Considering that blogging is an area that is growing, it certainly makes sense why people would want to jump in on the bandwagon. This is why we decided to come up with blog post ideas for beginners to help you get started on what is sure to be a rewarding journey. To lend some statistical credibility to the claim, here are some facts --- In March 2019, over 4.4 million blog posts were published every day. Over 409 million people read more than 20 billion pages on WordPress each month in 2020. In 2020, 71% of all content on WordPress is in English.
At this particular point, it would make sense to talk a bit about the many reasons people start a blog on the first instance. Ten years ago blogs were seen as a personal diary --- your own virtual space where you can share thoughts, ideas, experiences, and rants. Today, blogging is no longer regarded as just a hobby --- you could monetize your ideas, gain influence or bring together huge audiences from around the world. Here are some more stats --- To date, there are more than 500 million blogs out of 1.7 billion websites in the world. Their authors account for over 2 million blog posts daily.
This post may be about blog ideas for beginners but this all depends on what type of business model your blog is based on. Here's a veritable truth bomb --- A blog should be built around your business. It makes sense to have a great business model before you think of a content strategy. Just like the different business models present, there are different types of blogs that you need to consider.
The blogging industry has grown phenomenally. Just like a startup that grows into a global company, there are plenty of opportunities that take shape. Additionally you may have had a desire to either monetize your blog in some form or the other or you may have wanted to just express yourself. This is where the idea of formulating a business model for your blogging endeavors take shape.
Be Curious and Creative
The adage curiosity killed the cat is not actually true when it comes to getting ideas. Curiosity of the world around you can in effect assist you in understanding the environment you're in. In the ancient city of Alexandria in 300 BC we hear of how the soldiers used to forcibly embark ships that visited the city to take whatever literature they had to copy it. What they ended up with was the Wikipedia of 300 BC. This is how Alexandria became a truly enlightened land. Coming up with ideas is relatively easy. All it takes for good ideas to bubble up to the top is coming up with bad ideas.
"Don't focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that's great for your readers."
-Brian Clark
Curiosity is basically observing the world around you and looking at it from different eyes. Curiosity will lead to creativity. For illustrative purposes, let's assume that you have started a personal blog based on Formula 1, and you are a diehard fan of the sport, and you want to churn out as much content as possible.
Coming up with Blog Post Ideas for Beginners
Here is how you would come up with ideas:
1. Keyword Research with Ubersuggest
The easiest thing you would do is use a tool like Ubersuggest to help you come up with topics on Formula 1.
Based on this simple search itself, you can consider plenty of keyword ideas. Keep coming up with a list of keywords that have low volume and low SEO difficulty.
2. Choose Topics using Mind Maps on Creately
Once you have chosen your keywords, you can draw up some pretty cool Mind Maps using Creately. A Mind Map is basically a diagram that connects information around a central subject.
There are endless possibilities when it comes to choosing the topics you want using Mind Maps. To truly understand how to use Mind Maps, check out this video here.
3. Steal A Topic and Better It aka The Skyscraper Technique
Once again, let's use Ubersuggest to help us out here again. Simply choose your topic, which in this case was Ferrari F1, go to Content Ideas and then check the amount of Backlinks to the site. For the topic 7 Decades of Ferrari F1 Evolution in One Bellissimo GIF there are 19 backlinks.
This would be ideal since you could do a better article on the same topic and get those sites linking to it to link to yours.
4. Blog Ideas Generated by HubSpot
There are plenty of apps out there that will generate plenty of topics, and one such site would be HubSpot's Blog Idea Generator. Simply key in the Noun you are eyeing.
And what you get are plenty of ideas for the noun Formula 1.
This particular site will give you 5 variations, which do offer great potential in terms of ideas. The blog post title is a great part of success, so this tool will help you to generate ideas for your post in a very easy and useful way. All you need is to put five nouns which you want to generate into an idea for the title of your post, and the tool will do the rest for you.
5. More Ideas by BuzzSumo
With the help of this tool, you will find out which questions people search on popular websites, so you can choose a topic that will be relevant and successful.
The best part of doing this exercise is that you will never run out of ideas to write about. Whenever you are stumped, just go through this checklist over again. You may be surprised at how many more blog post ideas you'll come up with.
With the help of this tool, you will be updated on the\
trends and most important discussions in order to write content that is interesting for your audience.
6. Ask the Audience!
We've heard about Content donning on the royal red robes and crowning himself as King. But what about interactions and engagement? This is where true credibility lies.
"Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about."
Cory Doctorow
One cannot exist without the other. You need to ensure that there's excellent and valuable content that you want people to lend their affirmation towards it. Comments at the end of the day is content, and the enabling of comments only serves to create more content. It would be true to say that it takes all sorts to make a world, and being affable is a two-way street. Commenting is in a sense empowerment; and, this gives a sense of validation when participants feel they are heard.
(Discussion from "Is probability real?" by Aram, recently featured topic on Hackernews)
In this day and age where social proof is the measure of success, it is mandatory that the proper infrastructure is put in place to ensure an easy dialogue by enabling comments. Commenting can be an integral part of your content strategy when it comes to your site. Besides creating a space for interactions and opinionated dialogue, you also have the opportunity to add a great deal of value to your brand. We encourage you to read --- What is a Commenting Strategy? --- to understand how you can leverage this powerful tool on your site. If you haven't enabled comments on your website, you can use Hyvor Talk commenting system, which is fully customizable, ad-free, privacy-focused. It can be easily installed on any CMS (Ex: WordPress) or static site.
Listen to your commenters. Ask for their suggestions. Improve your content and get more content ideas.
I'll Conclude By Saying...
Keep shipping your work. Learn to blog regularly and to ship fast. We're probably used to an era where we always talked about achieving perfection before we allow the world to see our work. This thinking is largely redundant. The problem is, we all tend to ship too late and too infrequently. A number of psychological factors collude to stop you from shipping: pride, perfectionism, scope creep, fear of criticism, fear of rejection. Rather what you need to do is to ensure that to overcome that fear to be consistent. Because, as we all know, trying is to consistently produce work is what will get you leverage and visibility.
Originally published on Hyvor Talk Blog, written by Rohitha Perera
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