Blog Ideas: What to Do When You Run Out of Things to Write

Every blogger hits the day when the list of blog ideas is empty and the cursor keeps blinking. It happens to new bloggers in their second month and to old bloggers in their tenth year. The good news is that topics don’t run out. We stop noticing them, and noticing is a skill you can practice.

Why the List Runs Dry

The list rarely runs dry because the subject is used up. It runs dry because the bar in your head went up. In the first weeks, any small tip felt worth a post. A few months later, only a big, complete guide feels good enough, and big guides are hard to start.

The second cause is pace. New bloggers plan three posts a week, keep it up for a month and then stop. A goal you can keep beats a goal that sounds impressive. Try one post a week, with one extra written ahead as a buffer. Most people can hold that pace for years.

The third cause is the feeling that everything has been written already. We’ll come back to that one, because it deserves a real answer.

Start With the Question You Asked This Week

The best source of blog ideas is your own search history. Every time you look something up, you’ve found a question that real people ask. If you needed the answer, someone else needs it today.

Write down the question in the words you typed, not in polished words. Compare “Why does my query run fast in one window and slow in another?” with “Session Settings Explained”. The first one is the better title. Readers search the way you searched.

One question makes one post. You don’t need to cover the whole subject. A short post that answers one question well is more useful than a long one that answers ten questions halfway.

Let Readers Hand You Topics

Once a blog has a few readers, they start sending you topics without knowing it. Read the comments on your old posts. A comment that asks “what about this case?” is a new post waiting to be written.

The same goes for questions from colleagues, from a forum or from the line after a talk. When you hear the same question three times, write the answer once and send the link the fourth time. That saves you typing, and the post keeps answering people while you sleep.

Mistakes and Fixes Make Great Posts

The error you fought for an hour yesterday is one of the most useful posts you can write. Error message posts are some of the most searched pages on a technical blog. A reader with that exact error on their screen wants your exact fix.

Write it while the details are fresh. Include the full error text, what you tried that didn’t work and what fixed it. The failed attempts matter too. The reader has tried them already and wants to know they aren’t alone.

Old Posts Deserve Better Answers

Go back through your own archive. Some answers were right when you wrote them and are out of date now. Others were thin because you knew less back then. Both are blog ideas.

You can update the old post. You can also write a new post that looks at the same topic from a different side. A post about how a feature works leads to one about when not to use it. That one leads to the error people hit with it. Each one answers a different reader.

Keep an Idea List, Not a Pile of Drafts

Ideas arrive at bad times: in a meeting, in the car, halfway through another post. Capture each one in a single line, written as a question, in one place you always have with you. A notes app on your phone works fine.

Keep the list short and plain. Twenty half-written drafts feel like debt, and debt makes people stop writing. Twenty one-line questions feel like choices. When you sit down to write, pick the question that interests you most today. It doesn’t have to be the one that waited longest.

A fixed writing slot helps more than any tool. For years I wrote one post every day before starting the rest of my routine. When you know you’ll write tomorrow morning, you notice topics all day. Your mind knows there’s a slot to fill.

“Hasn’t Everything Been Written Already?”

You could say that every topic already has a hundred posts, and now AI tools answer questions directly. Fair point. Why add post number one hundred and one?

Because your post isn’t a copy of the other hundred. Your example, your test, your words and the mistake you hit are yours alone. A reader who didn’t follow the first hundred explanations can follow yours. And the answers AI tools give come from people who wrote things down. Original writing, with real tests and real examples, is what everything else learns from.

I’ve written on this blog since 2006, more than 5,800 articles, and the same topics come back every few years. Each time, the tools have changed, the readers are new and the old answer needs a fresh look. That has never felt like repeating myself.

A Short Checklist for an Empty Day

When the list is empty, go through these in order. One of them will give you a post.

• What did I search for this week?
• What question did someone ask me more than once?
• Which comment on an old post asks something new?
• What error did I fix recently?
• Which old post of mine is out of date or too thin?
• What did I learn this week that surprised me?

Pick one, write the question as the title and answer it plainly. Don’t wait for the perfect topic. The perfect topic shows up more easily once you’re writing every week.

Running out of blog ideas is not a lack of topics, it is a lack of notes.

Published by Pinal Dave on SQLAuthority. More of my work at pinaldave.com.