You’ve committed to writing a blog and now what? How in the world will you come up with enough ideas to write about? Sure, you know your topic inside and out. You wrote a whole book on it, after all. But how can you make it compute into interesting, informative, educational, entertaining daily or even weekly blog entries? <\/p>\n
While it may seem like an overwhelming task at first glance, it’s not all that difficult. I’ve come up with hundreds of blog topics these past few years—producing them on a daily basis for much of that time. Of course, I’m accustomed to coming up with ideas—having written magazine articles for a living over a span of 35+ years. I use the same techniques now as I did then. Here’s my formula for coming up with blog ideas:<\/p>\n
\u2022\tListen to your colleagues, clients, students, peers. What are their questions and fears? Many of my blog topics (and article ideas) stem from the concerns of others related to writing and publishing.<\/p>\n
\u2022\tRead what others in your field are saying. Subscribe to newsletters, sign up for Google Alerts http:\/\/www.googlealerts.com<\/a> and visit the blogs of your colleagues, read the latest books on your topic and attend lectures. You’ll be struck by variations of your topic. You’ll have questions. Explore these subtopics and write about them.<\/p>\n \u2022\tDiscover what\u2019s new in your area of interest, do a little research and report on it.<\/p>\n \u2022\tObserve how the changes in your industry or field are affecting others. Interview them for your blog.<\/p>\n \u2022\tInvite experts to be guest bloggers at your site.<\/p>\n \u2022\tLearn to expand one idea into several blog entries. For example, let’s say that your subject of interest is vintage aircraft. You can write about vintage aircraft as a hobby, specific aircraft, individuals throughout the history of aviation, individual collectors, photographing old airplanes, aviation museums, what it’s like to be in the cockpit of specific airplanes, restoring old airplanes, building airplanes from a kit, how to store a vintage craft, trips pilots take in their old planes, reminiscences related to specific aircraft, pontoon planes, biplanes, paint jobs and decals for old planes, cost of this hobby, women pilots in history and so much more. Go into the emotions of flying, spouses who worry, children pilots, the first stewardesses and even news bites and commentary about what\u2019s happening in today’s world of aviation.<\/p>\n Ideas are the absolute core of any blog and a writer must be armed with or know how to obtain hundreds of them in order to maintain a blog. If you aren\u2019t what you’d consider an idea man (woman), use the prompts and suggestions above to start generating ideas that will keep your blog afloat for many years.<\/p>\n For additional methods and techniques for generating ideas, read my book, A Writer’s Guide to Magazine Articles<\/em>. http:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/writingpage.html<\/a> <\/p>\n And if you are thinking about writing a book, in the midst of the writing process, you’ve just finished writing a book or you have a published book, it’s a good time to purchase my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book<\/em> http:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/rightway.html<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You’ve committed to writing a blog and now what? How in the world will you come up with enough ideas to write about? Sure, you know your topic inside and out. You wrote a whole book on it, after all. But how can you make it compute into interesting, informative, educational, entertaining daily or even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t