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Have you ever run out of idea when trying to make your blog post? Have you ever experiment a writer’s block? Don’t worry about that! I guess every blogger experiment that scary feeling someday.

The goal of this post is precisely to give you effective ways to find new ideas. My recommendation would be to try one or several of the following ways before running out of ideas; prevent it instead of healing it!

1. Set alerts on specific keywords.

Setting alerts with either Google or Yahoo is a great way to prevent running out of ideas. All you need to do is define a list of keywords that will be relevant to your blog’s topic. Then, log into your Google or Yahoo account and set your alerts based on the keywords you previously defined. I would recommend to setup alerts on both news and blogs. This will help you to cover an acceptable part of what is happening on the web.

Resources:
Goggle Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
Yahoo! Alerts: http://alerts.yahoo.com

2. Visit new blogs on your niche.

Sometimes, we just need to break the routine to get new ideas. To do so, I would recommend visiting new blogs on your niche. There are plenty of places where you can find them: blog directories, blogroll from your favorite blogs, social media, forums, search engines, etc. Depending on your niche, you’ll find lots or few blogs to visit. Take the time to read some recent articles and browse their archive.

Resources:
Google Blog Search: http://blogsearch.google.com
Yahoo! Blog Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com/news_and_media/blogs
Google Blog Directories list: http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Directories
Yahoo! Blog Directories list: http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Blogs/Blog_Directories

3. Browse the most popular articles from other blogs on your niche.

You may find great article ideas when browsing the “Popular Articles” section of a blog on your niche. It may help you getting more inspiration as well as helping you finding popular topics to update or expand. The most important aspect, when you start from that point, is to really make your updated content original and unique. To do so, take the time to read carefully the articles you may want to update or expand and only take the main ideas. Then, start from the scratch and present those main ideas by exposing your personal thoughts. Then, it would be kind from you to insert a link back to the original article.

Resources:
7 Efficient Ways to Increase the Value of Your Content

4. Look at what people are looking for.

Looking at what people are looking for may help you a lot to find a new article idea. In fact, keywords may help creative minds to find terrific ideas or at least be the starting point of an efficient brainstorming.

Resources:
Google Trends: http://google.com/trends
Google Zeitgeist: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Yahoo! Buzz: http://buzz.yahoo.com
AOL Hot Searches: http://hotsearches.aol.com
Dogpile Search Spy: http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy

5. Look at what people is looking for on your blog.

More specifically, it may be very helpful to know the search engine queries that lead people to your blog and what people are specifically querying while they are on your blog. This type of information may help you to focus your effort on articles that actually get the attention of your readers. Almost every tracking software will allows you to get this information. The most known one is Google Analytics. However, you could also consider using Sitemeter which also offers a great service.

Resources:
Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics
Sitemeter: http://www.sitemeter.com

6. Encourage your audience to suggest topic or ask questions.

Another great way to find new ideas is to either open a question session with your audience and/or create a “Q&A” or “Ask The Blogger” section. This is a simple and effective way to interact with your audience and find targeted ideas for your articles. Depending on the questions and the subjects submitted by your readers, you may want to organize them into categories. This will ease you job to create articles based on common topics. Note that this method may also be very successful to get new loyal core readers.

7. Browse through Social Media.

Social Medias receive tons of new submissions each day. It is a tremendous place to find plenty of new creative ideas. All these websites offers the possibility to make a search that may help you to find hot topics on your niche. Moreover, most of them offer also a way to filter the results by rating or by time. Get ready to take some notes and to create your own list of new ideas.

Resources:
StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com
Digg: http://digg.com
Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us
Mixx: http://www.mixx.com
Technorati : http://www.technorati.com
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com

To get even more…
Yahoo! Social Networks Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Cultures_and_Groups/Cyberculture/Social_Networks

8. Browse forums on your niche.

Forums are places to share ideas, ask questions or talk about general topics. Therefore, it is another good place to find fresh ideas. It is also a great place to participate in idea sharing and challenging discussions. To find forums related to your niche, get to your favorite search engine and type keywords relevant to your niche followed by the word “forums” or “forum”. For example, if your blog is related to health, you’ll have to type “Health forums” or “health forum”.

9. Look at the most popular things.

Taking look at the most popular things may help you to target your articles on things people are really looking for. It could be software tools, hot topics, breaking news or anything else relevant to your niche. There are several places where you could find popular things. The following resource list gives you a starting point.

Resources:
Wordpress Plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins
Firefox Extentions: https://addons.mozilla.org
eBay Pulse: http://pulse.ebay.com
Technorati: http://technorati.com/pop
Digg: http://digg.com (Use the “Popular” filter)
Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us (Use the “Popular” filter)
Mixx: http://www.mixx.com (Use the “Popular” filter)

10. Look for the most recent things.

As for the popular things, the newest things may have a good traction on your readers. It is always great to demonstrate that we are up to date in our niche. It may have a positive and significant impact on your authority. In fact, this could lead you to terrific opportunities to create original and unique content and thus, create a lot of back links pointing to your articles.

Resources:
Wordpress Plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins
Firefox Extentions: https://addons.mozilla.org
Technorati: http://technorati.com
Digg: http://digg.com (Use the “Upcoming” filter)
Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us (Use the “Recent” filter)
Mixx: http://www.mixx.com (Use the “Recent” filter)

11. Browse articles directories.

Articles directories get a large amount of article submissions each day. These websites aim to allow writers to get more visibility and to promote their sites and services through article submissions and, on the other hand, they help webmasters and bloggers to get free content based reprinting rights. As a matter of fact, these websites become large databases of ideas. All you need to do is to make a simple research with some relevant keywords.

Resources:
EZineArticles: http://www.ezinearticles.com
Article Dashboard: http://www.articledashboard.com
Go Articles: http://www.goarticles.com
Article Pros: http://www.articlepros.com
Articles 888 : http://www.articles888.com

Of course, there are many others…

12. Pay attention to your daily experiences.

Ideas are everywhere! They can be in a park while walking or they can also be on your day job processes. In fact, an action or an observation in a particular context could generally be translated in another context. For example, observing your children sharing their toys may gives you an idea about how generosity or altruism may impact your activity on a social media context. Everything is possible for an opened mind!

I would really appreciate if you could share your own experiences about writer’s block. How do you find new ideas? What are your personal experiences in that area?

I really hope this list to be useful and valuable for you!

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Blogging, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.