What to blog about: 27 blog post ideas (that will actually get results!)

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Staring at a blinking cursor? Stuck on what to write about? Here are 27 blog post ideas to inspire you (and which will actually get you results!)

Struggling to come up with great blog post ideas? Or perhaps you are constantly having brilliant ideas throughout the week… but then when you sit down to actually write your blog post your mind goes completely blank? Or maybe you do come up with ideas, but you talk yourself out of them because you don’t think they will be any good, or won’t get you the results you want?

Either way, this article will help you!

I’m going to help you by inspiring you with 27 blog post ideas… but first I want to ask you a question…

What do you want your blog post to achieve?

Because here’s the thing… I could just give you one of those long lists of ‘365 blog post ideas to inspire you’. And you could go away and use that to help you out of the mind blank you are in right now. But would that actually help you? Would that get you to where you want to go?

Well, that all depends on what you want to achieve. If all you want to achieve is words on paper (or rather screen!) then yes, that will.

But I’m willing to guess you want more, am I right?

That you don’t so much want a blog post, in and of itself, you want what that blog post will give you…

For example, what you REALLY want might be:

To get more email subscribers
To earn more affiliate commission
To sell more of your own products/services
To drive more traffic to your blog
To get more backlinks

Writing your next blog post is just a means to that end.

So instead of giving you a great long list of vague ideas, I’m giving you a much shorter much more targeted list of ideas that will not only help you get words on screen, but also – and much more importantly – help you achieve your REAL goal! Ready to get started?

Here are 27 blog post ideas (that will actually get results!)

Lightbulb against a blackboard with lines and circles, arranged like a spider diagram, to illustrate the concept of 'ideas'

If you want more email subscribers…

The way you get people onto your list these days is by offering some kind of freebie / opt-in offer / content upgrade / lead magnet. Call it what you want, but basically something free that your reader gets in exchange for their email address.

**NEWSFLASH** Those days of being able to get subscribers by offering ‘free updates’ are long gone!

If you haven’t yet created your freebie, head over to my step by step guide to creating an opt-in offer that actually works

But assuming you have already created your opt-in, how do you get more people to actually sign up for it?

The answer: by creating blog posts which attract the right people and lead naturally to a sign up.

I’ll give you an example from this blog. One of my opt-in offers is a Free DIY SEO Audit. Who might be interested in this freebie? Well, people who are googling things like ‘how to do SEO’ or ‘beginner’s guide to SEO’. So I have created a post called A beginner’s guide to SEO for bloggers, which teaches the basics of SEO.

And what would someone naturally want to do after reading that beginner’s guide? Well, most likely they’d want to find out how good their blog is from an SEO perspective and/or get tailored advice for their blog. And that’s what my Free DIY SEO Audit does. The blog post tells them generally about SEO and the opt-in offer tells them SPECIFICALLY what THEY need to do on THEIR blog.

So, if you want to get more email subscribers, here are 7 blog post ideas to help you achieve that goal.

A beginner’s guide to [the topic of your freebie]
The ultimate guide to [the topic of your freebie]
How to X (where X is something your freebie will cover in more detail)
10 common [the topic of your freebie] mistakes
10 reasons why you need to start [the topic of your freebie]
How to improve your X (where X is something your freebie will help with even more)
10 essential things to do before [the topic of your freebie]

Here are some examples of those ideas in practice:

A beginner’s guide to knitting (opt-in = Beginner’s Knitting Cheatsheet)
The ultimate guide to running your first 5K (opt-in = Couch to 5K Training Plan)
How to grow your email list (opt-in = 30 Day Grow Your List Challenge)
23 common new puppy owner mistakes (opt-in = How To Train Your Puppy ebook)
14 reasons why you should start meal planning (opt-in = Free 4 Week Easy Dinner’s Meal Plan)
How to improve your cupcake decoration skills (opt-in = Free Cupcake Decorating Mini Course)
17 essential things to do before starting a blog (opt-in = Free Start A Profitable Blog Challenge)

If you want to earn more affiliate commission…

If you want to earn more money from affiliate links, it’s no good just randomly scattering affiliate links throughout your blog and hoping for the best, you need to write blog posts which target ‘buyer intent’ keywords.

In other words, what are people who are ideal customers for the affiliate product, and who are in the mood to buy NOW, typing into Google?

For example, I am an affiliate for ConvertKit*. Perfect customers, who are in the mood to buy, might be typing things like ‘Is ConvertKit a good choice for bloggers?’, ‘ConvertKit vs MailChimp’ and ‘Beginner’s Guide to email marketing for bloggers’.

So, to address these 3 buyer intent keywords, I have written blog posts such as:

So, if you want to earn more affiliate commission, here are 7 blog post ideas to help you achieve that goal.

[Affiliate Product] vs [A Competitor]
10 things you need to know before buying a [Affiliate Product]
[Affiliate Product] review
How to X (where X is something the affiliate product will help them do better)
A beginner’s guide to [something that the affiliate product will help them do better]
The 10 best X for under $XX (where the affiliate product is one of the options and your top pick)
Essential kit for new X (where the affiliate product is one of the suggestions)

Here are some examples of those ideas in practice:

NutriBullet vs Vitamix – which blender should you buy?
10 things you need to know before buying an acoustic guitar
Nintendo Switch Review
How to get your newborn to sleep under 5 minutes (the affiliate product is something you use which helps)
A beginner’s guide to gardening (you include several affiliate links to products you recommend new gardener’s buy)
The best bluetooth speakers for under $50
Essential kit for new cyclists (you include several affiliate links to products you recommend new cyclist’s buy)

Lightbulb in a thought bubble/cloud drawn on a blackboard

If you want to sell more of your own products/services…

If you want to sell more of your own products or services, again you need to get into the head of your perfect customer. What might they be searching for?

