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How to Cheat and Steal Your Way to Endless Blog Post Ideas

How to Cheat and Steal Your Way to Endless Blog Post Ideas

You know, there’s no copyright on a blog post idea.

And although you want to create original blog posts, you don’t want to waste hours wrestling the “what to write about” fairy to the ground.

So when you’re filling up your idea bucket, cheating and stealing both work fine. Because when you do it right, nobody will ever know where you got your ideas from — by the time you write a post or a pitch, it’ll be your own.

To get you started on the path to your own endless reservoir of blog post ideas, I’m going to show you one of my favourite tricks for generating new ideas fast.

I’m doing this “live”, by the way. I’m literally writing this blog post while I come up with a list of blog post suggestions for one of my editors. Let’s see how long it takes me to deliver at least 5 fresh ideas, shall we? Start time: 5:21 pm.

OK, here’s what to do: 

Start reading

How to Cheat and Steal Your Way to Endless Blog Post Ideas

My top cheat when I need to generate several new ideas fast is to skim-read the client’s competitors’ websites and blogs.

Just looking at the headlines and subheadings is enough to get your thoughts flowing and show you plenty of general topic ideas you can steal.

This is a handy tactic to beat blogging burnout or writer’s block, too, by the way. If you’re stuck for ideas and you feel like you’ve got no creative thoughts left in your head, all you need to do is start reading.

At the moment I’m working on blog posts for a company in the business research and insight industry, so I pull up a few competitors’ websites and scan the post titles on their blogs.

On the first competitor blog, I find a blog post titled “Advantages and Disadvantages of Open Questions in Course Evaluations”. I don’t stop to read the post, because there’s no need to take in every nuance of angle and tone. The headline alone gives me two topics I could write about: course evaluation is one, and the issue of open questions is another.

Steal the topic, not the angle

Looking at the topic of open questions, the suggestion I pitch to my editor is “10 Reasons to Use Open-Ended Feedback Questions (And 5 Reasons to Avoid Them)”. Going back to the course evaluation side of things a moment later, I also pitch “How to Use Employee Training Feedback to Sharpen Your Competitive Edge”.

Then I see the headline, “New Worksheet: Personalizing Survey Email Invitations and Reminders”. Immediately my head’s filled with thoughts of the thousands of poorly-personalised emails I’ve received from spammers. So the new idea I add to my pitch list is “Survey Personalisation Gone Bad: How to Avoid the Alienation Effect”.

You can see I haven’t directly copied the post ideas I looked at. But I’ve used the core topic (or topics) as a springboard for my own ideas and angles. This part of the process might take some practice for you, or you might be brilliant at it from the start — give it a try to find out.

OK, so I’ve got 3 post ideas from the first page I looked at. Time now: 5:30 pm.

Not bad going. Let’s grab some more.

Don’t stop for roadkill

The next two competitor blogs I visit are, frankly, terrible. The headlines are short, vague and unappealing, so I leave after a couple of seconds.

The internet is a paradise filled with crap. Backspace fast if what you find isn’t what you need. [You like that thought? Tweet it!]

But wait a sec! Do you need more blogging gigs at the moment? If you do, note down the URLs of those crappy competitors — as long as your contract with your existing client doesn’t include a non-compete clause, you can offer to help those other companies improve their blogs too. 😉

Moving on, when I open another decent-looking competitor blog, the first 3 interesting blog post titles I see are:

  1. How to Ask Sensitive Questions in Surveys
  2. 2 Ways the Most Successful Businesses Learn from Their Customers
  3. 4 Tips for Writing Matrix Questions

In my pitch list, these topic ideas become:

  1. Sensitive Questions and Evasive Answers: How to Collect Honest, Accurate Feedback
  2. Are You Learning Enough from Your Customers?
  3. Matrix Questions: Are They Very Good, Very Bad or Somewhere in Between?

A trick I often use is to think of a short title when I steal a topic idea from a long title, and vice versa. Changing the length of the headline when you write down your own ideas helps to snap your mind away from the example you looked at, making it easier for you to generate fresh ideas loosely based on that example.

Stay lean

I need to write 4 posts for my client this month, so I wanted to suggest at least 5 ideas; now I’ve got 6 to offer.

For each idea, I list the working title (I might change it before sending the drafts to my editor, but it’ll work fine for pitching). Then I add a one-sentence summary of what the post will focus on and what points I’ll make.

Finish time: 5:44 pm, so it’s taken 23 minutes to come up with 6 short pitches. At this rate — less than 4 minutes per idea — you can easily generate 15 short pitches in an hour.

That’s all this editor needs from me. Your clients may want longer pitches, in which case you can flesh out that one-liner description into a more detailed outline. The important thing is, you’ve won the battle with your “what to write about” fairy and the rest is just a matter of adding detail.

Here endeth the lesson in cheating and stealing your way to an infinite number of blog post ideas.

