Three of my teams recently mentioned that they were having a hard time coming up with new blog post topics and asked me if I had any tips for them.
I am fully aware that it must be a difficult, stressful and worrying task trying to think of a blog entry on a daily basis, if it has not been planned in advance. I gave them a very simple tool and now they have more blog post ideas than they know what to do with.
If you’re having a similar problem, all you need is a couple of free hours and an A4 pad of paper and I promise you’ll have more blog posts than you know what to do with. Once you’ve completed this exercise, your problem will be more about what order to write posts in, rather than stressing daily about finding a topic to blog about.
What we are going to do is create a “mental map” of your blog. The more time you spend on this, the better your blog will be, but you can do the basic plan in less than twenty minutes.
Take a blank sheet of paper and in the center of this sheet write the central theme of your blog in a maximum of two or three words; internet marketing, technology, health and fitness, making money, cars and bikes, vacations abroad, etc.
For the purposes of this exercise I am going to use a core topic of “Internet Marketing”.
Draw a circle around the words of your central theme. Now draw a number of equally spaced arrows radiating from this central theme. At this stage, I suggest you start with 6, 8, or 10, and you can add or subtract these values later.
Draw a small circle at the end of each arrow and in each circle write a subtopic that is directly related to your central topic. This becomes your check sheet.
Using “Internet Marketing” as the central theme you could choose;
- blog
- social networks
- Brand
- Marketing
- making money
- affiliate marketing
- Reviews
- Dirty
For each of these subtopics, repeat the exercise you just did for Internet Marketing on a new sheet of paper.
For example, on one sheet of paper I would write “Blogging” in the center of the sheet, and on a second sheet of paper I would write “Social Media”, and so on for each of my topics.
Again, draw 6, 8, or 10 equally spaced arrows radiating from the core themes of “blogging” and “social media” and draw a small circle at the end of each arrow.
In these circles, write subtopics that are directly related to the central topic.
For “Blogging” I could choose;
- Choose a blog host
- create a blog
- Choose a theme
- How to write a post
- How to edit a post
- Choose a title for each post
- Accessories
- SEO Basics
- tags
- post-syndication
For “Social networks” you could choose;
- The importance of social networks
- Youtube
- dig
- stumbled
At this point, if you started with your central topic and thought of just eight subtopics and another eight topics for each of these subtopics, you now have SIXTY-FOUR separate but linked ideas for your blog.
Now it starts to get really exciting. Let’s take the topic “social media” and use “Facebook” as a subtopic.
Get a new sheet of paper and write “Facebook” as the central topic and think of as many different aspects of Facebook (FB) that you could write 300 – 1500 words about. You can choose themes like;
- FB history and how many users you have
- Set up and edit a FB profile
- Basic FB Etiquette
- Join a FB group
- Create a FB group
- Add and remove friends
- Creating and editing a FB fan page
- Shorten the URL of a FB fan page
- advertising on fb
- Add a picture from FB
- Messaging on FB
- FB capture page creation
- Personalization of FB pages and images
- advertising on fb
Now, for some of your sixty-four topics, you might only be able to think of three or five separate things to write a post about, but for others, like FB, you might be able to think of twenty or thirty. The above list was produced while I was writing and I thought very little of it.
I would suggest that if you think about it a bit, you probably get an average of TEN topics for each of your sixty-four. This means you now have SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY potential posts!
Put all your sheets of paper in one file and compile an index as the first sheet. As you write about a particular topic, cross it off your index sheet, and as you write a post and think of another subtopic, you can add it to your index.
I would suggest that six hundred and forty potential posts, written in perhaps four or five posts a week, means you now have two years worth of ideas in front of you and shelved, ready and waiting for action. I think you’ll agree that a couple of hours of work, or even a couple of days of work, is a result in anyone’s language.
However, if you think or feel that you would like more ideas, you can contact me through my details below.