9 Ideas for Blog Posts When You Are Stuck

If you are the type of blogger who writes daily then it becomes important for you to post consistently because your readers begin to expect that from you.  However, what do you do when you're fresh out of ideas and still want to get something valuable out to your readers?

Below I have come up with 9 ways to help you keep your blog going:

• Hot Industry Stories: Everyday you hear about acquisitions, mergers, companies releasing new technology/services or even executives getting fired. Unless you are one of the first blogs to cover these stories, it becomes somewhat useless to your readers. Rather, I recommend you add your personal perspective on the story as well as help your readers leverage the news by offering advice on how to apply it to to their own businesses.
• Relationships with PR Firms: Try making relationships with PR firms who work for companies in your industry. It's a win/win situation, you get hot news off the press and the companies get publicity in exchange. As you become more authoritative, PR firms will begin to approach you first.
• Google Hot Trends: This an excellent way to determine the buzz across the Internet, however you do have to apply your own filters per industry. Google Hot Trends also allows you to see a graphical trend on the level of interest for a given topic.
• Correlating Common Interests: You probably enjoy other interests outside of your niche such as sports or politics, so why not bring something your other passions into your professional life? I like to sometimes use Google Trends, Technorati and Social Bookmarking to reference the NBA or sports playoffs.
• Guest Bloggers: When you're completely out of new topics try leveraging guest bloggers to offer their thoughts on new topics. This gives you a little break and gives your readers some fresh perspective to digest. Guest bloggers can be people from your industry or even fellow employees. Make sure to prescreen your writers so they adhere to your high quality of content.
• Reigniting Old Topics: Dig into your stats and figure out posts which have been historically popular (consider seasonality if appropriate) and then write an update to those posts explaining how strategies have changed or Part 2.
• Credit Other Bloggers: In any given week there are dozens of posts and articles around your industry which people should definitely read. This is your opportunity to categorize these other posts and spread some link love. Both Search Engine Land and Marketing Pilgrim both do this on a regular basis.
• Create a Compilation: Have you ever written 3 or 4 posts on the same topic which you think an organization can circulate around to it's employees, then try combining those posts and offer them in a PDF version.
• Attend a Webinar: If you wanted you could probably attend 2 or 3 webinars everyday (and realistically 1 every 2 weeks) and for those who can't make it, provide a brief summary for them detailing the "nuggets" from the webinar.