Tips For Coming Up With Article Topics

One of the greatest challenges facing writers, particularly daily writers, is coming up with fresh content that will grab the reader’s attention. When you’re on a roll, the ideas are flowing and your creativity is at peak levels.

But what happens when you feel like you’ve exhausted all your ideas, and writer’s block sets in?

You can’t leave your readers without content. After all, you just wooed them into your blog with a string of great articles.

Here’s a look at some great ways to come up with article topics that are sure to sizzle and attract an audience, and help you push through those inevitable moments of brain cramps.

What’s Trending?

The most widely used search engines are great resources for identifying hot, trending topics. “Trending” topics are determined by how many unique searches there are on a given topic. These are often tied to breaking news on all fronts, including the economy, entertainment, celebrities, public safety, or the death of someone prominent.

If you’re just stumped for an idea, a quick search of hot, trending news will give you some great ideas and can spark a perspective that will be sure to interest your readers.

Topics of Personal Interest

Coming up with article topics if you just want to write about something new and interesting are fairly easy roadblocks to overcome. But what if you genuinely have writer’s block and discover you can’t think if anything to say, even if you did find a great topic?

Tapping into your personal interests and experiences is an excellent way to start crafting some compelling words, even if they aren’t directly related to the topic. A personal perspective will always make any topic more interesting to write, and certainly more interesting to read.

Let’s say you are writing an article on landscaping but are feeling blocked or like you’ve written everything there is to say on the subject. What can you do to add some spice to the topic? A great way to do this is to start thinking of various ideas and making a connection to landscaping. If something clicks then you’ve got something you can build on.

Surfing the web for ideas can also break through your writer’s block. There’s absolutely no reason not to peruse other landscaping blogs and websites. You never know when you’ll stumble across something that only scratches the surface of a topic you know a great deal about. Perhaps you’ll come across a topic you haven’t thought about in a long time, giving you the perfect opportunity to re-visit it.

Another great way to light that idea flame is to look at the online ads from your local home improvement stores. What do they have on sale this week? Slate rocks? Edging? Rolls of weed-resistant plastic? Flat shovels? Those are all items necessary to remove a section of grass to build a vegetable garden, flowerbed, or rock garden. Write a how-to guide based on those items currently on sale at your local hardware or home improvement store.

Listening to Others

Whether you’re at the grocery store, hanging out in the break room at the office, or having a picnic with the in-laws, there is no shortage of things that interest other people. Truly listening to what others are talking about is an excellent way to come up with article topics as well as to punch through your writer’s block. The reason for this is because of all the interesting perspectives and opinions held by others. You might be so focused on your own ideas and expertise that you have temporarily lost sight of what others think about various things.

Fortunately, as a writer, it is “other people” who matter. What are they reading? What are their interests? What will pique their interests, and most important what will have them coming back for more? The people you associate with every day—directly or indirectly—can provide a plethora of article ideas and perspectives, and most will be timely and of interest to a broader audience.

Follow-up Articles

What have you written in the past? Few things in this world are actually “one and done.” This means something you wrote a month ago could be ripe for a follow-up article. Did you write a review of a summer blockbuster movie? How’s it doing at the box office? What other movies are its stars in? Will there be a sequel? Was it a box office disaster?

Looking at your past topics, not with an eye on simply doing a re-set of the topic, but a true follow-up of it can yield plenty of ideas. Done properly, this can be a near endless supply of article ideas and is an approach that can keep you writing for years to come.

No matter your source for article ideas, ensuring their timeliness is one of the most important factors you can consider. If it’s hot, if it’s trending, and if it’s something that will appeal to a wide range of readers, there’s a very good chance you’ve identified another great topic. Now press on through that writer’s block, dig deep, and try some new and interesting methods you might not have considered in the past.