As a blogger, you know that sometimes the hardest thing to do is come up with content for your blog. Finding ideas for your blog (especially if you want to post regularly) can often lead to you not blogging at all, because you start hitting the wall when it comes to what to blog about.
So I thought it might be useful to offer up 25 ways to use the web to find content for your blog. Here they are.
Blog Comments
1. Using a plug-in like CommentLuv allows your commenter to share their most recent post. I’ve seen blog titles that have intrigued me and clicked through to read, and given me an idea for a post of my own. We use CommentLuv on For Bloggers By Bloggers.
2. If you see a comment that really resonates and offers a great viewpoint, ask the poster if they’d like to guest for you and expand on the original comment.
3. Similar to above, if you see a comment you disagree with, expand your own view into a post and offer reasons why your viewpoint is different.
Other Blogs
4. As #1 points out, CommentLuv is great for sharing the most recent post of a blogger, but not every blog uses it. So click through the URL of someone’s comment and see what they’re writing about, to see if you can gather ideas from there.
5. Blogrolls. While some have called blogrolls out of date, many bloggers still use them to share what they’re reading. Visit the blogs of those your favourite blogger reads, and see what ideas you can get from them.
6. A lot of bloggers have category lists for Top 10 Tips and popular posts in their navigation menu. Have a look and see what’s there, and use them to build your own content from.
7. Speaking of popular posts, if a blogger has their most popular posts on display in their sidebar, click on a couple to read and see what made them popular. Then see how you can take inspiration from them.
Social Bookmarks
8. Delicious is a great resource for finding blog content. Just type your topic into the Delicious search bar and you’ll find a ton of results from people that have saved articles or blog posts about your chosen topic.
9. Stumbleupon is a cool browser add-on that lets you browse websites at random. You can land on some great content that will give you your own ideas for your blog.
10. While not as popular as it used to be, Digg still has some great shared posts and news on its site. Look at the most popular and see what take you can offer.
11. BizSugar is becoming more popular, as it concentrates on small business news. If your blog is in this niche, you can get some great ideas from here.
12. A mix of social bookmarking and community, Blog Engage is similar to Digg and BizSugar with its voting system, but it focuses a lot on just bloggers and is a great starting point for ideas.
Blog Resources
13. One of my favourite blog communities is Scribnia. You can find authors and bloggers based on niches, and this can really help you target content to get inspiration from.
14. Alltop offers a great collection of blogs in a veritable feast of topics – if you can’t find something to write about there, then I’m stuck!
15. Still viewed by many as the Blogger’s Bible, Technorati has more than 133 million blogs registered with them. Use the categories or top topics to find content you can get ideas from.
16. Google Blog Search offers up a huge resource of blogs on every topic under the sun. Much like Alltop and Technorati, use the topic search to find your interests.
17. Another resource from Google is their Trends platform. If you’re quick off the mark, you can write a blog post about a trending topic, optimize it for SEO, and (hopefully) be found by those looking at the trends for that moment.
18. Junta 42 offers some great tips on content marketing – check out their articles for ways to get ideas for your own blog.
Social Networks
19. If you’re on Twitter, one of the best ways to find content for your blog is to jump into the weekly #blogchat discussion. Great bloggers, great topics – what more do you need?
20. Sticking with Twitter, have a look at what’s trending at any time on that platform then see if you can get a post out about it (just don’t go all spammy with your hashtags when your post is ready). Trendsmap is a great resource for global trends.
21. And yet again with Twitter, Twitter Search is great for finding out what people are saying regarding the stuff you blog about – type in a keyword, and see if any conversations inspire you to expand on them in a blog post.
22. On Facebook there’s a great app called Networked Blogs, that shares content from Facebook users with blogs, and the Networked Blogs directory. You can get a widget with different blogs in it, and use this to build some ideas for your own content.
23. LinkedIn Groups are perfect for finding blog content. Look at the questions being asked on there and write a blog post as your answer.
24. Seen by many as a place for file and document sharing, Slideshare has great presentations that are just chock full of ideas for you to take away and build several blog posts from.
25. YouTube is more than just a video upload site – think about grabbing a tips video, for example, embedding it into a blog post and then riffing on what else could have been added to the video to make it a better resource.
Your Turn
As you can see, there are a ton of ideas that you can get from places you’re already using, but may not have thought of. These are just 25 – but there’s bound to be a ton more.
So how about you – what are some of the ways you find content for your blog? Share your tips in the comments!
image: hugovk
