This document provides 101 ideas for blog post content from two sources - www.davidrisley.com and www.ihelpyoublog.com. The ideas range from discussing your own experiences, social media interactions, forum discussions, keyword research, interviews, tutorials, reviews, polls, series, and more. The goal is to generate ongoing topics that are interesting and helpful for your readers while driving engagement and traffic.

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HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR OWN BLOG: LESSON 7
PREPARING POSTS FOR YOUR BLOG
WHERE DO YOU GET IDEAS FOR YOUR BLOG?
www.davidrisley.com Suggest the following 7 sources of ideas for your blog
1. Your Own Experience. Obviously. Sometimes you just think up ideas.
2. Blog Comments. Watch the comments on your site. What questions are they asking?
3. New Email Subscribers. I recommend that you set up an autoresponder message on your list so that they are
surveyed shortly after they subscribe to your list. You can either point them to an actual survey or simply ask
them to reply to the email. What you want to ask them is how you can help them, what they want to learn from
you, and what are their frustrations. When you set this up in your autoresponder sequence, then you’ll have an
ongoing source of new content ideas, right from the very people who landed on your blog.
4. Social Media. Directly ASK people on Facebook and Twitter what they want to know about related to your niche.
Record each idea – and WHO said it – then you can write up a post and feature the person who asked the
question. Great way to get post ideas as well as involve your followers. Another idea is to monitor the big
keywords of your niche on Twitter search. You can both chime in with answers as well as use the input for post
ideas. Little hint: Pay attention to HOW they ask the question, because that’s probably close to what they’d type
into Google. SEO, baby.
5. Forums. Forums are whole websites based on nothing but conversation, in their own words, and people getting
help. In terms of getting blog post ideas for a related niche, it really doesn’t get any better than that.
6. Social Bookmarking. If you check out the top stories in your niche on the major social bookmarking sites, it
gives you an idea what is getting attention. You can twist that into a post idea for your site.
7. Wordtracker Questions. I picked this one up from Shane inside our Inner Circle program (some cool things
happening in there). Go to Wordtracker Keyword Questions. Type in a niche keyword and see what kinds of
questions people are asking. Just beautiful. You can use the tool a few times publicly, but after that, they’ll hit you
up for a free account to keep using it.
HERE ARE REAL GREAT POSTING IDEAS from www.ihelpyoublog.com
1. Brainstorm by matching up your readers wants and needs using the Visitor Grid method of brainstorming.
2. Write a post by examining the pros and cons of an issue.
3. Write a tutorial.
4. Do an interview with key people in your niche.
5. Create a mock head-to-head competition like what Daniel did.
6. Do a case study like what Read/Write Web did with the hot topics on Technorati 100.
7. Take an alternate position.
8. Write a long comment.
9. Pick a topic by reading business book titles.
10. Research a topic by doing research on Amazon.com.
11. Drill down on a topic using Ask.com‘s search feature.
12. Do a post that answers your readers’ questions.
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13. Create a comprehensive list.
