Building a successful blog takes a ton of work and dedication. From pinging users with a litany of interesting pieces to crafting search engine optimization elements in a way that ensures ideal search rankings, the belief that merely putting virtual pen to paper is all it entails is a myth. All too often, a budding blogger will pour his or her heart out at first. Through the creation of several great pieces and a sleek website, traffic slowly begins to build. One day and all of a sudden, however, the idea fountain stops flowing and writer’s block sets in. Finding new blog topic ideas is half the battle: today, we’ll help you out by giving you some ideas for improving your research and brainstorming blogging process.

Dig Through Questions on the Web

If you want to know what other people are talking about – and therefore, what they want to learn about – then you’ll definitely want to explore current questions being asked. Through a variety of question and answer websites like Reddit, Quora, Answers.com and Yahoo Answers, you can search by category or niche in order to find relevant questions about your broader blog themes. From here, you can see what people want to know and build blog topic ideas around that. You can even cheat in some ways and decide to do a “top questions asked” piece that directly encompasses all of the questions about your theme that you find.

Explore Trends

It seems that just about everywhere we look these days, the notion of “trends” or “trending topics” has appeared. From social media websites like Twitter and Facebook to multimedia platforms like YouTube, there are plenty of outlets through which you can see what is currently on the minds of readers, watchers and subscribers. This can be extraordinarily useful for blogs that deal with late-breaking topics or current events, as it ensures that you’ll be able to consistently drive traffic to what’s hot in the news on a consistent basis. By combining this strategy with an aggressive social media marketing effort, you can dramatically increase engagement and traffic for each new blog post.

Mine Your Previous Comments

If you’re all out of blog ideas, then consider another source of inspiration: your previous blog comments. Much like you can use question and answer portals around the web to find a variety of new ideas, you may very well find the same lurking in previous comments on old blog posts. Some people will even blatantly suggest new ideas for topics to be considered in the comments sections.

Ask Your Fanbase

There is no shame in admitting that you need new ideas. Your current base of readers is likely to view the same topics and themes from completely different mindsets, which can be a great thing for generating new ideas. Put out a request for new ideas to them, either through a simple blog post, email blast or open-ended survey/poll on your blog. By pinging users in this way, you’re sure to come up with some new ideas in no time at all.

If you’re struggling for inspiration, then consider exploring question-and-answer websites, asking your fanbase for new ideas, looking through previous comments and exploring what is currently trending around the web via social media and beyond. Do you have any other ideas that have helped you break through and write great content in the past? If so, share them with us below!