They combine two unrelated ideas. All right, what does, for example, PayPal combine? PayPal combines payment processor and a marketplace, two different ideas. When you combine those, you get PayPal. What is another good example of this? What is a comic? Comic is a story written with both text and pictures. You combine those two, two ideas. In your own area, you can come up with several ideas, and you can come up with the combination of them. You know how to be successful in today's world, in the world where so much competition is taking place. In your own area, perhaps, if you're just getting started, maybe there are thousands of bloggers already writing about what you want to write, but if you want to be successful and want to come up with great ideas, you have to combine two unrelated ideas. That's how you become unique, at the intersection, because nobody else will be doing the same kind of thing, the same kind of combination. You have to think deeply what can you combine. That will help you produce unique ideas for your blog. 11. Childhood Interests If you're struggling to find ideas to write about in your blog and even not sure about what your area of expertise is, look in your childhood more closely. When you were little, maybe from 8 years old until 13 or 14 years old, what were you passionate about? What were the things that interested you the most? Maybe you were interested in comics. Maybe in movies. Maybe in sports. Maybe in other things. Maybe in trains. Maybe in space. Maybe in drawing. Maybe in music, right? Maybe you like to play an instrument. Maybe dance. Somehow along the way, in the middle school usually, people tend to forget the passions from their childhood. Later on in their life when they're grown-up adults or even senior persons already in advanced age, they will discover something which is deeply missing from their own childhood. When they look at the hobbies they had in their childhood, today they can be really useful, let's say, in your blogging business, too. Your childhood passions might become resurrected today, and you might become passionate about that, too. You were passionate all the time, but life got in the way. You worked at another job. You did some things that you were not necessarily passionate about, and you sort of postponed your passion or maybe put your passion on the back burner, so to say. Today, you're free to research and look deeply at your childhood passions and think maybe a combination of childhood passions might be useful to come up for your blogging ideas. That's usually a very pleasant activity, to remember the childhood passions, and it could be very useful and valuable for people today in their blogging business. 12. Good or Bad Ideas? When you think about blogging deeply, I recommend you write down a lot of ideas every day. Write 10 or 20 ideas and become an idea machine, as James Altucher says, over time. A lot of people are struggling with this still, because they're worried that they will produce bad ideas. Now, nobody is happy when we produce bad ideas. For example, you know Thomas Edison, who invented light bulb, he failed about 10,000 times, but he didn't give up. He was successful only at the last attempt. He basically produced 9,999 bad ideas about how to make a light bulb. Only the last one, or so the legend goes, was successful, but this didn't stop him. That's why we have today a light bulb, and that's why light bulb is an invention by Thomas Edison. That's why we remember him, although he was a great inventor of many other things, as well. In general, those inventions didn't happen right away. The final great versions of the inventions happened only because of many, many failures. When you write down ideas every day, don't be concerned whether an idea is a good one or not. Just simply write down. Your purpose is to write down the ideas, as many ideas as you can come up. It doesn't take long to come up with ideas every day. Maybe if you read a lot and your brain is ripe with information you just read, you can come up with 10 or even 20 ideas just from reading a simple chapter very easily. Some of the ideas will not be good, and that's okay. In your life, over time, in the years to come, you will produce literally thousands of ideas. Imagine if you did this every day for one year. How many ideas would you get? You would get 3,650 ideas at least if you did this for one year and write down 10 ideas a day. Will all the ideas be good and valuable from those idea lists? Absolutely not, but some of them definitely will be. So don't worry about the quality of the ideas, just worry about the quantity for now. Out of quantity will grow quality, as well. This is very powerful, and never forget to write down 10 ideas a day, regardless whether you think they're good or bad. I hope this has been valuable to you. What is your experience with coming up blogging ideas? Did I miss something? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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