99 Great Post Ideas

Internet Archive (Photo credit: bigoteetoe)

Post ideas are hard to come by and great ideas often disappear, such as ProBlogger Philip of IHelpYouBlog.com (vanished from the web, but available from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine). The article was originally written in March of 2007. I have removed all the original links and deleted the first suggestion along with one other, taking the list from 101 to 99 ideas. If you want to read the original post, do a little digging in the archive.

1. Write a post by examining the pros and cons of an issue.
2. Write a tutorial.
3. Do an interview with key people in your niche.
4. Create a mock head-to-head competition.
5. Do a case study about your topic.
6. Take an alternate position.
7. Write a long comment.
8. Pick a topic by reading business book titles.
9. Research a topic by doing research on Amazon.com.
10. Drill down on a topic using Ask.com’s search feature.
11. Do a post that answers your readers’ questions.

12. mappa_blog (Photo credit: francescopozzi)

    Create a comprehensive list.

13. Create flagship content.
14. Interview controversial people in your niche.
15. Post about current events in your niche.
16. Invite your readers to submit articles.
17. Instead of exchanging links, get together with other bloggers and review each others’ blogs.
18. Connect with bloggers around your same level and share ideas.
19. Do a “speedlinking” post. (This is basically making a post listing some articles you have read on a given topic over the past few days that caught your attention, usually around 10.)
20. Post about posts made by others in your My Blog Log community.
21. Be opinionated in your post.
22. Turn off the nofollow attribute to encourage comments.
23. Do a “tag” post and have other bloggers who are tagged add to a list.
24. Be a guest blogger and share ideas with new readers.
25. Review your statistics to see what keywords referred your visitors to your site and post about those.
26. Answer your readers’ questions with more questions (i.e., have you thought about…?).
27. Contrast two or more positions in a post.
28. Make a post that solves a problem.
29. Make a post that is inspirational.
30. Make a satirical post.
31. Write a series of posts.
32. Post your research findings.
33. Post an “advantages/disadvantages” post.
34. Update an old post for new ideas/findings.
35. Link ideas from different genres in your posts (e.g., Celebrities and the gadgets they own).
36. Debunk a myth in your post.
37. Make a post for beginners.
38. Make a post for advanced readers.
39. Invite experts to comment on your post.
40. Ask your readers to Digg your best posts.
41. Change up your posting style (e.g., tutorial, reviews, etc.).
42. Write a funny post.
43. Create a huge list of your best posts.
44. Add to a list started by another blogger.
45. Create a mission statement for your blog.
46. Make a post simplifying a complex problem for your readers.
47. Create a guide for your niche.
48. Make a post turning a negative into a positive through humor ( e.g., tell a joke: “My parents tell me I’m autistic. I tell them they have an attitude problem.”).
49. Browse through a thesaurus and see if synonyms help spark ideas for your posts.
50. Respond to criticism in a post.
51. Write a post like you are telling a story.
52. Spruce up your posts with pictures.
53. Post about frequently asked questions in your niche.
54. Pose a rhetorical question in your post.
55. Post about what’s popular and why it’s beneficial ( e.g., “Twitter” for tech blogs).
56. Pose a hypothesis and conclusion in your post.
57. Support your post with related post links.
58. Make a [blank] for dummies post.
59. Post a picture that speaks a thousand words.
60. Buy a how-to book from a bookstore and use some of the ideas from that book to generate ideas for posting (e.g., a book about Photoshop).
61. Look at the archives of your niche competitors and see if any of their old posts can be expanded in an “update” post on your blog.
62. Post with a personality.
63. Write about how to do something more efficiently in your niche.
64. Write about generally unknown secrets in your niche.
65. Write about how to use a product in an unconventional way.
66. Do a post transcribing live events.
67. Dissect an argument in a post.
68. Make a post summarizing someone else’s post.
69. Make a post about how things have changed from the past.
70. Make a post that expands on someone else’s post.
71. Create a post that incorporates the words, “desperate” and “futile”.
72. Make a post alleging a conspiracy.
73. Make a post that encourages visitors to subscribe by offering a reward.
74. Make a post that involves New York City, London, San Francisco or Sydney.
75. Make a post that incorporates in the title the word “crossover”.
76. Create a post that utilizes a bar chart or pie chart.
77. Create a post that has a cliff hanger to be answered in a later post.
78. Make a post about pitfalls in your niche.
79. Participate in a reciprocal guest blogging scheme where you blog on someone else’s blog and that other person blogs on your blog.
80. Do a paid posting targeted to your readers.
81. Profile the competition in your niche.
82. Post linkbait.
83. Make a post about your fellow bloggers’ top posts.
84. Make a post about your most popular posts.
85. Read some sports (or other genre) magazines and incorporate some of the writing styles in your posts.
86. Write a post that pinpoints similarities and differences.
87. Write a post giving a free recommendation.
88. Write a post about something that is merely “good” but not “great”.
89. Write a post about a hack for your niche.
90. Make a post that constructively criticizes someone else’s post.
91. Run a poll and post the results of that poll.
92. Ask your loyal readers to email you links to their best resources and make a post about what you found.
93. Write only about a particular theme for a week.
94. Designate each day of the week as a theme day where you will always post about a particular topic on that day.
95. Review your blog’s (weekly, monthly, yearly) performance and post the results.
96. Write an “attack” post by setting up an argument and then shooting it down.
97. Combine some of your best posts from your archives into a new series.
98. Hold a conference via blog posts.
99. Make a “100 ideas” post. 

Thanks to Philip for the original post, most if not all the ideas above are his. Your blog is missed, man!