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How I Generated Over 6000 Ideas to Write About on My Blog in 15 Minutes

Ever run out of things to write about on your blog?

In this video screencast I want to show you how I came up with over 6000 ideas to write about on my blog using two tools – an Auto Responder (I use Aweber (aff)) and a Simple Survey.

Setting this up took me all of 15 minutes work – after that it’s just been a matter of sitting back and watching the ideas roll in.

You may not be able to generate 6000 ideas (and the reality is that I can’t use that many) but this technique can be used on even a smallish blog.

Video Notes

How to Generate Ideas to Write About on Your Blog – Transcript

I’ve had this video transcribed below for those who prefer to get it that way. The transcription provided by The Transcription People.

Today I want to show you a technique that I’ve been using just for the last few months, on how to come up with ideas to write about on your Blog.

A lot of blogger face this problem – after a few months of blogging you run out of all those great ideas that you had when you started your blog, and you want to come up with more.

This is a technique that will work best on a blog with lots of readers, but even just some readers that, particularly readers that are subscribing to your newsletter, it can be used quite effectively, even in small numbers over a longer period of time.

So, you can see on the screen here, I’ve opened up AWeber. AWeber’s my email newsletter tool that I’ve talked about numerous times on ProBlogger.

What I’ve opened up here is the auto responder sequence for my Digital Photography School (I have a number of them).

This is an auto-responder that I’ve set up for DPS and one of the newsletters, and you can see here that on this particular one I have seven different messages that go out once someone subscribes to my newsletter. These are automated messages that go out at pre-determined intervals. You can see here the intervals on the left, they get a Welcome to DPS message straight away on the first day they sign up. Then they get a series of informational newsletters including one promotional one. So they actually hear about he products that we have and get offered a discount, but they also get emails that are purely informational that give them quality links back into archives on the site.

Number seven here is the one I want to talk about today. “What would you like to learn about Photography Next?” is the title of it.

I’ve already opened it up here. Now, they’re getting this email, you’ll see there, it’s around four months into their sequence. So they’ve already been subscribed for a while, they’ve been getting our weekly newsletter updates, which is in addition to this auto-responder.

So they’ve got some connection with DPS, and then get this email. Basically thanks them for joining, and introduces the idea that we’re doing some planning for the site which we’re always doing, and at the time I started this auto-responder, I was actually doing a week of intensive planning, and introduces the concept we want it to be, DPS to be as helpful as possible and we’ve got a survey to help us to improve the site and to come up with topics to write about. And then it gives them a link to click. When they click on that link, they are taken to a survey.

Now, I’ve set it up in SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is a great tool, I think you get a certain amount for free. I’ve signed up for the premium edition, because I’m sending so many people to this as part of my newsletter. This is the back end of SurveyMonkey where you set up your questions, but here you can see the questions that I’m asking.

I introduced the topic again, and talk about why I’m doing the survey. Then I get them to begin to describe themselves in terms of the level of photographer that they are.

Then I ask the question, “I would like to see Tutorials on DPS on the following topics,” and get them to choose all that apply. Now, these are pre-determined topics that we do write on from time to time. The idea of this question is just to work out what the priorities of people are.

Then I ask them which topics would you like to see a more comprehensive guide to? So here what I’m asking is, I’m trying to get a feel for what people might pay for information on, because I want to develop eBooks. So here I’m doing a bit of a survey on that. One of the biggest ones was Travel Photography, so we developed an eBook on that. Then I asked them a question about the post-production tools they use, Photoshop, Paintshop, you know, LightRoom, Aperture, that type of thing.

And this is the golden question, this is the one I want to talk about today. Apart from those listed above, what topics would you like to see covered more on DPS? Feel free to be as specific as you’d like. So anything from a general topic like underwater photography to more specific – like slow-synch flash, or how to sharpen images in Photoshop.

So I’m giving them permission there to go beyond those broad categories we covered earlier in the survey, and to ask specific questions.

