Need Some Inspiration? 5 Blog Post Styles To Get You Started

If you've been blogging for some time now you might well be running out of ideas for posts that will keep your readers coming back for more. Don't let your blog be one of the thousands that are abandoned every year, here are five ways you can find new blog topics to keep your blog fresh and interesting.

1. Captions

Blogs should be timely so a great source of inspiration should be the day's news items. Look at newspaper and website headlines and captions that could spark an idea. Write about a news story and give your thoughts on it. Use an article for a springboard to a list post or a how to post.

A brilliant way to keep in touch with the news in your niche is to use the free Google Alerts service.

2. Comments

If you have readers who comment on your blog then their messages can be a great source of inspiration. Let's say that you write a blog post about keyword research and someone posts a comment asking for help with using those keywords for article marketing. You now have a topic for your next blog post. Read through your comments and identify topics that you can write about simply by answering the questions people are asking on your blog.

3. Companions

It's unlikely that you are the only website in your niche so another great theme for a blog post is a list or resource post. Visit other blogs in your niche and make a note of any interesting articles or resources you come across, now simply compile them into a list complete with URLs to post on your blog.

4. Community

Spend some time reading other blog posts and hang out in the forums for your niche. What topics are people talking about? Think about the problems that people in your niche have that need solving?

You should find a whole wealth of ideas here that you can then turn into blog posts. Write some how to articles to solve the problems you unearthed, or write a post in response to something that another blogger wrote about that you don't agree with, or that you want to shed new light on.

5. Calendar

Start collecting ideas for posts so that you always have something available when you get stuck for ideas. Keep a notebook where you can write down ideas as they come to you. Better still create an editorial calendar and write down topics that fit best at different times of the year. Try and make sure you have a blog post ideas listed every week so that you can just open your calendar and start writing without even having to worry about what to write about.