Inspiration is sometimes hard to come by, especially when trying to come up with content for your business’s blog week after week. Don’t let writer’s block get in the way of keeping your content fresh and regularly updated. When you come up against an idea wall, it’s important to push through that feeling of being “stuck” and dig deep for more ideas and topics that will inform your audience and provide value for your subscribers.

One great way to bust through your blocks is to read. Reading other content and ideas will help you spark ideas of what you can write about, too. There’s always something interesting to share with the world, the only trick is striking the match that’ll inspire a flood of great content for your own website.

To help you, here are the top thirty ideas that will inspire your blog writing and help you create original, inspiring content over and over again.

1. What products are you using personally that could relate to your business professionally? All your blogging doesn’t have to be about you and your company. Highlight a useful or interesting product that you’ve been using for business to add real value to your reader’s lives.

2. Where do you go for inspiration? Listing out a top 5 or top 10 lists of websites you frequent to get motivated or inspired is something other readers would be interested in as well. Make sure you title your list to match your topic and include links to reference those sites. You may even consider contacting the sites to see if they have affiliate programs and include affiliate links to their products. But only if they’re things you’d want to stake your reputation on endorsing and make sure you include the proper disclosures about affiliate linking to keep your site compliant.

3. Do you have employees? Even if you aren’t in the HR business, talking to your audience about how you hired or recruited top talent in a way that relates to your industry might help them and it’s always a useful topic.

4. If you have employees or use vendors, try interviewing them. Doing a little “behind the scenes” interview with an employee or vendor about what they do and their back story can be a good highlight and provide insight for others into your business. It puts a nice human touch to your business to know more about the people who work there and the people you work with outside your business. Maybe even consider a bio on the office pet if you have one!

5. Everyone is looking to improve, so why not talk about a hardship you had to overcome and how you did it? People love a good success story so hearing how you overcame and what advice you’d offer is very helpful for others.

6. What are some topics you wish that everyone in your industry knew about? Covering hot-button issues, upcoming legislature or anything the effects your industry will help establish you as an expert in your market and help inform your audience to the struggles and issues facing your industry.

7. What’re five cool start-ups in your local area that inspire you? They don’t even have to be in your field but covering new businesses and go-getters in your community will help build relationships and spread the word about other businesses. You never know who might be reading or whom you might help.

8. If you can’t find or think of five start-ups, what about local business leaders that you admire? Could you contact them for a brief quote or industry interview that you could include on your website? Is there a local issue that you could interview officials about or gather information for and cover on your blog?

9. Start a weekly Q&A with your customers. Let them send in questions and start a dialogue with your community. People love to be heard and it’s a great way to address questions about your business or gauge your success in your niche. Often times if you get similar questions from a few people -- that means there are lots more people wondering the same question but not speaking up about it, so answer questions.

10. Going to a convention? Make sure you take notes while you’re there and photos if you can. That can make for a great blog post after your attendance filled with your experience, the highlights, photos of the set-up and your recommendations for attendees next year.

11. Try something new! In addition to reading for idea prompts, getting out and doing things is one of the best ways to come up with new blogging ideas.

12. What is the most personal is often the most relatable, so share your challenges. Break down the process you’re going through on a tough project. What’s slowing you down? How are you working through this challenge right now?

13. Interview a repeat customer. Find out why they like your company and what you’re doing differently than the competition. Highlighting a raving fan will not only help share good word-of-mouth for your company but also makes for an interesting read for your audience to see what other people enjoy about your offerings.

14. Share your company’s vision or mission statement as a blog post. What is it? How did you come up with this mission? Don’t have one? Then this is a great idea to start talking about on your blog and how you’re going to set, then implement your vision. Ask for feedback on your mission and incorporate what works. Then share!

15. Convert data or industry research into an infographic. This is a visually pleasing way to engage your audience with your business and they’re incredibly viral. Make sure to include your sources for your research and brand it back to your company. Also make sure that the quality is great and it matches the tone and feel of the research topic you’re covering. Infographics are a great resource for building your blogging needs. If you don’t know how to make one yourself, try bidding out your project on design websites like Visual.ly or eLance.com for price quotes on how to do this within your budget.