You now have the power to create new blogging ideas and pitches on demand, just by scanning a few headlines to fuel your creative fire.

How does it feel?

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Comments

  1. I like the idea of generating blog pitches quickly! Sometimes I find myself wondering what I should write.

    One idea would be to take the keyword(s) out of the title, Google the keyword(s), and see what the suggestions are at the bottom of the page. Using these suggestions may help decipher a fresh angle to take. For example, “Sensitive Questions in Surveys” Googled shows up “price sensitivity survey questions”. So perhaps the article could focus on how to sneak in pricing questions?

  2. This is a really helpful tactic that I use, too. Even when I don’t need new blog topics I try to take note of any helpful headlines in my daily browsing. I also like to clip articles to Evernote that I think will be helpful in coming up with ideas later so that I don’t lose them.

  4. Excellent tips, Sophie!

    The important thing here – which you have also mentioned – is not to copy what others are doing. Instead, get a basic idea and come up with something totally fresh and unique.

    I’d like to share another tip with your readers.

    Follow these competitors’ blogs and bloggers on social media websites, especially on Twitter. They also have to come up with their own topics. So they do all the research and hardwork by reading other blogs and keeping themselves updated with all the news and industry-updates.

    But more importantly, they often share/tweet those blog posts and news for their social media followers. By keeping an eye on what they are sharing, you can come up with tons of new ideas. The best part is that they do all the research.

    This works especially well for niches that require breaking news and updates, e.g. SEO, SMM, etc. It’s a whole new reservoir.

  5. Oh dear, if ideas could be copyrighted, only a handful of people would be allowed to think in this world! LOL 🙂

    Like James, I use topical keyword research to come up with ideas, but I also rely on existing angles and see if there’s anything missing that I (or my client) could say about them. Different people can say different things about the same angle– and I can always cite and quote others’ work when I want to add the existing angles to my post (and then I notify the writers, who generally appreciate and share!).

    I (or my client) may also have specific takes on a certain topic, so for example, if everybody’s writing about how link building without nofollow tags is bad and dangerous, I’ll write about how link building without nofollow tags is cool and who-cares-about-Google, a take that defines me and is unique.

    I love your approach, Sophie! 😀

    ~ Luana

  6. Great tips, Sophie! I love your method of switching short titles for long and visa versa. I struggle with titles, especially when I get ideas from someone’s post.

  7. Deepest thanks to you Sophie 🙂

    The post just ran right in time for me. I’ve to send a list of ideas to my client and that is an awesome post for me. “Don’t stop for the road kill” is the best section for me.

    Thanks once again.

  8. Great post, Sophie! And it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been blogging for one client for nearly 2 years now, and finding topics is getting more difficult. This is a great way to grab fresh ideas!

    • Yeah, I’ve got some long-term clients like that — after years of writing on their pet topic, you start to feel like you can’t think of anything new.

      But there’s *always* a new perspective you can take. This trick is just an easy way to remind yourself of that fact. 🙂

  9. Excellent post, Sophie! So far I’ve been given topics because I wasn’t sure how to come up with something that hasn’t been done a thousand times. Now I know and I’ll put it to work. Thank you!

  10. Thanks for the great post Sophie. This could not have come at a better time for me. I will try this technique in addition to using Evernote for swipe files.

  11. This is an awesome idea, and one I usually use when trying to figure out blog post content, or even ways to spruce up my blog. By cheating without really cheating. Stealing parts, and allowing those parts to help you flesh out unique ideas. I love it! Thanks for the read!

  12. Sophie,
    Excellent post as always. You’re the Robin Hood of blogging!
    I love the idea of looking at competitors’ blogs. I also find it helpful to take the ideas you generate and enter them into the search box on the blog you are writing for–this way you can see if the topic has been covered or not!
    Cheers,
    Cherese

  13. This is an awesome idea to start, I have a little problem of selecting the websites for blogs where I can at least post 🙁 .

    Very Helpful Sophie thanks

  14. Hi Sophie,

    Amazing post, as usual. Couldn’t have come at a better time, as I was currently trying to find inspiration for article ideas to pitch!

    I think many writers often forget that the best way to get back to writing, aside from actually writing, is to go and see what other writers are up to.

    Many thanks!

  16. Thanks for this detailed look at your process. Just reading it makes me want to go do what you suggest. I am just starting my own blog but I also run a corporate website in my day job and on occasion must write for it. I can definitely use this for both blogs. Thanks!

  17. When it comes to pitching, for me it’s about pitching guest posts, since I don’t make my money from writing articles.

    When I’m stuck for ideas for a site, I definitely check out competitor sites to the site I want to pitch. The ideas there are a gold mine! I like to go back to 18+ months ago and see what was popular then that could have a fresh angle today.

    It takes work still, but it’s way better than ‘hhmm, what shall I write about?’

    Awesome ideas here Sophie.

  19. The only problem I have with scanning headlines is that there is no way of knowing how substantive the original post actually was.