Now, SurveyMonkey gives you some great analytics, and so you can see here the answer to that first question, I’ve graphed people. I’ve actually got 71% of readers who say they’ve had a camera for a while, they’re fairly confident, but they want to get more advanced. And we get same sort of stats on these other ones. But what I want to go do down here below, is this last question that I’ve talked about.

You can see here, I’ve had this survey running for a couple of months now. I’ve had 6,369 people tell me what they want to get more information on. Specific questions. Now this is gold. This is really gold.

You get a download button here, and you can download it as a PDF or as an Excel, whatever you’d like.

Now, 6,000+ people have told me what they want to get information on, and they’ve given me specific questions. Now, some of these questions aren’t very helpful, some of the answers aren’t very helpful, you know, I’ve got someone here that says, “Fashion.” Well, we kind of figured that they probably would have ticked the Fashion Photography box above, but here we go, look, fixing problems like blown out skies, or wrinkle removal or skin softening. There’s three topics that I could go away and write on. Fish-eye photography, taking pics of babies and pets. You’ve got a lot of quite interesting stuff here. A lot of these questions are very specific, they’re post-type questions. Some of them people joke and they give you crappy answers and stuff that they’re just trying to be funny. But this is gold. There is 6,000 responses here.

Now DPS has a fairly large audience and so we are able to get 6,000 responses and that’s great. But even a blog that may be getting only a small number of people signing up to it’s newsletter every day, what happens is, as an auto-responder, remember, I’ve set this up as the seventh thing, so they’re getting all this quality information first, but after a few months of being subscribed, they’re actually still got questions, and they’re answering them.

We have around eight or nine hundred people sign up a day for this. So eight or nine hundred people are getting sent to this survey every day. You may have only eight or nine people getting this information every day, but you will find over time, if you have this as part of your auto-responder for a year or two, you’ll begin to build up a bank of questions that you can then draw upon later.

So if I’m ever wondering, you know, “What should I write about today on my blog?” I tell you, that file, that Excel file that I opened up before is one of the first places that I go, because it is just gold, it’s got so much great information.

Hope this has been helpful for you. It’s a technique that I’ve been using over the last few months on my blog and it’s really helped me to come up with a lot of great things to write about on my site.
End of Recording.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Thank you not only for this great way to generate ideas, but also for having a written transcript of the video.

    I definitely see the value in doing this. Not only do you get great ideas, but they are things your readers really want to read/watch!

  2. Great video Darren, it’s a clever idea, a lot of things I see on sites now is a little pop up that appears asking people what they want to see more of on the blog as well

  3. Using surveys to generate content ideas is a great technique. Another technique I find useful is “eavesdropping” on other people’s “@” conversations on Twitter. Especially people who are in the same niche as you.

    Great tip Darren.

    Kwame.

  4. Hey there Darren,

    Thanks a lot for sharing this kind of information. It is a coincidence where I’m now stuck (a.k.a writers block) and have no idea what to write about.

    This video give a lot of useful information for me. :D

  5. I like meditating to generate blog post ideas, but this seems to work too. Thanks for sharing Darren.

    Ryan Biddulph

  6. Darren,
    This is a great video-post. The one suggestion I would make is to use Google Forms instead of Survey Monkey. So many people swear by survey monkey, but Google Docs Forms are so much better. You can have unlimited responses all for free (of course, it’s Google) and it organizes it into a nice Google Doc Spreadsheet. I have used it for surveys and wouldn’t recommend any other tool.

    Thanks for sharing!

  7. Darren,

    Surveys to generate ideas on content, what a great and useful idea!! Thanks for sharing this wonderful idea.

  8. Hey Darren,

    I’ve done this couple of months back using SurveyMonkey on my blog. You do get a lot of great information of what your readers are looking for.

    Chat with you later…
    Josh

  9. Very informative. As someone who’s just getting in to blogging this is great information for smart ways to build your site and deliver value.