Typically, a product or service solves a problem for your target audience, so writing blog posts which deal with the types of problems your perfect customer has is always a good move.

To give you an example from this blog, one of my products is Online Course Jumpstart, a course which teaches bloggers how to create and launch a successful online course. If someone is thinking about creating their own online course, one of the questions or ‘problems’ they might have is ‘How to choose a profitable course topic’. So I have written a blog post targeting this query: How to choose a profitable online course topic: step by step. This post then naturally leads into a mini sales pitch for Online Course Jumpstart.

Someone who is searching for help on picking a profitable course topic is likely to be the perfect customer for my course and, if they enjoy my blog post and find it helpful, might well be interested in buying my course to get in-depth, step by step help and watch ‘over my shoulder’ video tutorials on all aspects of creating and launching a successful course.

So, if you want to sell more of your products/services, here are 7 blog post ideas to help you achieve that goal.

How to [fix a problem your product/service solves in much greater depth]
X ways to [fix a problem your product/service solves in much greater depth]
What is [something which your target customer might be googling]
X reasons to [something which your target customer might be googling]
Why can’t/won’t/doesn’t [something your target customer is struggling with]?
How much does it cost to hire a [the service you offer]
[Name of product] success stories

Here are some examples of those ideas in practice:

How to build a raised vegetable bed (your product is a raised vegetable bed gardening course)
101 ways to stick to a budget (your product is a course which teaches people how to get out of debt and start saving)
What is the Marie Kondo Method? (your product is a course on decluttering)
27 reasons to hire a VA (you offer VA services)
Why won’t my baby sleep? (your product is a course which teaches new parents how to get their newborn to sleep)
How much does it cost to hire a business coach? (you offer business coaching)
SEO Jumpstart Success Stories (case studies from successful students on my SEO Jumpstart course)

**Someone who lands on your website for the first time is much less likely to buy from you than someone who knows you well. A tried and trusted technique for warming cold traffic up, so they are more likely to trust you and buy your product, is offering a lead magnet. A lead magnet is simply an opt-in freebie which is designed to attract your ideal customer. Once your ideal customer is on your email list, you can warm them up with a nurture sequence before sending them a sales sequence, designed to convert your warm leads into red hot buyers! So, to help you sell more of your products/services, you might also want to create a lead magnet and then check out some of the suggestions in the ‘If you want to grow your email list…’ section above.**

bare lightbulb glowing in the dark / blurred out lighbulbs in the background

If you want to get more traffic to your blog…

The best way to get more traffic to your blog is to do effective keyword research and then write high quality blog posts which target those keywords. By doing effective keyword research, you will find keyword phrases to write about that have a good amount of search traffic and aren’t too competitive. The more high-quality blog posts you write on well keyword-researched topics, the more traffic you will get!

Since the blog posts you need to write in order to get traffic to your blog will depend entirely on your keyword research, I am not going to give you prompts for this. Instead, I am going to point you in the direction of a post which will help you generate so many good traffic boosting posts you’ll never find yourself staring at a blinking cursor wondering what to write again!

Head over to How to use Google Search Results for keyword research and learn how to harness the power of Google’s own search results to find high traffic / low competition keywords!

(If you are new to keyword research, you might also like to check out my Beginner’s guide to keyword research.)

**Don’t limit your keyword research solely to traffic boosting posts, make sure you also do keyword research for other types of posts to ensure you maximise the traffic to those posts**

If you want to get more backlinks…

There are many ways to build backlinks, but the holy grail of backlink building is ‘natural’ or ‘earned’ backlinks. These are backlinks you get because people naturally want to want to link to your content. And the best way to get these is to write unique content based on your own original research.

So, for example, on Productive Blogging I wrote a post called How bloggers can best work with PRs and brands. Instead of just coming up with my own ideas, based on my own experience, I actually went out and interviewed PR companies and asked them a series of questions. This not only made the post much more useful to my target audience, it also made my blog post much more likely to attract backlinks naturally as it was my own original content.

So, if you want to get more backlinks, here are 6 blog post ideas to help you achieve that goal.

50 [your niche] statistics you need to know
5 [your niche] strategies that will boost your [something important to your niche] by 113%
101 [your niche] tips which actually work
50 benefits of [something related to your niche]
[something in your niche] vs [something else in your niche]: detailed review and comparison
15 [something in your niche] tested: the results will surprise you!

Here are some examples of those ideas in practice:

37 email marketing statistics you need to know (either from a survey you conducted yourself or collate recent statistics you have found dotted around the web)
15 running hacks to try that will improve your 5K pace by 10% (15 things that you teach your running clients that, on average, improve their 5K pace by 10%)
101 baby sleep tips which actually work (tips are not off the top of your head but from interviewing hundreds of parents about what has worked for them)
53 benefits of going vegan (either from a survey you conducted yourself or recent statistics you have found dotted around the web)
Entry level Nikon vs Entry level Canon: detailed review and comparison (you bought both and you tested them in numerous different ways and this is the detailed side-by-side comparison)
15 slow cookers tested: the results will surprise you! (you bought all 15 and tested them in numerous different ways and this is the detailed side-by-side comparison… turns out the cheapest one is far better than the most famous / much more expensive brand…)

This is just a snapshot of possible link-building blog posts you could write, there are numerous others, think of data that your audience would be really, really interested in, find that data / conduct your own original research and present your findings!

**As a general rule, the more original the research, the more in-depth the research, the more unique your research and the more valuable your research to your intended audience, the more likely you are to earn natural backlinks.**

Over to you…

Has this article inspired you? Given you plenty of new blog post ideas? Helped you get over your mental block? I’d love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments below!

(And if this post has helped you in any way, I’d really appreciate a quick share on your favourite social media platform – TIA!)

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*This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!