I mentioned in my recent anniversary post that most of my material for post ideas comes from my actual experiences with Internet Marketing. That’s good, because it gives my posts a unique spin that you won’t find anywhere else. It’s also good, because every thing I do online tends to generate at least one post idea, so I rarely run out.
This week has been especially busy, though, so I haven’t had a chance to do much online. So I thought I’d share some tips for what to do when you run out of post ideas.
#5: Use a marginal idea
As you’ve been writing posts all along, there have probably been some ideas that weren’t quite good enough or fleshed out enough for a full post. Well, if you’re out of ideas anyway, you might as well use one of those marginal ideas. It might not be your best post ever, but you might surprise yourself once you start writing.
#4: Read other blogs in your niche
Head on over to your favorite other blogs in your niche, and see what they’ve written about lately. Maybe you can take one of their ideas, put your unique spin on it, and write about that.
#3: Use StumbleUpon for inspiration
Go to StumbleUpon and stumble a few sites in an appropriate niche. Maybe you’ll hit a web comic that provides you with just the inspiration you needed.
#2: Digg Deep
Visit Digg and see what sorts of related news stories are up and coming. If you don’t have any original ideas, you could at least write about one of those news items before it reaches the front page of Digg.
#1: Write a Top 5 List
If all else fails, write a top 5 (or 10, or whatever) list about what to do when you run out of post ideas.
What do you do when you’re just stuck for post ideas, but you’ve got a posting schedule to keep?
Nice article! I´m running out of good ideas once in a while too and when this happens I visit mybloglog, digg and other social sites to see if I could get some ideas for a post.A last resort is to buy an article that I re-write, but this is not often.
Rewriting purchased articles is an idea I hadn’t thought of, mostly because I’ve never purchased an article. There are plenty of people out there doing article writing very inexpensively, though. Might be a nice fill in for expected downtime.