16. Try incorporating staff activities into a blog post that will engage your readers. R.E.I. does a great job of highlighting their staff’s hobbies. Every time you walk into an R.E.I. store there’s always a wall filled with photos of each staff member engaged in their favorite outdoor recreation activity. This is a great way to get to know the staff by name and face, as well as know that their activities and hobbies support the R.E.I. mission and expertise. What could you share about your staff that could further establish your group as the experts in your industry?

17. Tell the story of your founding. Everyone loves a good story and learning how your company came to be can make a great blog post.

18. Share what’s happening in the community as a kind of highlight piece on the local area’s activities. Are there any interesting upcoming events that your customers or audience might be interested in? Do a round up of the next three months and get your readers all the information they could want about the community calendar through your blog post.

19. Do you listen to podcasts? Podcasts are an incredibly popular and useful medium more and more people are listening to. Try to list your favorites and why you love them for your audience. Even better, break them down into categories and give them the score on why you like each show for that particular genre.

20. YouTube videos are a great way to engage your audience and share more about who you are and why you exist. You can embed YouTube videos from your channel into your blog posts to do a nice summary and intro about the video and then let them watch to see the full experience.

21. If you aren’t ready or don’t want to have a YouTube series featuring yourself or your business, then you can still use this technique to assemble playlists of your favorite YouTube videos out there and embed that content into your post. Each video on YouTube has an embed code you can simply copy, then paste into the html view of your blog post draft to share video right in the post. It’s easy and effective. Make sure you include commentary on why you’re using or featuring this post so your readers know the relevancy.

22. Just like a podcast or YouTube list, book lists or book reviews also make great blog posts. Make a case for your recommendation and share the highlights and takeaways of why you’d want to recommend this book. Do it often enough and you may want to consider an Amazon Affiliate account which allows you to earn commission on the direct referral and purchase of books from your website. Again, just make sure you disclose that it’s an affiliate link.

23. Scams suck but they’re in every industry. Have you or your company experienced a scam? Sharing the setbacks or challenges you’ve faced with scammers, viruses or other online cyber security threats is something that every reader will be able to relate to and potentially learn from. Share what you’ve learned.

24. Check the news. Feel free to give some non-alienating commentary on current or global events. You can choose to make it political but often sticking to more neutral topic global events like the World Cup, Olympic games or even something like an upcoming Royal Wedding can be more appropriate and less alienating.

25. What’s your daily routine? Professional routines vary and can be high-traffic posts if they’re related to the success of your business. Share what you do and ask your readers for tips or insights into their daily routines for success and healthy, balanced living.

26. Start a weekly ‘best of’ for Twitter. You can choose what the week’s best of topic is, or keep is a consistent weekly thread like “Best of the Industry” and share your insights.

27. If your business is seasonal, write posts related to the time of year and especially help your readers to get ahead of the cycles of business. Help them get a jump-start on seasonal business or to-dos and capitalize on their desire to prepare for what’s next to prepare them.

28. Outline the steps to “Go Pro” for amateurs. No matter where you’re at with your business, odds are good there is someone who could learn from you. Explain how you got started and what steps you took to get here. Share your step-by-step plan to bust through the stages of novice to expert from your own experience. Let your hindsight be your reader’s foresight and offer them that valuable assistance.

29. Speaking of your “How To Go Pro” to help start-ups, why not start an entire how-to series. It can relate to your field and common tasks your team does daily. These types of blog posts, especially if accompanied by video and photos, are a valuable and viral addition to your blog.

30. Share your key learning or address customer complaints and feedback. Did a customer send you a complaint that helped you improve your business? Ask them to publish their note and explain what you did wrong and how you fixed it. Or publish anonymously and explain how you’re improving from the suggestion or feedback. It’s a great way to show that you listen to your audience and that you aren’t just interested in positive improvements, you implement them!

Have different ideas that have been helpful for your own blogging content? We’d love to hear from you and to share your thoughts with the community on our Facebook Page.

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