Having a hard time thinking of new blog posts? Think of hundreds of new posts easily

Three of my teams recently mentioned that they were having a hard time thinking of new blog post topics and asked if I had any advice for them.

I fully appreciate that it must be a difficult, stressful, and worrying task trying to think of a blog post on a daily basis, if you haven’t planned it ahead of time. I gave them a very simple tool and now they have more blog post ideas than they know what to do.

If you have a similar problem, all you need is a couple of hours to spare and a pad of A4 paper and I promise you will have more blog posts than you know what to do with. Once you’ve completed this exercise, your problem will be more about the order in which to write your posts, rather than worrying daily about finding a topic to blog about.

What we are going to do is create a “mind map” of your blog. The more time you spend on this, the better your blog will be, but you can do the basic plan in less than twenty minutes.

Take a blank sheet of paper and in the center of this sheet write the central theme of your blog in a maximum of two or three words; Internet marketing, technology, health and fitness, making money, cars and bicycles, vacations abroad, etc.

For the purposes of this exercise, I am going to use a core topic from “Internet Marketing.”

Draw a circle around the words of the central theme. Now draw a series of equally spaced arrows radiating from this central theme. At this stage, I suggest you start with 6, 8, or 10, and you can add or subtract them later.

Draw a small circle at the end of each arrow and in each circle write a subtopic that is directly related to your central topic. This becomes your control sheet.

Use “Internet Marketing” as a central theme that you could choose;

• Blogging
• Social media
• Brand
• Marketing
• Earn money
• Affiliate marketing
• Reviews (1)
• Dirty

For each of these subtopics, repeat the exercise you just did for internet marketing on a new sheet of paper.

For example, on one sheet of paper I would write “Blogging” in the center of the sheet, and on a second sheet of paper I would write “Social Media”, and so on for each of my topics.

Again, draw 6, 8, or 10 equally spaced arrows radiating from the central “blog” and “social media” topics and draw a small circle at the end of each arrow.

In these circles, write subtopics that are directly related to the central topic.

For “Blogging”, you could choose;

• Choose a blog host
• Create a blog
• Choose a theme
• How to write a post
• How to edit a post
• Choose a title for each post
• Plugs
• SEO basics
• Tags
• Syndication posting

For “Social Media”, you could choose;

• The importance of social networks
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Reddit
• Digg
• Stumble

At this point, if you had started with your central topic and thought of just eight subtopics and another eight topics for each of these subtopics, you now have SIXTY-FOUR separate but linked ideas for your blog.

Now it starts to get really exciting. Let’s take the “social media” topic and use “Facebook” as a subtopic.

Get a new sheet of paper and write “Facebook” as your central topic and think of so many different aspects of Facebook (FB) that you could write 300-1500 words about. You can choose topics like;

• The history of FB and how many users does it have
• Set up and edit an FB profile
• Basic FB Tag
• Join an FB group
• Creating an FB group
• Add and remove friends
• Creating and editing a FB fan page
• Shorten the URL of a FB fan page
• FB Advertising
• Add an FB image
• Messaging on FB
• Create FB Capture Pages
• Customizing FB Pages and Images
• FB Advertising

Now for some of your sixty-four topics, you might only be able to think of three or five separate things to write a post about, but for others, like FB, you might think of twenty or thirty. The above list was produced while I was writing and I did not give it much thought.

I’d suggest that if you thought about it a bit, you’d probably average TEN topics for each of your sixty-four. This means that you now have SIX HUNDRED FORTY potential posts!

Put all your sheets of paper in one file and compile an index as a cover. As you write about a particular topic, cross it off your index sheet, and as you write a post and think of another subtopic, you can add it to your index.

I would suggest that six hundred and forty potential posts, written in maybe four or five posts a week, means that you now have two years of ideas in front of you and on file, ready and waiting for action. I think you will agree that working a couple of hours, or maybe even a couple of days, is a result in anyone’s language.

However, if you think or feel that you would like some more ideas, you can contact me through my details below.