One major issue with blogging is the ability to continuously create great interactive content as often as possible. It is belabouring sometimes and requires a good amount of effort to arrive at those posts that are shared on social media and stand out. The good news is that you are not alone. Everyone has seasons when they are most creative; there are high times as well as low times, we’ve all been there.
It is a challenge that every blogger must face, both professionals and newbies. However, more often than not, the content we struggle to put together can turn out to be amongst our best. The reason being that we take extra care to ensure they come out well, since they don’t flow in the usual way. So, cheer up, there’s awesome content at the end of that low creative season.
There are many places to source blog posts online, although there are different blog niches. As a first point, no matter your blog category, you cannot get it wrong with recent news, specifically if applicable to your blog area. Nonetheless, other sources include:
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Your Target Audience
How do you get blog topics from your target audience? Don’t fret; it’s okay to ask your audience what bothers them and what their concerns are. It does not diminish your creativity or independence level in any way. Rather, it communicates that you care about what they care about and many will wait to read the results of their questions and suggestions. Think about this: why do some radio stations have ‘song request’ sessions? Why can’t they just play songs they feel listeners will be happy listening to? Why must they go that extra mile to play some oldies when that’s what was requested? It’s simply because, they know listeners will be more loyal if their requests are met and continuously tune in to their station to listen to their favourite songs, especially those that are not found so easily.
The same applies to this tactic; asking for suggestions about which topics to write about from your audience makes them bookmark your blog address and stamp it on their hearts, because they know sooner or later, they will get well-researched answers to their questions. You can receive requests and send responses via email or by commenting on some of your previous posts.
Another way to go about this is to ask friends, relatives and colleagues what topics they would be glad to read about online. You will be awed at the responses you get. In addition, try using Facebook Viral Posts Finder (FVPF). It is a sort of database where you can discover content with the use of keywords. Content is collected by the number of ‘Likes’, ‘Shares’, ‘Comments’ and date posted. You can also take polls and survey your audience or utilise the power of Google surveys.
Guidance from other sources
Perusing content from other blogs within your niche (and the subjects they write about) will give you a head start on topics your target audience will enjoy. When you search the ‘Comments’ section of most blog posts, you can easily determine how well the topic sits in people’s hearts. You can also take a sneak peak at the number of ‘Shares’ and ‘Likes’ on the post. Those with a lot of ‘Shares’ indicate that many people resonate with that blog post and this can give you inspiration to get your creative-self rolling out similar posts. Another important technique is to sign up for email newsletters. Since sending newsletters is a marketing tool, it will contain various keywords and phrases you can marry together to form an interesting topic.
Furthermore, question and answer sites such as Quora, Ask Jeeves, Ask Ville and Yahoo, are great places to locate trending topics and questions. Likewise, you can check content sites like Hubpages where writers post material for people to comment on. In fact, freelancing sites such as Fiverr, Freelancer and Upwork can also be effective, as bloggers in need of great content (who are willing to pay writers) post on such channels for assistance.
When you search the ‘Comments’ section of Hubpages and compare those with blog writing requests on Fiverr and the like, you can easily discover topics that will be of interest to your readers. Then, the issue goes from being unable to get topics to write on, to having too many topics to choose from. Lastly, check out sites like Ezine. You’ll be surprised to discover article topics you might never have thought of, because the Ezine platform is well moderated and editors do not accept any old content; hence, all these articles are highly sought after.
Outsource
If you think or know you deserve a break, this is usually a major reason for low creativity. To combat this, you can hire an individual or a professional copywriting company to write on your behalf, while you rest. This article provides some useful information on the difference between a copywriter and a content writer.
Guest posting is an effective way to gather out of the box blog content. There are professionals who specialise in creating good content for blogs. Trying them out will be beneficial for you, as you will get time to recuperate and also have content for your audience as and when necessary. Outsourcing allows you to get your break while still churning out quality content.
Having learnt of places from which to source content, we need to focus on you. As earlier discussed, Zach Bulygo on Twitter points out that mostly, the lack of creativity is not due to the fact that you are not creative at that point in time. However, it is usually due to simple things such as having lost the muse to help you strike the chord of flowing content. So, instead of beating yourself up, you should just relax, take a walk, go and watch a stage play or a movie or simply do whatever it is that makes you happy. Thereafter, when you are well rested and refreshed, don’t worry about being overly creative immediately, but start on familiar territory.
You can check your social media platform to expand on your previous comments, get ideas from archived conversations you’ve had with people, as well as write down your frustrations about certain products and services, and even your thoughts during and after the ‘rest and refresh’ period. For example, you can write about ‘The importance of resting if you want to be an efficient blogger’; a write-up that will be inspired by your ‘just concluded’ experience, so it will be rich and fresh. You can also observe people’s actions around you to give you some inspiration.
In summary, don’t be too hard on yourself by trying to reach for topics from afar. Look within and gradually build up your momentum again. It will be as though you’ve just started blogging, because all the enthusiasm you had at the beginning will be back.
Try all these points, before adding your own experiences to the ‘Comment’ section below.
