You're a mom. You can do anything. (yes, even manage your money)
Start today and download my FREE Mom's Got Money starter pack!
You’ll also get updates from me.

5 Ways to Find Inspiration For Your Blog Posts

  October 2

This post may contain affiliate links.

 

One of the most common questions I get asked is “How do you come up with so many blog topics for your clients and your blog?” (For those of you who are new here, I am a six figure freelance writer and create seemingly endless amounts of content for my clients!)

Well it’s not easy but after 9 years of doing this, here are some ways I find inspiration to write:

Read Other Blogs

Other bloggers continuously inspire me, and one of their posts might lead me to write my own take on a topic or write something personal. For example, do you remember when a couple of bloggers all inspired each other and we all wrote posts about why we were so weird? Yeah, that was awesome.

I think a lot of writers get caught up in trying to be original all the time, but we forget that because we are writing our own take on a topic or story, it is by default going to be original. There’s only so much you can say about money or debt or saving or budgeting, but there is an unlimited amount of content you can write about your life and the lessons you’ve learned.

Look Around You

On days when my creativity is shot, I have been known to look around the room and grab topics. So, right now I am writing this post in my bed with headphones on. My sweet hubby sleeping beside me, laundry is piled sky high on my desk to force me to fold it tomorrow, and I can hear one of the twins moving in their bed. So, with all of that going on, a couple of topics come to mind:

How to Grow Your Business and Keep Your Marriage Intact

5 Ways My Kids Inspire Me to Be a Better Mom

How I Keep My Business and Household To Do List Under Control

See? Three blog posts ideas came from just looking around at my environment.

Always Be On the Lookout for Personal Stories

Even if you’ve written a lot about your own life, you can write about other people’s lives too. I constantly write about my friends and family. I rarely use their names, but I use their stories both good and bad.

Once, an acquaintance on Facebook bragged about how her husband gave her a really, really expensive car and kept saying what a surprise it was. Since people rarely pay for cars in cash these days, the gift he really gave her was the gift of a car payment. Anyway, it rubbed me the wrong way so I wrote a post about it for one of my clients.

If a friend of mine paid off a ton of credit card debt, I’d probably write about that too. Once I asked for quotes from people who used PayDay loans, and I realized one of my friends had used them and then climbed out of debt in a huge success story. It was awesome.

So, sometimes if I am out of ideas, I just have to hop on Facebook to find some. 🙂

Hire a VA

You can always hire a virtual assistant to help you create topics for your site. This can be a huge help to bloggers, and I highly recommend this approach if you feel overwhelmed with your writing work load.

Ask Your Family and Friends Questions

I have been known to not allow the Hubs to leave a room until he gives me a blog post idea. Back during his first few years of medical school, I used to go and say hi during one of his study sessions with his friends and not leave until each one of his friends gave me a financial question or a blog post idea. It kind of became a joke, but it was immensely helpful.

Sometimes, people don’t want to talk about money because it’s taboo, but if you just ask if anyone has any questions, you’ll be surprised at the wealth of topics you can gather up!

What are some ways you find inspiration for your blog or your other projects?

 

P.S. If you liked this post, you’ll probably like my post on 17 ways to motivate yourself when you’re feeling lazy! 

 

 

5 Ways to Find Inspiration For Your Blog Posts

37 responses to “5 Ways to Find Inspiration For Your Blog Posts

  1. Great new homepage!

    I get lots of topic inspiration from reading other personal finance blogs and books. Sometimes there is a controversial point I want to respond to, or some angle that is left out that I want to cover. I also agree that just conversing with friends brings up many financial topics. I figure if people want to talk about a particular topic, they may want to read about it, too.

    1. Those are all great ways to find topics for your blog posts. Friends and family can provide a lot of inspiration. So can strangers if you overhear them talking when you are out and about.

  2. I LOVE the new site design Cat! I really dislike struggling to come up with topic ideas because when I feel fresh out, it takes quite a bit of time to come up with new ideas and that’s time that I feel could be best spent actually writing the post or working on something else. I usually try to brainstorm topic ideas ahead of time but I get my best ideas from just pulling from motivation from what’s going on in my life or the lives of people around me.