  10. Darren, great idea/ video. Thanks, Bob

  11. Hi Darren,
    We are using Aweber already, so I am always looking at ways to maximize its incredible capabilities. Using the survey is brilliant for generating post ideas. But I also love that we can learn more about what’s important to our readers.

    Planning for the longterm content of our site is something we forget to address. I hadn’t thought about developing a business plan specific to our blog before—that’s now on my list for 2011! Thanks again for another helpful post.

    Karen

  12. Great Tips Darren! You could probably do the same using your Twitter account and a tool like http://www.twtpoll.com, and also get a lot of new topics to write about.

  13. Awesome video. Simple ideas that should be able to be put into place. Thanks for sharing.

  14. Hi Darren,

    Thanks for the tip. I also like to stay tuned into what’s happening in the pop culture world and use that as inspiration. I think a lot of my readers respond when I attach my message to something they can relate to, like Mad Men. Plus it’s more fun for me that way too.

    Thanks again,

    Rebecca

  15. Hi Darren,

    Thanks for exposing such a powerful idea. I just can’t miss your blog for anything.

  16. Thanks for the tips. I had never heard of this before and am constantly trying to figure out what to write about next. Some days I am just downright un-creative! Thanks for the tip. You rock Darren!

  17. it’s official, I don’t like you anymore! ;-)

    You make this look way to easy, and you think of things that I would never think of.

    While I struggle here to come up with ideas, you cruise along on autopilot and go on Vacation.

    Have a Great Week,

    John Wheeler

  18. This is also a great idea to create practically instant hits for your next information product as well. All you have to do is look for trends in the comments people make when they answer your qwuestion.

    If you get enough people that are asking you to write about a certain topic, then you have a great beginning for a hit product. All you have to do is tweak the idea with a little more reasearch.

    I like to take survey results, and then couple them with a solid keyword search. I have created 10 products using this method, or something close to it.

    -Joshua Black
    The Underdog Millionaire

  19. Wow, this is a great idea! I was thinking about setting up a newsletter for my blog. Now I have an even bigger reason to do so.

    I’ll try that auto responder once I receive more traffic.

  20. I’m so old-school when it comes to this. I have a pocket notebook that I always bring with me. Every time an idea hits me, I write it right away on my notebook. But Ideas are still hard to come by specially if I’m busy at work or home.

  21. writer’s block or in this case, blogger’s block. how right you are Darren. It is depressing to want to write and not come up with any idea at all. this is great.

  22. Wow, amazing as always. I can only hope that half the people I’ve turned on to your blog have subscribed. You are a fabulous role model, thank you.

  23. Another way to get ideas is to include polls in your sidebar with a golden question!

    There are WP poll plugins that make it a snap to include in your blog.

  24. Great advice which I must try out.

    At the moment I get most of my ideas by posting a question on a forum I belong to. People are very responsive and helpful. Then I have a planning session at the beginning of the month and set up a spreadsheet so I know what I’m going to write about when. I never think about topics on a writing day and vice versa.

    I haven’t tried surveys, but it’s a great idea, and something I’ll try out for Octobers topics if not before. Thanks!

  25. This post was really helpful. What I really enjoyed was seeing how you set up your autoresponder. The survey is great as well. I like the interaction you have with everyone.

    Sarah Baron
    Anonymous8

  26. Thanks for the video.. that’s so simple but so powerful… you just showed us how to automate market research..

    THAT IS GOLD! thanks again

    Hector

  27. As usual…..great ideas. But I’m really struggling trying to record this stuff. Any ideas?…..anybody?

  28. I’m guessing this blog post was one of them?

    :)

  29. Great video, really helpful! – I know myself it’s often hard when you feel like you’re running out of ideas but this video clearly shows how to get around that!

    Also, good work with the video and transcript, as much as I love to watch videos it’s nice to have some to read along / refer to! :-)

  30. Thank you for the idea and the step by step video. I have integrated this into my blog and while I am sure I will not get anywhere near 6000 responses, it is something I am definitely looking forward to using as a tool to increase not only my readership but to ensure my readers get more of what they want.

