It doesn’t matter how long you have been blogging for, be it 5 months or 5 years – we all get to a point where we look blankly at the screen for hours sitting here with thoughts in our heads but nothing making it onto the screen and of course there will be times when you have absolutely no idea what you want to blog about.
Words fail us all and inspiration can be thin on the ground. We all want to write posts which will be read but where do we start when writers block hits
Whatever your niche, there are ways around this and planning/brainstorming is a great place to start.
Look at a calendar:
With 12 months to work on you can find a topic you could write about for each:
- January: New Years Resolutions
- February: Valentines Day – crafts, recipes, gift ideas, write a letter to a loved one
- March: Mothers Day – Homemade gifts, recipes, cards, write a post about your own mother or a mother figure, share your earliest memories
- April: Easter
- May: Getting ready for BlogOn – write an introduction to who you are (don’t forget to share a picture so others know what you look like) and link up to the ice-breaker linky
- June: Fathers Day
- July: Summer holidays – share your plans, a holiday you have loved, where you would like to go – a recipe you loved from a country you’ve visited
- August: Summer
- September: Back to school
- October: Halloween
- November: Guy Faulkes, Fireworks
- December: Christmas, crafts, gift guides/idea, recipes
These are just a few guide ideas to start off a brainstorming session, and if you look online you’ll find more random things you could write about Nationaldaycalendar.com is a great resource for listing these, such as: National Maccoroni Day, National Hangover Day, National Bubble Bath Day…the lists are endless
Evergreen Posts
Evergreen posts are posts which people will read at any time of the year, which can be shared again and again at any time, not seasonal or topical.
“A good tweet peaks at 18 minutes. An evergreen blog post lasts for years” – Bufferapp.com
Tutorials and how-to-guides are always popular – informative posts which are often searched for. It is a good idea to spend a little more time on these types of posts making sure to include keywords which will be searched for, updating them if information changes, add a pinnable image so it can easily be shared, and make sure you have sharing buttons under or on the post so readers can share it for you.
Collaborate with fellow bloggers:
This can be done in many ways, joining in with linky’s, commenting on your favourite posts, guest post for another blog and invite another blogger to do the same for you – this is great if you are looking to get yourself in front of a new readership and works well for both parties. Sharing a post you’ve particularly liked by RT’ing it on Twitter or sharing to your blogs FB page. Crowd-sourced posts: these has become increasingly popular and are a way of sharing other bloggers thoughts and opinions on a topic/subject you would like to write about.
Planning and organising:
Now it is all good and well having these ideas and brainstorming but you’ll then want to organise them so you have an idea of when to write about them. This can be done in any way you want – pen and paper, bullet diaries, spreadsheets or even an editorial calendar.
Give it a go for yourselves – can you write down 5 blog titles or topics ?