No matter if you’re a novice or an experienced blogger, we all sometimes suffer about finding topics to write about. What to blog about is a genuine struggle, even for the most successful bloggers out there. So, what do you do when you hit a wall, use up all the topics you would write about? Before you start screaming or reaching for some copy/paste solutions (please, DON’T!), follow these guidelines and tips and spark your ideas in no time!
What to blog about the table of content
Whether you’re a beginner or a professional blogger, just click on the link below and jump start to your section of interest!
What to blog about when starting a new blog
What to blog about as an experienced blogger
Now, I divided this article into two sections, just to make it easier for everyone. Simply, the idea is to offer the right advice to the right group of people without confusing you with the stuff you don’t need or understand yet.
And before we dig deeper, a little side note. Being a novice or an experienced blogger, a proper content marketing strategy is (ideally) a must. It helps you to have focus and structure, to set up goals, make a plan and achieve them successfully. You can learn all there is about WordPress content marketing strategy in our other post and get more perspective on the overall blog business.
What to blog about when starting a new blog
One of the biggest issues every newbie blogger faces is finding the right topic to write about. That’s why it is important to define a niche you want to cover. That should be something you are familiar with, know much about, and something of interest to your target audience. So, if you want to be a travel blogger (take a look at our in-depth guide on how to start being one!), define what type of travel you’ll cover. Is it low-cost travels and experiences, or adventure traveler, maybe frequent weekender? By narrowing the desired niche, you’ll be that more specific and defined which will help you choose the exact topics your type of target audience wants and needs. Once you do that, here are the type of blog posts you could write.
Personal stories
Everything can be a story — you’ve just got to tell it. Paul Jarvis
One of the bullet-proof type of blog post you can share. Everyone loves a personal story; it’s a way for people to get to know you better, learn more about you, discover you as a person. Personal stories can be something people can relate to, learn from, drive conclusions… Use it to share a memory, explain something about you, or maybe as a teaching moment; drive people through some of your mistakes, make them learn from you. Share your passion, your point of view on something, your hobbies. Every one of us has a story to tell, just define what you want to say it with.
Data posts
People love data! Data educates, explains, takes away doubts and gives people something solid to lean on. It can be some specific niche stats and figures, like, if you are a financial blogger, you’ll talk about 2019 social economics predictions backed up with some industry professional stats. Or if you come from the food blogger niche, you’ll cover the most recent healthy nutritive food stats, and so on. You get the idea. Just because you’re a beginner blogger doesn’t mean you can’t come up with some serious data. But only if it’s backed up with carefully chosen relevant niche professionals, not Wikipedia or some unknown clickbait sites as sources.
How-to’s
One of the most popular and wide spread type of blog posts and articles. How-tos are a great way to explain or inform people about something you know about. Whether it’s a piece on how to pack lightly for a backpack weekend trip, or how to add Google AdSense to your blog (something every newbie should learn), these type of posts are a great teaching point. It’s relatable, helpful and makes people remember you since you solved their problem. Think about what it is from your blog niche you can explain, teach or solve and put it in writing for others to learn.
Interviews
Interviews are a great way to not only come up with new blog post ideas but also a great promotional tool. Besides having an infotainment post for your readers, interviews can help you in being more professional and more discovered online. How you ask? People you interview will want to share it – whether on their blogs and sites or social. Hence more exposure, more visits, and more awareness. You can use this type of blog posts to promote yourself and other bloggers from your niche, for instance. Think of it as I scratch your back, you scratch mine, one of the Off-Site SEO tactics that, in time, improve your search engine positioning.
Reviews
People nowadays don’t trust advertising as they used to. That’s where bloggers, micro and macro influencers step in. People believe in word of mouth. So, reviews are a great type of blog post, whatever niche you’re covering. If you are a photographer (in case you are, take a look at our photography niche premium theme!), then a review on some used or new lenses is a great way for your target audience to decide which ones to use and for you too drive targeted traffic and become an authority in your line of work. In time, you can even develop mutually beneficial cooperation with the photo equipment companies and such. The same goes if you are from the beauty, automotive, lifestyle, art or any other type of blog industry.
Lists
Similar to how-to’s, list type of blog posts are among the most common ones. People love to read posts that either compare or inform; they are easy to scan through and are pretty straightforward. Take this blog post, for instance. It’s a typical list type of writing where we list what to blog about, right? 🙂
It can also be a list of must-visit coffee shops in your area, or a list of industry professionals to follow, something like that. Come up with a wedding photography session checklist so people can know and realize what needs to be included. Even a blog about your most read posts can be written in a form of a list and served to your readers as a reminder. You get the idea.
Trending topics
Why not? Ride the wave of something that is happening right now, that people are talking about and it’s relevant to your niche. Like, if you’re a food blogger, write about seasonal holidays, or Saint Patrick’s menu ideas, Christmas sweets and so on. Or, if you’re a travel blogger, you might want to write about Easter budget trips, things to see in your city during spring holidays and such. You can go even further and use Google Trends to search what it is your target audience talks about that is relevant to you and think of ways to write about it as well.
