By Chris Taylor, The Forgiven Wife
If you’re like most bloggers, you’ve probably had times when you are stuck for a topic. You want to get a blog post written, but you have no idea what to write about.
Try one of these ideas next time you find yourself stuck without a topic.
1. Search the internet for writing prompts.
(Full disclosure: As I as preparing to write this article, I had absolutely no idea what to write about. I did a search for “how to come up with ideas for blog post topics.” Boom! Inspiration.)
You’ll find plenty of ideas—and many of them can be rephrased to address marriage. If the prompt is “My favorite thing about my job is . . . “ you can write “My favorite thing about my marriage is . . . “
Check out these sites for ideas.
- BlogHer’s NaBloPoMo Writing Prompts – The idea behind NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) is that bloggers write a post every day during the month. Each month has a theme, and you can adjust many of them to fit the subject of marriage. You’ll find hundreds of ideas if you click around.
- WordPress.com’s Daily Prompts – With a different prompt for every day, some of these may stretch your creativity a bit. Have fun!
- Kludgy Mom’s Idea Bank: Your Source for Writing Prompts – Her post has over 600 ideas—and check out the comments for way, way more!
- 20 Prompts to Inspire Your Next Professional Blog Post at The Muse – These prompts are for professional blogging—but they could make great prompts if you relate them to married life instead of professional life.
- 30 Blog Writing Prompts That Don’t Tell You What to Write from Chicago Now – These prompts encourage you to be creative with formatting rather than giving you a subject. If you have a topic in mind but don’t know what to do with it, maybe one of these suggestions can get you moving.
- 500 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing, from the New York Times – This list is categorized to help you quickly find things that might appeal to you.
- How To Come up with Great Ideas for Blog Posts, Every Single Time – This article may help you head off future writer’s block by being proactive about collecting ideas.
2. Respond to Another Blogger’s Post
As you read other blogs about marriage, pay attention to ideas that intrigue you or that could be applied in the areas of marriage you write about. Or if you run across a post about something else that could be applied to marriage, consider that. Write a post that links to the other blog post and helps your readers think about how to use the information in their own marriages. Sometimes you may find that other CMBA bloggers will write about something and then encourage other marriage bloggers to address the same thing in their blogs. (Just a hint: if you’re writing about another blogger’s work, it is a professional courtesy to check with them and offer to give them a link.)
3. Be inspired by your readers.
Although you shouldn’t quote the email without the reader’s permission, reader emails can be a great source of ideas for blog post topics—especially if you’ve received multiple emails about the same thing. What advice do you have for people facing certain challenges in their marriages? How have you handled similar challenges?
Be sure to take a look at reader comments on your older posts. You may find some great ideas in the comment section. While you’re there, be sure to look at your own replies to those comments. It’s possible that you have some brilliant insight just sitting there waiting to be made into a blog post.
4. Recycle.
Do you have some new ideas that relate to one of your older posts? Write a new version of it, or write a follow-up. If you wrote about something you tried in your own marriage, give an update. If you’ve written several posts about the same topic, pull out the most important point from each of them and write a new post to reinforce those ideas.