If you’ve been blogging for a while (or even if you haven’t actually) you will hit a point where you hit a block and can’t come up with blog post ideas that seem worthwhile.
I suffer from this terribly at times, even though I have a long list of ideas for blog posts. Sometimes I look at my list and think the ideas just aren’t strong enough.
Hitting a block is a fact of life for anyone who writes… and those that claim never to have hit one are either lying or the exception to the rule.
If you find yourself with a case of blogger’s block and can’t think of anything to write about, try these ideas to unblock your creativity and set you on the way to blogging with a clear head again.
Blog Post Idea Generators
Remember school homework and what a drag it felt like sometimes? It felt restrictive to me to march to someone else’s drum at times, however…
… homework set parameters that you HAD to work within. They gave you focus because the parameters forced you to work towards producing an end result: your homework.
It might not have been the way you’d prefer to work, but it was effective.
Now… I’m not advocating that you get a blogging teacher to set you homework every day. However, there are a zillion sites that can help to give you parameters within which to produce blog posts.
With this in mind, here are some useful tools to come up with ideas for blog titles.
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator is a really neat tool to help gives you some ideas.
You just need to feed it up to 5 nouns and set it to work. I’ll give you an example based on this post.
I fed the Topic Generator the nouns “blog”, “post” and “ideas” and this is what it gave me:
- Blog: Expectations vs. Reality
- Will Post Ever Rule the World?
- The Next Big Thing in Ideas
- Blog Explained in Fewer than 140 Characters
- This Week’s Top Stories About Post
Okay… so you can see they’re not necessarily great titles for blog posts, but each one gives you something to work with. For example:
- Blogging: Expectations vs. Reality
- Will Blogging Ever Rule the World?
- The Next Big Thing in Blog Posts
- Blogs Explained in Fewer than 140 Characters
- This Week’s Top Stories About Blogs
Get the idea?
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator gives you five suggestions per each noun set you provide it with. You can download up to 250 suggestions though if you complete a form passing some personal details to Hubspot.
If you’re stuck, this can be a great asset to give you some seed ideas.
Blog Title Generator by SEOPressor
SEOPressor’s Blog Title Generator is another little helper that even Santa would be proud to have!
It’s very simple to use. You pass it a keyword and select one of the following options from a dropdown menu depending on whether it’s a:
- Generic term
- Brand/product
- An event
- Location
- An industry
- Location
- Person’s name
- Skill
The Title Generator takes this and spits out a bunch of blog titles for you to think about.
In my test, I chose the word “blogging” and selected the “Skill” option. This created some great titles for me, such as:
- Seven Ways To Use Blogging To Your Advantage.
- 5 Shocking Facts About Blogging.
- Seven Preparations You Should Make Before Using Blogging.
- Five Facts You Never Knew About Blogging.
- 7 Fundamental Rules You Can’t Afford To Ignore When It Comes To Blogging.
- 5 Common Myths About Blogging.
I’ll probably use some of these!
Each time you generate blog titles you can refresh to reveal others from the pool of titles it creates from your query. However, you can only use the tool 5 times each day (including refreshes) unless you subscribe by passing your email. If you do this you’ll have unlimited access.
I find this generates more useful and meaningful titles than some of the others.
BlogAbout Title Generator by Impact
Impact’s BlogAbout Title Generator is another interesting blog title ideas generator that works in a slightly different way to the two mentioned above.
You provide it with an initial generic term (I used “blogging”) and click next. This returns a single title with spaces for you to add words to complete it. These are a few it created for me:
- 3 Unbeatable Strategies to Win the War for Visitors
- 5 Essential Ingredients Every Blog Post Needs
- 4 Ways Blogging Can Kill Your Productivity
- 5 Predictions for the Future of Blogging
- 8 Things That Make Your Blog Posts Less Effective
You can “like” any title you want to keep and it’ll add it to a list at the bottom of the page.
My one complaint about the BlogAbout title generator is it’s a little more time consuming to produce ideas. Having said this the results aren’t half bad.
Portent’s Content Idea Generator
Portent’s Content Idea Generator is a very popular utility that many SEO behemoths recommend. I like it too!
Similar to the BlogAbout Title Generator, you feed it a seed word and it provides single post title ideas rather than spitting out a handful each time.
I rather like the titles it creates though, and although you have to click to generate a new one what you get is quite interesting. Here’s what it gave me for the keyword “blogging”:
- Blogging by the Numbers
- How Blogging Can Make You Sick
- 8 Ways Blogging Could Leave You Needing a Lawyer
- 19 Great Articles About Blogging
- Why Blogging is Scarier Than Taylor Swift
These ideas are interesting and give you bags of opportunity to be discursive. Of course it’s valuable to be able to add data analysis and relevant sources within your blog posts, but the content I enjoy writing tend to be more discursive rather than analytical.
The Blog Post Ideas Generator by Build Your Own Blog
BYOB’s Blog Post Ideas Generator doesn’t require a seed keyword idea to make suggestions for you.
You literally click the “Generate Blog Post Idea” button and away it goes. It returns half completed titles that you can add to focus them on a particular topic. For example:
- [Add Your Idea] Rules You Should Break!
- 7 Reasons Why [Add Your Idea] Always Work
- Why You Should Always [Add Your Idea] First
- The Benefits of [Add Your Idea]
- The Art of [Add Your Idea]
Again you have to click and wait for an individual idea but the results are good enough for you to put pen to paper… or, erm, keyboard to screen!
A nice feature of BYOB’s Blog Post Ideas Generator is there is a Google Chrome extension for it. I’ve not installed it personally (I try to keep my browsers as light as possible) but the reviews are good and it’s had a good few thousand downloads.
Summary
- Writer’s block is something you will encounter so don’t beat yourself up about it.
- There are days when the list of post ideas I have (I have a lot!) just don’t inspire me… perhaps I’ve looked at them for too long.
- Don’t flog yourself trying to come up with your own ideas to find a solution to blogger’s block.
- Blog post idea generators can offer a fresh source of input for you. Indeed, just running through the ones I’ve listed here has given me some inspiration!
- The post ideas tools that I prefer from the ones I’ve listed are:
- Always remember… ideas are one thing but high quality content must always be a priority for you.
I’ll update this post with further useful tools as I find them… but for now this should help you get through those times when you just can’t seem come up with ideas for posts!
That’s it for now.
Paul
If you have any ideas to add to this list, please drop a comment below and I’ll include them. Alternatively you can ask me a question and I’ll reply asap!
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