When you’ve been blogging for a while on a particular topic or in particular niche, it’s not uncommon to feel like you’re running out of ideas. Or maybe you’re sitting there at your computer wondering if what you’re writing is what your readers are looking for. It doesn’t help if you have a cat walk on your keyboard adding and deleting random words while your trying to type.
Once you’re starting to build a following and a readership, even if it’s small one, you can start asking your readers for topic ideas. In that case one of the emails you send to your list on a regular basis is to ask them what else they would like to see on the blog.
Otherwise, you can occasionally mention a request for topic ideas in your blog posts or on your social media posts. Or add a note to your blog side bar with a link to a post with a contact form.
How you get the reader input doesn’t really matter. The important thing is to ask them what type of content they want and then accommodate them as and when it is appropriate. See my cat, Winter reading a book featuring him and his sisters modeling. What do your readers like to read?
Don’t feel like you have to honor every single request. Pick and choose the ones that make sense for your blog and that will benefit at least a few of your readers. Sometimes these requests will try to pull you off topic on your blog. Just ignore those and focus on the ones that makes sense for what you’re doing with your blog.
How you make use of these requests is up to you. You can use them simply as suggestions and then write your own blog post on the topic. Or you can treat them similar to the email blog posts we talked about a while back. In that case start with a little intro to the topic, copy and paste the reader request and then wrap it up with your reply. Sometimes this makes sense and it’s a great way to not only get the blog post written quickly but also share some social proof (you’re getting good questions and you’re taking the time to answer them on your blog).
Other times the suggestions will be so vague that you’re better off writing a blog post from scratch. If you’re really lucky, you’ll get a great topic idea that will inspire a whole series of blog posts. Pick and choose and use whatever method works best for each request.
Check out more Blogging Tips in the 30-day Blogging Tips Series.
Great tips, thanks for sharing! I’ve done a few ask me anything blogs and haven’t gotten many responses so I will try adding it to some of my blog posts as a call to action instead of making it the sole focus of the blog.
Great Idea to add a Call to Action!
Good advice. I will ask my Twitter followers to come up with some ideas that they would like to read about. My blog following is small.