Planning out your blog post ideas is one of the biggest parts of creating regular, consistent content and utilizing your content calendar. This post is part of a blogging series utilizing the pages of the 2017 Free Printable Blog Planner. Check out all my posts on blogging in my archives!
I went to college to be a writer. It was the PLAN. At some point in my journey an advisor asked me, “How do you plan to make money?” I said, “Writing.”
I thought he was completely forgetting the conversation we just had about me wanting to be a writer. GEEZ, man.
But, alas, he had not, “Well, that is fine and good, but how do you plan to MAKE MONEY.” He made it very clear that writing for a living was, well, hard. He also made it clear that it wasn’t impossible and that I simply needed a good plan.
That was when I decided to become a journalist. Working towards my journalism degree was fairly easy for me because one of my strengths was the ability to quickly think of story ideas. I have a LOT of weaknesses in writing which is why I find it challenging and fun, but my greatest strength has always been in my ability to come up with endless ideas for stories.
Blogging for me has been the most fun due to the fact that I get to develop my own ideas based on my readers and my whims to create stories.
Three Tips for creating full year worth of blog post ideas
Putting in the work for blog post ideas is key to creating content that is unique to your blog, but I promise, if you utilize a few of the following tips, the ideas will flow easily!
- Use Holidays and days of special recognition to inspire your posts.— Going month by month pick out the holidays and days of special recognition and think about the ways that those days may inspire your posts. Try thinking about the holidays in different ways than what you always see. When you plan a full year of ideas out you can then working on getting your content out early enough that readers can use your tips, DIY posts and personal stories in their own expression of those holidays. This works for a variety of blog styles from lifestyle to DIY , food, budgeting and beyond. While these posts aren’t exactly “evergreen” if you don’t make it too specific to the current year, you can promote these posts year after year.
- Use the old classic, the 5 Ws & H.— The 5 Ws are Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Answer a question for your readers and use the 5Ws to come up with a couple of posts. For example, if you write about meal planning for a family you could say write a post on:
- (Who) Top Bloggers for Meal Planning Tips
- (What) Stock your pantry with these items to make meal planning easier!
- (When) When to buy in bulk, and when to skip the “sale”
- (Where) My favorite stores to shop at when planning my weekly meals.
- (Why) Why I meal plan— Saving $300 each month makes meal planning worth it.
- (How) How I make my weekly meal plan + free meal planning printables!
- Recycle your best posts. — There is no sense letting your best posts just sit in your archives! Take your most popular posts and spin them off to create more content. Utilize the 5Ws and H to come up with additional ideas.
Now… get planning!
A Year of Ideas
Use the Blog Post Ideas pages from the 2017 Free Printable Blog Planner to help you layout your blog ideas. The Year of Ideas page has planning space for each month of the year.  The Blog Post brainstorming pages let you flesh out your ideas! Sign up for my newsletter to access your free printable blog planner including the blogging planning pages as well as access to all of the subscriber only printables and posts.
Now that you have your ideas all planned out… make the move to really get your blog going with these steps on how to start a self-hosted blog!
Updated and Edited to b utilized with the 2017 Blog Planner.