Ask the audience
What better way to write what people want to read about than to ask them? Assuming you already have social media accounts connected to your blog, use them to get valuable inputs on what to write about. Ask your fans and followers what troubles them (from your niche), what kind of doubts they have, how can you and your writing be of assistance to them. Then collect all the info, make a spreadsheet with all the topics and prepare yourself for some serious keyword research. Why? Just because you have all that data, doesn’t mean it’s enough for you just to write it. It needs to be optimized in a way for people to find it once it’s published. We explained it all in our On-Site SEO tips for WordPress, so take a look and take notes!
What to blog about as an experienced blogger
In time, you’ll evolve from a newbie to a more serious, professional blogger. That is if you are consistent and willing to put a lot of work into it. As you evolve as more advance writer, there will be the time you hit a writers’ block, and that’s ok. We’ve all been there, self-included. So, their tips I’m sharing are the very steps I took to overcome that block and come up with new ideas on what to blog about. Besides all the beginner blog ideas you can write, these are more advanced topics you can cover.
Beginner’s guides
As a professional blogger, you have a wide knowledge you can transform into various beginner guides and tips. We often use it to teach our readers about new things that are happening in the WordPress environment. Like this Beginner’s tips to Gutenberg development or top vlogging tips for beginners. Think of it this way. There’ll always be people who know less than you, so put yourself out and become your niche authority. Share your knowledge and help people improve their skills, mindset, whatever with your tips and guides. Be a mentor for all the newbies that are yet to come while making great valuable content for your blog.
Opinions
Whatever the subject is, pick a side and state your opinion on it. Whether it’s politics, celebrity situation, marketing trends, or some new video equipment, a new WordPress release… Besides showing yourself as a person, your beliefs and where you stand, this type of posts showcase your level of knowledge about a particular topic. Not to mention, this type of posts sparks debate, perhaps a conflict too. Either way, you get people to react and state their own opinions as well. Think about it.
Case studies
An excellent idea to showcase your worth and authority while educating your target audience and, who knows, prospects. A case study is a type of post that shows how you achieved something; might as well be how you became a professional blogger. Or, how you managed to be a consultant to a well-known company by being active and relevant to your writing. Maybe a study on how to become a go-to photographer for sports industry? Whatever your niche is, case study blog posts are a great way to show people who you are and what you did, persuade and inspire them to either:
- Hire you
- Become like you
By sharing details about your experience and steps you took to achieve something, you teach, motivate and help people, and, you make them remember you. Even if you don’t have a successful story, share a case study of how you did something wrong and what came out of it at the end. Funny thing, people love failure stories, it makes you more human, more relatable and connectable to them. Also, it’s a great teaching moment as well, to learn from your mistakes. Talk about the power of gifting.
Myth-debunking
Say you’re a successful fitness vlogger and apart from being good at what you do, you also share insights in some most common misconceptions regarding your niche. People love learning what they did wrong, finding out how they can improve themselves, go the right way. Why not write about that? Some myths about easy 3-day workouts that are advertised, or how by drinking a lot of water will slim your abs and such. Dig into the pool of your niche misconceptions and start debunking one by one myth. That way, you’re not only helping your readers, but you’re making yourself a trustworthy authority. Way to go!
Quora/Reddit/Facebook Groups research
Think of these places as an infinite pool of ideas! See and track what people are asking, what troubles them, what they want to know, or what they talk about. Make a list of all relevant topics, and you’ll get yourself ideas for months to come!
Bonus topics to blog about
Guest posts
A handy little trick for all those times you can’t come up with the idea what to write about. Call someone from your blog niche or ask someone you like and admire to write a piece you can publish on your blog.
Upcoming events
A great way to come up with topics to blog about is to write about all the relevant events happening in your niche. Write about a conference you go to or a developer’s meetup in your area. Cover a movie premiere or a red carpet event if you’re a lifestyle blogger, a music concert, a book reading. Events are always exciting and get a decent amount of search queries. You can always use them in times when you don’t know what to blog about.
Follow-ups
You visited a conference, attended a seminar, finished a paid course or training on something. Write about your conclusions, summaries about the learned knowledge, get key statements from speakers, put your thoughts about it and voila! You got yourself a well written, targeted blog post on something people want to read about. Or, if you are a regular Twitter chat participant, go over the # and write a summary about the topic you were covering within it. Everyone loves this kind of pieces, to learn what they might have missed.
We do this type of posts often and some of the recent follow up blogs is the one about YoastCon 2019 recap. Must-read if you want to know the best and most updated SEO tips for this year.
Summaries
Write a post about experts sayings from your niche. What do most successful travel bloggers say about picking destinations, working with hotels and resorts? What is new and relevant in the SEO industry? Collect wise thoughts from industry professionals and summ it up in your post. Or, what are some of the most popular podcasts from your niche? Find an angle to gather quotes, recommendation, discussions from relevant people and make a post about that.
Wrapping up
There you have it. Let these 17 different types of blog post serve you as a reminder and creativity boost for times you get that writer’s block. Feel free to share more tips and ideas you have in that situation. And consider sharing it on Social with your friends and fellow blog colleagues as well.