business ideasThe best way to find topics to write about is to start from the beginning with the minutia about your niche. Don’t assume your audience has already seen everything or that you can’t tell them about it in a new way. Even if other people are talking about the same thing, you will do it differently and appeal to your own audience.

  • Forums and Message Boards – Find out which forums your audience uses and go there and observe. What are they talking about? What are the titles they give their new posts? Use this information to formulate ideas of what to write about.
  • Read Comments on Other Blog Posts – Read industry blog posts, and then read the comments. What is the audience saying? What questions are they asking? You can use these questions and comments as fodder for new blog posts and articles.
  • Questions Asked by Others in Groups – Both LinkedIn and Facebook have groups that you can join. Find groups that consist of your ideal audience and observe what they are talking about. These are all ideas for blog posts.
  • Read Industry News – Subscribe to online and offline magazines for your industry so you can keep up to date on new technology and information. This will help you with increasing your knowledge so that you can find more topics to write about.
  • Keep a Swipe File – You don’t want to plagiarize so be very careful, but use something like Evernote.com to keep a file full of interesting quotes and information that you can use to write about.
  • Brainstorm – At least weekly, sit down and give yourself 15 minutes on a timer to list everything that you can think of to write about. Keep in Evernote or on a publication calendar that you can make with Excel, and upload to Google Drive.

Finally, it can’t be said enough that it’s essential to keep notes at all times. If you don’t keep notes, you will not remember what you thought about while you were showering, shopping, or out with your friends. Keeping a running list of ideas that come to mind, then doing research on those ideas, you’ll be sure to have plenty of content to write about when you’re ready to sit down and write.