Ideas for bloggers to write about and how to find them

Two questions bloggers continually as themselves and others are:

What should I write about today?

and

How do I get ideas for my blog?

After blogging for 5 years and facing these questions myself, I have found that ideas come from a variety of public sources: television, family topics, radio, advertisements, politics, other blogger articles, and more.

Sometimes my topics are planned, and other times they are spontaneous. For example, one morning I listened to a radio tidbit about a Supermoon. So, I decided to research it and wrote an article about Supermoons. This is currently in my top 10 most read posts.

In addition, ideas come from technical tools that many bloggers already use, such as Feedjit and Google Webmaster Tools because both of these sources list search terms that potential readers have used to find your site.  For example, last July I wrote an article about my 4th of July plans which mentions that we have a chicken barbecue. Then earlier this week, a visitor found this post by searching for:

How to cook chicken on an outdoor pit?

Since my article does not discuss this in detail, the question provides an excellent topic for a future discussion.

Unlike many other blogs that are focused on a particular topic, Ask the Blogster is broad enough in scope which allows a variety of topics to be questioned and answered.

Among the many questions and topics that I have for future posts are:

• How much money can I spend?
• Can I buy everything advertised on television and radio?
• Are work at home offers scams?
• How sharing my working experiences with my son helped his education and got him a job.
• What will happen if I lose my job?
• What will I do when my unemployment runs out?
• My favorite zucchini casserole.
• My political opinions about spending and taxes.

My list can  go on and on, but at the beginning of the day,  I must choose a topic and write about it. Since I only write a post once a week, many of these topics will never be addressed. However, having prepared a list of topics makes the process of writing a post much easier and less stressful.

So, whether you have a "money making",  "sports", "cooking", "political", "mommy related", "technical", "biographical", or "a general purpose" blog, I encourage all of you to continually ask yourself: "Is this a good topic for my blog?" whenever you hear, see, or read something (no matter what you are doing).

If you think it possibly is, then write it down for future reference. In time, your list will reward you with a variety of excellent topics.