  31. Great advice. I set up a one question survey on one of my self help sites where I basically asked what subjects my readers were most interested in reading about (stress, relationships, confidence, mental fitness…). I set it up years ago and the replies still pour in.

    Not only does it point your thoughts and ideas in the right direction and prevent writer’s block but (even more importantly) it allows you to write what your readers want to read rather than what you want to write.

    Thank again, btw, for always providing a wonderful transcript along with the video.

  32. Great information, Darren! I will have to try and figure out how to do that. I could use the ideas!

  33. Thumbs up for Aweber.

  34. This is what I have been looking, Lack of ideas to write content on! Well, I will use the method and come up with some great topics for my blog.

  35. Oh my. Good stuff. I am at the very beginning of my blog adventure so i ll wait a bit to try this but definetely goes in my archive.
    Watching Darren at work is like watching an olympian…on one hand it inspires you to do great things and on the other hand you feel like you ll never be up to that level!!!

    anyway, thanks for the inspiration part :)

  36. great idea sir! i always run out of ideas and my blog seems always outdated. got some good news here
    thanks

  37. Hey Darren, i think this question is a kinda offtopic, but i have to ask this.

    Why do you use AWeber for dPS newsletter and use Feedburner for Problogger newsletter?

    I’m very curious about this…

  38. Wow great idea for generating some user interested idea but isn’t is too much for a single handed person like small blogger. How if we visit yahoo answer forums and than generate some topics to write upon?

  39. cool stuff man…very usefull to a full time blogger like me…cheers

  40. Quite an interesting article,

    I have just started my Blog… was happy to land on this blog as well, gave me a couple of ideas…

    Many thanks.

    Follow me: http://riadafyouni.blogspot.com/

  41. Fantastic ideas. I had not thought of using Survey Monkey like this or even the auto responders either!

  42. I really liked reading your article. It definitely will help me if I ever get writers block and can’t come up with any ideas. All I need to do is ask my readers “what would you like to learn about next?” Great idea. Thank you!

  43. Thanks Darren for this very helpful post. I used to struggle with coming up with ideas about what to write – but this post has given me a wonderful plan that I intend to use.

    By carrying out a survey that specifically asks people what they would like to see on the blog, as you explained, it means that you will provide exactly what your audience / blog readers need – which makes the blog very valuable and useful to your readers!

    With the information gathered from the survey, one can then plan ahead, write your blog posts in advance since you know what to write about. This means that when you have those days when you feel like writing a lot, you can go ahead and do so…and if you have some days when you don’t feel like writing a lot, then that’s fine since the future posts for your blogs are all prepared and lined-up. This is an excellent idea!

    In addition to this amazing technique that you have explained, two ways of getting ideas about what to write on are:

    (a) Draw on what you know. If you have been involved in a niche for a long time, you’re probably an expert. There are people out there who have questions and need information on what you already know. So, ask yourself, what challenges did I face when I started to be involved in this niche? Then share what you know!

    (b) Visit some main forums that are related to your niche, if there are any, and look for the most frequently asked questions. What common questions do people have? Then write a post providing the answers to these.

    Many thanks again Darren for this valuable technique.

  44. I’m having this problem now. I’m beginning to run out of new, creative ideas to write about. Thanks for this.

  45. You don’t how badly I needed this. Again, you were right on time!

  46. I think adding polls in your blog can also give some idea on which article to write…also adding a question on what to write can also be helpful…I have implemented this on my blog and have got results..

  47. You can often write an article in response to readers comments to a previous article. It’s a bit like what newspapers do . They find a story that they can run and run with!

  48. I have been kicking about the idea of a survey….you have now given me the information and inspiration to do so…thank you!

  49. lol, this really was my problem! but to solve this problem I started visiting other’s people blog’s and taking ideas by reading many blogs.

    but this is a good idea too, thanks for a share.

  50. I am a new blogger, looking for ideas for my blog, with this post I have started re thinking on what to do next. Apart from SurveyMonkey we also use Google Docs to create Survey form.

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