Getting Ideas for Your Blog

If you lead a very exciting life, you have no problems finding ideas for your blog — you just write about your most recent adventures. If, like me, you have Ideation among your superpowers, you have no problems finding ideas for your blog because your mind is always filled and crowded with ideas. What if you’re not in either of these two categories?

My inclination is to suggest that you just hire or assign someone who falls into one of these categories as your blogger and get on with the stuff you’re good at.

But I know, because I get this question a lot, that the world is filled with people who feel they have to write blogs even though they have trouble finding ideas. So let me give you some suggestions:

• Use a News search. Even if you don’t have trouble thinking of ideas, it’s good to keep up with the news on your subject. I write on some subjects about which I don’t normally keep up, and I find that a quick search at Google (use your favorite search engine) turns up interesting new information on those subjects most of the time. You can report the information, respond to it, or use the news as a starting point for your own ruminations on the subject.
• Eavesdrop. If the customers in your store or the workers in your office are talking about it, it’s probably something interesting to the people reading your business blog. If your workstation is in some rarefied area where you can’t eavesdrop well, visit a forum. I hang out at forums sometimes where I am just astonished at how little people know about the subject they’re discussing. Every misunderstanding and clueless comment tells me about something readers need to know and don’t know yet.
• Start with an image. This section could equally well be called “Go for a walk” or “Make a mind map.” The object is just to get your brain to stop going in its accustomed channels and get it to see things from a new perspective. You can start with the obvious and step further away until you come to something about which you actually have something to say.

Actually having something to say is the key. There’s no point in writing if you don’t have anything to communicate. If you simply have nothing to say at all, and that continues to be true for an extended time, then you have only two options: hire a blogger, or get a more interesting life.