Generating Blog Post Ideas

Ever struggle to come up with blog post ideas? Do you have a blog that suffers from little interaction, and you would like the visitors to chime in?

Here’s one way to think about new content… Consider the role of questions.

You can use questions in a variety of different ways to generate content for your blog site.

Here’s the First Way: Ask A Question

If you don’t want to spend much time writing your own content, or you’re running short on time, you could simply introduce a topic and then post a question for your readers.

If the question generates some interest, then your audience is welcome to chime in with answers.

This way it’s not the post itself, but rather the audience contributions, that build the majority of the content on your page. With each answer, there is more content available to attract new readers and to elicit potential new comments.

The Second Way: Find A Question

Another way to use questions is to actually search for questions that already exist. Take a look on your blog, your competitors’ blogs, or in social media to find some questions your audience is already asking.

Then go back to your blog, introduce the question you found, and then go on to answer it for your audience.

By doing this you are taking a question that someone has already posed, and you are expertly providing the answer they seek.

Assuming the asker of the question is not the only one on this planet with that question, you are putting yourself in a position to help others. The demonstrates your expertise in the industry and helps establish you as a go-to authority.

The Third Way: Use the FAQ Model

If you have a business that serves customers in the offline world, then you probably get questions over the phone or from those who walk into your store.

What are some of those most frequent questions?

Choose to write up the question and answer. Just make sure it’s long enough, and interesting enough, to be useful. For example, answering the question about your office hours does not belong in a blog post.

But answering a question about something you sell can make a good post. You get to showcase a solution for your prospects while featuring a specific product or service.

The Fourth Way: The Desperation Method

This method is suitable for when you cannot come up with any questions at all.  In other words, you can’t think of a question to ask, you can’t find a good question already asked online, and you can’t come up with a good question already asked offline.

In this case, ask your audience if they have any questions that you can answer for them! Cross your fingers and hope they rescue you by providing some good questions you can use in the next series of blog posts.

Do you have other good ways to use questions to generate blog posts? If so, comment below.