This month I cel­e­brate my 50^th blog for mul­ti­chan­nel ecom­merce plat­form Expand­ly and quite often I am asked how I man­age to think of so many dif­fer­ent, yet rel­e­vant, blog posts for each of my very dif­fer­ent clients. What bet­ter way to answer that ques­tion than to write a blog about it!

1. Google Alerts

Google Alerts allows you to “mon­i­tor the web for inter­est­ing new con­tent”. Cre­ate a list of key­words and get Google to email you a list of rel­e­vant inter­net men­tions and arti­cles once a day (or week). Not only does this pro­vide you with break­ing head­lines and pro­voke thoughts and ideas, it also helps you to cre­ate a once-a-month news roundup blog of all those lit­tle sto­ries that weren’t quite juicy enough for a blog of their own.

2. Read

One of the first tips for writ­ers is to read, read and read. The more you read, the more you expand your mind and thoughts to come up with new and excit­ing blog ideas. Read a vari­ety of for­mats and con­tent (it doesn’t even have to be on the top­ic you’re writ­ing about): fact, fic­tion, recipes, inter­net forums – they’re all great places to pro­voke your blog­ging mind.

3. Ask

Ask­ing for help isn’t a weak­ness, it’s a strength. Ask­ing about the pur­pose of the blog or for con­tent ideas, is a great (and easy) way to get blog ideas. Ask cus­tomer sup­port what the biggest user mis­takes are, ask mar­ket­ing what the big 2018 trends are going to be, ask cus­tomers why they’re using the prod­uct – ask and you shall get!

4. Journal

The human brain is a won­der­ful tool that some­times it’s so busy doing the impor­tant stuff (like eat­ing ice cream), that it for­gets some of the lit­tle things. What did I come upstairs for, oh shoot it was Jerry’s birth­day yes­ter­day, what was that blog idea I came up with? Inspi­ra­tion for writ­ing often comes in unex­pect­ed places and at com­plete­ly the wrong time, which is why I car­ry a jour­nal around with me. When­ev­er I get a thought, idea, or even just a blog title, I write it down in my jour­nal so that 1. I don’t for­get it and 2. when I’m sat at my lap­top screen com­ing up with more ideas for din­ner than I am blog con­tent, I can look at my list of blog ideas to spark some typing.

5. Instruct An Expert

Com­ing up with a con­tin­u­ous stream of rel­e­vant, inter­est­ing and fresh blog con­tent is hard work. Luck­i­ly there are peo­ple that enjoy it (hel­lo) and that’s the eas­i­est way to come up with new blog ideas: Instruct a free­lance writer!