Stuck for content ideas for your blog? Here is a type of blog post that might spark an idea or two for you – it could even spark ideas for a whole series.
It is something that should be relevant to most niches and topics of blog so pick one, write it up, and when you’re done I’d love to see it in comments below.
A question I had when I started out
Sometimes the best received posts are the ones for beginners on topics that help them really get started out in whatever pursuit you are writing about.
This is one of my favourite techniques for coming up with ideas to write about is to simply think back a year, two or ten and think about the questions and challenges that I had at that time.
Then I write the answer that I’ve since discovered to that question.
It might seem a bit silly writing about something so beginner or basic but you’ll if you were asking it you can bet others are still asking it today.
Beginners are often an ignored reader in many niches so paying them attention can be a powerful technique.
It’s also great for creating content that will potentially rank well in search engines as Google is a place many people go to ask the questions they’re too embarrassed to ask their friends.
Examples
On dPS some of our most popular posts of all time are answering really simple beginner questions. For example my How to Hold a Camera post was inspired by my own mistakes as a kid taking blurry photos.
As I’ve previously written on ProBlogger – that How to hold a camera post was something so basic I nearly didn’t publish it. But to this day it’s had over 600,000 visitors to it (with more arriving every day).
A similar example here on ProBlogger is my ‘what is a blog?’ post. I wrote the post in 2005 and to this day it still gets traffic!
Exercise
So think back – what questions did you used to ask about the topic or topics you write about? Come up with a list and start working through them.
You might even come up with enough to start a weekly or monthly series of posts for those just starting out.
Once you’ve brainstormed get to work and write your post. Once it is published feel free to share a link below so we can see what you wrote!
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Blog Post Idea: Answer a Beginner Question