14. Create flagship content.
15. Interview controversial people in your niche.
16. Post about current events in your niche.
17. Invite your readers to submit articles.
18. Instead of exchanging links, get together with other bloggers and review each others’ blogs.
19. Connect with bloggers around your same level and share ideas.
20. Do a “speedlinking” post.
21. Post about posts made by others in your My Blog Log community.
22. Be opinionated in your post.
23. Turn off the nofollow attribute to encourage comments.
24. Do a “tag” post and have other bloggers who are tagged add to a list.
25. Do an “IM” PPC campaign and then post about the results.
26. Be a guest blogger and share ideas with new readers.
27. Review your statistics to see what keywords referred your visitors to your site and post about those.
28. Answer your readers’ questions with more questions (i.e., have you thought about…?).
29. Contrast two or more positions in a post.
30. Make a post that solves a problem.
31. Make a post that is inspirational.
32. Make a satirical post.
33. Write a series of posts.
34. Post your research findings.
35. Post an “advantages/disadvantages” post.
36. Update an old post for new ideas/findings.
37. Link ideas from different genres in your posts (e.g., Celebrities and the gadgets they own).
38. Debunk a myth in your post.
39. Make a post for beginners.
40. Make a post for advanced readers.
41. Invite experts to comment on your post.
42. Ask your readers to Digg your best posts.
43. Change up your posting style (e.g., tutorial, reviews, etc.).
44. Write a funny post.
45. Create a huge list of your best posts.
46. Add to a list started by another blogger.
47. Create a mission statement for your blog.
48. Make a post simplifying a complex problem for your readers.
49. Create a guide for your niche.
50. Make a post turning a negative into a positive through humor ( e.g., tell a joke: “My parents tell me I’m
autistic. I tell them they have an attitude problem.”).
51. Browse through a thesaurus and see if synonyms help spark ideas for your posts.
52. Respond to criticism in a post (e.g., respond to the Wall Street Journal’s criticism of bloggers).
53. Write a post like you are telling a story.
54. Spruce up your posts with pictures.
55. Post about frequently asked questions in your niche.
56. Pose a rhetorical question in your post.
57. Post about what’s popular and why it’s beneficial ( e.g., “Twitter” for tech blogs).
58. Pose a hypothesis and conclusion in your post.
59. Support your post with related post links.
60. Make a [blank] for dummies post.
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61. Post a picture that speaks a thousand words.
62. Buy a how-to book from a bookstore and use some of the ideas from that book to generate ideas for posting
(e.g., a book about Photoshop).
63. Look at the archives of your niche competitors and see if any of their old posts can be expanded in an
“update” post on your blog.
64. Post with a personality (e.g., John Chow is evil).
65. Write about how to do something more efficiently in your niche.
66. Write about generally unknown secrets in your niche.
67. Write about how to use a product in an unconventional way.
68. Do a post transcribing live events (e.g., Macworld conference).
69. Dissect an argument in a post.
70. Make a post summarizing someone else’s post.
71. Make a post about how things have changed from the past.
72. Make a post that expands on someone else’s post.
73. Create a post that incorporates the words, “desperate” and “futile”.
74. Make a post alleging a conspiracy (e.g., Is there a Digg Bury Brigade?).
75. Make a post that encourages visitors to subscribe by offering a reward.
76. Make a post that involves New York City, London, San Francisco or Sydney. For example, review a local
business like this one about New York movers.
77. Make a post that incorporates in the title the word “crossover”.
78. Create a post that utilizes a bar chart or pie chart.
79. Create a post that has a cliff hanger to be answered in a later post.
80. Make a post about pitfalls in your niche.
81. Participate in a reciprocal guest blogging scheme where you blog on someone else’s blog and that other
person blogs on your blog.
82. Do a paid posting targeted to your readers.
83. Profile the competition in your niche.
84. Post linkbait.
85. Make a post about your fellow bloggers’ top posts.
86. Make a post about your most popular posts.
87. Read some sports (or other genre) magazines and incorporate some of the writing styles in your posts.
88. Write a post that pinpoints similarities and differences.
89. Write a post giving a free recommendation.
90. Write a post about something that is merely “good” but not “great”.
91. Write a post about a hack for your niche.
92. Make a post that constructively criticizes someone else’s post.
93. Run a poll and post the results of that poll.
94. Ask your loyal readers to email you links to their best resources and make a post about what you found.
95. Write only about a particular theme for a week.
96. Designate each day of the week as a theme day where you will always post about a particular topic on that
day.
97. Review your blog’s (weekly, monthly, yearly) performance and post the results.
98. Write an “attack” post by setting up an argument and then shooting it down.
99. Combine some of your best posts from your archives into a new series.
100. Hold a conference via blog posts.
101. Make a “101 ideas” post.
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