    1. Thanks girl! I agree that it can feel like wasted time, so I try to brainstorm a bunch of topics all at once for several of my clients’ blogs and my own. That way I don’t have to stop and think about finding a topic when I’m on a roll with writing.

  3. The redesign looks great, Cat! I’m always looking for new ideas. I try to answer a question someone’s asked. Or dive deeper into an issue I’m struggling with. And I’m constantly jotting things down in my phone’s notepad. Also, long walks seem to be the secret to good ideas!

    1. Jotting down ideas in your phone is a great idea. I keep a notebook by my bed because sometimes my best blog post ideas come to me while I’m sleeping.

  4. Aww! Thanks for the shout out 🙂 It’s getting to where I almost think we share a brain since we’ve worked together so closely over the past year +. I do a lot of these thing to help me find blog topics too. I’m hosting a game night with some girl friends tonight and maybe they’ll give me some more blog material, haha.

    1. My VA is amazing! She seriously saves my life like everyday and helps with lots of aspects of my business. I only wish she lived closer so we could pow wow in person more often.

  5. Love, love, love the new site, Cat! 🙂 Great post, too! I definitely get most of my ideas from looking around me and reading other blogs and articles. I also tend to think of most of my ideas while driving or showers…you know, doing something where I can’t easily access a pen and paper 🙂

    1. I think of a lot of ideas in the shower too. Sometimes whole blog posts are written in my head and then when I can finally write them down on paper they’re gone. 🙁

  6. I go through a lot of ups and downs when it comes to getting inspired. I definitely find ideas by looking at what other people are writing. I’ll often find one part of someone elses blog post and run off in a totally different direction. I think keeping a list of ideas helps too. Often I’ll write an idea down, and won’t be inspired to actually write about it for quite a while, but one day I’ll suddenly be motivated to write about that particular topic.

    1. Keeping a list is a great idea. I have done that in the past too, but once in a while I’ll just clean it out if I don’t feel motivated to write about the topics on my list.

  7. Fantastic new homepage!

    One place I always look for inspiration for blog posts is whenever I hear an interesting story. I like to pull in an interesting and engaging story, usually historical, at the start of blog posts and oftentimes the story is what inspires the post.

  8. I love the new layout, Cat! It looks awesome! I love that your topic for today is how to find topics! It’s something that I definitely struggle with. I really like to write about daily life experiences, so I sometimes feel like I can’t write anything if nothing particularly exciting happened. I love your idea for holding people hostage until they give you a topic. I’m definitely going to implement that strategy =]

    1. I’m glad you like it Kristi! Finding topics for clients and yourself can be difficult at first. These things really helped me step it up a notch so I don’t feel like I’ve run out of things to talk about.

  9. Wow! The new design looks more sophisticated and very professional! Congrats Cath! Nice color combinations. Looking forward to better changes in the future.

  10. This new layout looks so professional and sophisticated! Your tips on getting and staying inspired are great, reading other blogs like yours are what inspired me to start! Thanks so much for the tips.

  11. Very nice front page, I like it 🙂
    I typically get my inspiration when I walk at the beach, read books or blogs, or watch HGTV 🙂 I have my days when I don’t have any great ideas at all, and then there are days I have more ideas that I can handle.

  12. Absolutely agree I love read personal stories from other bloggers, taking notes…Thanks for sharing it!!!

  13. LOVE the new look Cat!! I usually get pretty much all of my blog inspiration these days from my clients. I joke with them that I will keep their info confidential, but their stories albeit anonymously are fair game for the blog. 🙂

  14. You’re absolutely right, Cath! Sometimes we think that we have written down everything. However, if we try to expand our mental capacity a little more and be sensitive to everything around us, we’ll end up making new stories, and new ideas.

  15. As a new blogger, I feel like I have too many ideas! However, I imagine that eventually it will become difficult to find topics to write about. When that point arrives, I will keep these tips in mind!
    Thanks for sharing.

Comments are closed.
Copyright © Catherine Alford.  Designed & Developed with by LizTheresa.com