Never Run Out of Blog Ideas: 10 Tactics

This blog post will share 10 tactics that we use to ensure that we never run out of blog ideas. Content marketing has been a major driver for our growth, and coming up with post ideas has been easy.

Our organized system uses a lot of tactics that have been refined over time. We generate far more ideas than we have time to write about.

Read. A Lot.

Reading is one of the best ways to get inspired and learn about new topics. We read books and blogs that are relevant to our business and industry. This helps us stay informed and find new ideas to write about.

• For example, the idea for our popular post came from an Owner Mag piece I read about staying sane working solo.
• If you read something new every day, you’ll never run out of ideas to write about.

Get Into the Habit of Taking Notes

We take notes on everything we see around the web. Different folks on our team have different systems, from Evernote to simple text docs. Everything gets dumped into our communal blog-focused Trello board.

• Any time we get a blog post idea, we create a Trello card.
• When we see something around the web that’s relevant to a blog post idea we’ve been thinking about, a note gets added to that card.
• This helps us think about different perspectives and ways to make blog ideas better, and sometimes it changes the idea completely.

Talk to Your Customers

Our customers are the ones who we want to help with our blog. We talk to our customers and hear about the different problems and challenges they’re facing.

We use this information to create content that is relevant to their needs and interests.

• For example, when I talked to our customers, a lot of folks mentioned that our homepage video got them interested in trying Groove. They wanted to know how we made it, and how they could create a good explainer video, too.
• By talking to our customers and solving problems for them — even if those problems aren’t related to Groove — we build deeper relationships with people and make them more likely to want to do business with us.
• Our customers (and their challenges) will always be a huge source of content ideas for us.

"Copy" What's Worked for Others

Look at what other blogs are doing that's successful. You can learn a lot from analyzing what works for other blogs, and then put your own unique spin on it.

• We use BuzzSumo to see what the most shared URL’s from a domain are. For example, if you were interested in writing about content for startups, you might enter “groovehq.com/blog” into BuzzSumo.
• So now that you know that these topics resonate with people, can you offer an interesting, useful and unique take on any of them?
• What works for others won’t necessarily work for you. And simply writing about a topic isn’t enough to make a blog post a success.
• But this is a great technique for building a list of vetted blog topics that you know people are already interested in reading about.

Do Keyword Research

Keyword research is a good way to come up with ideas for the types of problems people actually want you to solve for them.

• Start with a general topic you’re thinking of writing about. For example, remote working.
• Use a tool like KeywordTool.io to get a list of the different Google searches that people do that relate to remote working.
• Use that information to create blog posts that address those search queries.

Scan Social Media, Forums, and Other Online Communities

Online communities are great places to find blog post ideas.

• Find subreddits on Reddit that are relevant to your blog and search for "how do you."
• This will bring up a list of posts where people are trying to learn new things or solve challenges.
• Addressing those burning issues is a clear win, and it also gives you a great place to come back and share your content.

Do Stuff That Other People Are Scared to Do

People love reading about things that they’re scared to try themselves. By taking those risks yourself and then writing about them, you get double the benefit.

• The upside from trying new things that could potentially grow your business, and the thought leadership that comes from writing about it.
• Some of our most popular posts have come from doing things that scared the hell out of us at the time: turning down funding, killing big features, deleting our Facebook page and walking away from an acquisition offer.
• This entire blog is focused around something that many people are scared to do: be transparent with their business.

Encourage Comments and Emails

Ask your readers for blog post ideas. Encourage them to comment on your blog posts and send you emails with questions and suggestions.

• Almost every single time we publish a post, someone comments asking for a post on a different topic.
• It’s a fantastic way to get blog post ideas that are already guaranteed to generate interest in a highly qualified audience: your existing readers.

Share Your Experiences (Even Small Ones)

You can blog about anything, as long as it’s unique, interesting and useful.

• We get a lot of our blog ideas from very routine, pedestrian things that we do that we think other people and companies might want to learn more about.
• Things like how we manage bug reports, A/B tests that didn’t work and why I write investor updates.
• People like to read about these things because there’s a good chance they have to do them too.

Repurpose Existing Content Into Different Formats

Don't waste your existing content. Repurpose it into different formats to reach a wider audience.

• Take a key point from a post and use it in other posts, simply reframing it.
• For example, take our “You’re in” email that we send to every new customer.
• Because it’s been so valuable, I really want people to see and steal this technique. So I’ve used it in posts about customer development, product videos, onboarding, testimonials and more.
• By discarding an idea every time you write about it, you rob yourself — and your readers — of massive potential value.

How to Apply This to Your Business

Use these 10 tactics to overcome the barrier of coming up with ideas for your blog.

• Steal any — or all — of these and pretty soon you’ll have more ideas than you can write about.
• Even if you’re already blogging regularly, I hope this gives you a new way to think about sourcing and coming up with content ideas to keep your blog fresh, interesting and effective.