30 days worth of blog post ideas

You’ve signed up for the 2013 WordCount Blogathon, put the badge on your blog, tweeted about it — using the #blog2013 hashtag of course — and started hanging out on the WordCount Facebook page. There’s only thing left to do, get revved up to write 30 days worth of posts.

Even if you’re brimming with energy to write, write and write some more in the first week or two, a month-long challenge can start feeling like a slog, slog, slog by the third or fourth week.

We’ve done what we can, by creating theme days, a guest post exchange, a haiku day and a word-cloud day to keep you going. You can see them all on the 2013 WordCount Blogathon calendar of events.

30 Blog Post Ideas

In case you need more inspiration, here are ideas for 30 posts – one for each day in June. Use some, all or none of them depending on how your own blogathon experience goes. Even if you’re not involved in the blogathon, use these topics as inspiration when you need it.

News

1. React to local or state news. Explain how does it affect you or your readers.
2. Write a roundup of news on the subject you blog about from the past week. Do this once a week and you’ve got four posts covered.
3. Interview a local news maker. Ask him or her about issues your readers want to know more about.
4. Interview an interesting person in your field. Record it as a video or podcast and post it on your site.
5. Cover a school board meeting, road race, farmer’s market, conference, dance performance — anything that gets you out into the community.
6. Crowdsource a question on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Share the variety of answers you get.
7. Do a pictoral essay of an auto show, fashion show, wine tasting or other event that lends itself to being chronicled visually. Post pictures with captions.
8. Poll readers and build a post around the results.
9. Curate. Pick an event or topic that’s been in the news, find the best stories or blog posts about it, compile them, and add an intro with your own spin on the subject.
10. Re-run popular posts. Update as needed to reflect changes in the situation or your thinking. If readers loved them the first time, they’ll probably love them a second time too.

Views

1. Share your mission statement. What does your blog cover? What do you stand for?
2. Write about one of your heroes. Why do you admire them?
3. Write about upcoming holidays or seasonal activities. June has Father’s Day. It’s also the season for graduations, vacations, summer camps, summer schools, and lots of conferences. What could you say about any of them that’s uniquely you?
4. Write a lessons learned post. What did you take away from a major life experience?
5. Are you an expert at bike repair, canning, bookkeeping, training for marathons or something else? Write a post or series of posts teaching others what you know.
6. If you’ve been blogging for a while, write a list of 10 things you’ve learned from covering about your subject.
7. Be spontaneous. The next time you see something related to your blog topic on Facebook or Twitter, blog about it instead of commenting. Or expand a comment into a post.
8. Break up long posts into smaller ones. Instead of writing one post of 1,000 words on a subject, divide it into parts 1, 2 and 3 – just as much information, three times as many posts.
9. Run a graphic. Infographics are big now, especially on Pinterest.
10. Be a contrarian. Take a popular way of thinking about something and re-examine it from a different perspective. Readers love controversy.

Reviews

1. Review 5 or 10 of your favorite smartphone apps for the topic you blog about.
2. Review 5 or 10 iPad or tablet apps related to your blog topic, or that you use often.
3. List the last 5 books, movies or concerts you went to, and what you liked or didn’t like about each.
4. Read a book, see a movie, watch a TV show, attend an author lecture, then share the highlights. Turn it into a weekly feature.
5. Practice something you’ve wanted to learn – guitar, yoga, knitting, painting, etc. – and give updates on your progress.
6. List your favorite quotes about writing, blogging or the subject you blog about. Ask readers to share theirs.
7. Run “Best of…” posts. Look through your page view statistics for popular posts and create a list of the best posts you’ve ever done on a specific topic.
8. Run a contest. Ask readers to share reviews of their favorite web comic, music concert, vacation, book, etc., and have a raffle drawing for the winner.
9. Taking a trip? Take your camera (or use your smartphone camera), take pictures, and post a travelogue series from the road.
10. List your top 10 favorites of something – ice cream flavors, sit-com actors, foreign cities, national parks – and what makes them special.

Now get going!

[Flickr photo by exfordy]