Finding blog topics on an ongoing basis can be intimidating especially for those companies starting out on their inbound marketing journey.

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t find an endless stream of blog ideas if you know where to look.

Below, we discuss 24 sources of blog post ideas you can start drawing inspiration form immediately.

Your audience and other people

• Ask your readers

One of the simplest ways to get blog post ideas is to ask your audience what they’d love to read about. You can ask this through email, through a blog post, via social media, or through any other means.

• Blog comments

The comments on your blog are another great source for blog ideas. See what issues readers are raising and identify possible blog topics from there.  

• Ask a friend

You can also ask your friends, relatives, workmates, and other people around you – especially those who are interested in your content.

• Ask your customers

Who is better to give you some ideas than your customers directly.  Ask them in person or go back through your emails to pinpoint any questions they have asked you that might be ideal for a blog post.  If they are asking you via email it means they likely couldnt find the answer first on Google - go write the answers.

• Outsource the task

Why not hire someone to brainstorm ideas for you?

If you know a person who is an expert in your area of interest, simply approach them and ask if they would be willing to do the job for a small fee.

• Crowd source ideas

This can be easily done on a site such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. Provide some guidelines and ask several writers to come up with a certain number of topics relevant to your readers.

Inspiration from other content sources

• Other blogs in your niche 

As a writer, you should also follow a few other blogs for inspiration and ongoing learning and development. These blogs are a treasure trove of ideas.  Dont forget to check out the comments on those blogs to see if you can grab a few ideas from them.

• Email newsletters

Sign up for email newsletters from other bloggers in your niche, see what topics they cover, and use those as ideas for content themes to develop out.

• Q&A websites

Yahoo Answers, Quora, AskVille and similar websites are excellent places to find interesting topics and learn about other writer perspectives.

• Content sharing websites

These include sites like Medium, Hubpages and Squidoo that boast thousands of talented contributors. Browse by niche and remember to look at the comment sections as well.

• Blog aggregators

Blog aggregators collect dozens of blog posts from multiple sources. Find an aggregator in your niche and start following it closely. You’ll find endless blog post ideas.  One of the best is Alltop.com

Your own content and personal experiences

• Repurpose content

Taking a piece of content you had already published and presenting it in a different format. For example, you can convert a text blog into a podcast.

• Update your previous topics

As time passes and the world changes, a few topics you covered earlier might become outdated. Go ahead and create new blog posts out of those outdated posts.

• Expound on a previous post

You may also discover new insights to a blog you published earlier. Maybe you didn’t have the time back then to get into the minor details. Expound on that old blog and republish it.

• Personal experiences

Did you learn something new recently that your audience might be interested in? Write a post about it and share with them.

• Showcase your successes and failures

Tried something and it didn’t work?

Write a blog post about it. If it worked, share the story as well. These kind of How to and How Not To Dos are great evergreen content that provide real value to your audience.

Pick up ideas from social media

• Facebook groups

Join a number of Facebook groups or create your own, engage in discussions, and pay attention to what other people share. 

• Retweets

Another great source of ideas is the retweets from other people. Check both retweets from your posts and those from other people’s posts.

• Social bookmarking sites

Sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg also contain plenty of inspirational topics that you can blog about. Identify topics in your niche and periodically stop by to see if you can find something interesting.  Reddit is another one that kind of fits into this category and very much an awesome source of current and relevant blog topic ideas.

• YouTube and other video sharing networks

As you watch your favorite videos on YouTube, Vimeo and other video sharing sites, pay attention to the message and try to pick a few ideas along the way.

Research tools

• Google AdWords

AdWords is an excellent place to learn about keywords in your industry. If you’re trying to improve your search engine ranking and boost site traffic through blogging, the Adwords Keyword tool is hugely inciteful to make some considered decisions on content ideas.

• Google alerts

Another wise option is to set up Google Alerts to receive new topics in your industry. 

These are geared to your specific suggestions so think broad and use the suggestions to laser focus on specifics.

• UberSuggest

Check UberSuggest to generate a list of popular keywords. Use the keywords to brainstorm topics that can help you gain search engine traffic.

• Buzzsumo

One of my favourites.  Buzzsumo lets you search websites or keywords for top performing articles by social shares.  Use this to find out whats a hot topic and create some great content around that.

Summary

There are literally thousands of sources of inspiration for blog content that you can draw from instantly.  

The above sources are ones that have either worked for me or have been recomended to me previously.  

Find one or a couple that work for you and have proven to be successful in terms of hitting home with your personas - dont try to appeal to everyone, write for your personas by finding relevant topics to them.