    Unless someone is thoroughly versed in the topic area, it would be easy to get carried away and follow up on something that’s a non-issue or of little weight.

    In other words, you could be dealing with something that is more or less useless or a total rabbit trail, but in a self-fulfilling way, by casting another post about the respective topic into the ether, that topic takes on an aura of substance.

    I suppose for some topic areas this doesn’t matter much: if people are blogging about celebrity gossip, for example, and I see a post titled “The Top Ten Topless Bedroom Scenes,” does it really matter if I pitch a post titled “Topless Bedroom Scenes: who went bare, and who had a stand-in?”

    Probably not.

    But if it’s for something else, it might.

    If I’m writing posts in the topic area of natural medicine, I might see a post from a competitor site titled “The Hidden Benefits of Washing in Your Own Urine”. I’m not going to then pitch a post about how to best wash your hair with your own urine.

    Obviously, that’s a gross exaggeration (pun intended).

    But, the principle is the same. We can see that the urine example is absurd because everyone knows that the original title sounds iffy more or less intuitively.

    For a topic area where things aren’t so intuitive however, where things are more nuanced, it would be easy to get a ‘great idea for a pitch’ from a couple of competing sites’ posts that are complete bullshit.

    If that happens, new angle or not, you’d just be bringing the client down to the same level as the competition by writing yet another post on an inane topic, non-issue, cliche, etc.

    I think it might be safer to brainstorm by using clusters of keywords, or thematic intersects (think Venn Diagram), pertaining to the topic/issue/market area instead of scanning headlines.

    I’m not saying that the headline technique doesn’t work (it obviously does for Sophie); I just would be cautious about using it for every topic area out there. Some topics have literal mountains of BS written on them, and though there might be recurrent headlines and high ranking headlines, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they pertain to anything substantive or particularly noteworthy.

    • Within the example title, “The Hidden Benefits of Washing in Your Own Urine”, I’d see 3 separate potential topics: “hidden health benefits”, “washing with unusual substances”, and “urine as health improver”. Any one of those can be re-angled, expanded and, if necessary, debunked to create a new post for my client’s blog. So you could have “10 Hidden Health Benefits of [whatever practice or substance]”, “Weird Washing Tips You’ll Wish You’d Known Sooner”, “Myths and Misconceptions About Urine in Natural Medicine”, or take the natural health topic to a lightweight gossip blog with a post titled “Celebrities Who Pee On Themselves: WTF?”

      Headlines are just a way to collect ideas you can remix — in the end, the angle, quality and relevance of the post are down to us, the writers. 🙂 Noticing clusters and intersections helps, and I find you start to do that naturally once you’ve looked through enough headlines. But as there’s a lot of crap on the internet, you can easily find clusters of keywords about washing in urine, too!

      P.S. for the love of all that’s holy, don’t Google “washing in urine”. Wow, there’s a lot of porn.

  20. Sophie,
    What an amazing article. I’m new to freelance writing and blogging, and I’m learning to re-angle old ideas, but this takes it to a whole other level. Thanks for the tips.

  21. This is a great post. I’m pulling together my suggestions on idea curation – and I agree that this is the most important part of pitching for ideas. Let’s see how I get on with my pitch to you hehe!

  22. Experience talks. The more reading and assignments are completed, the more insights are gathered while going through a post.

    It won’t be as easy for someone who is starting out but it can definitely help those who procrastinate at the beginning of a freelance writing career.

    This blog post must have been a good portfolio.

  23. Hi Sophie,
    I am a relative newbie to blog writing but have a lot of experience in legal writing when I was a paralegal, grant proposals (I am currently a grant proposal writer) and have authored a college study guide. I graduated Texas A&M University with a minor in Creatve/Technical Writing. I list all of this to ask your observation as to if I would have what is needed to be a successful freelance blogger? As I read your website and letter I truly would appreciate your valued opinion. Thank you in advanced.

  25. WOWZA – this is brilliant!

    ..and ironical too because I just got an idea for an article from one of the comments on one of your blog posts 😉 ehhe

    Thanks Sophie #HUGS
    Kitto

  26. I was actually wondering how one can sustain a career in freelance writing, particularly if it is in a particular niche, without running out of ideas; so this comes in handy.

    You seem to have a post for every obstacle a newbie freelancer might face. Love it.

  28. Your expertise in extracting pitches from an existing topics /ideas is amazing! I would love to be like you.

    What I usually do is read, and read a lot until I get interested in one of the words or phrases I found. I make a topic out of those phrases or words. I hope with your ideas here I can find my way up there where expert bloggers are!

  30. This method is so systematic，clean and snappy that my brain just did a happy dance when I finished reading the post. Thank you so much for the brain fuel. Trying to come up with an idea and pulling up blank is the biggest reason why I am inconsistent when I write.

  32. Thanks for this Sophie,

    I am at the ‘can I actually do this?’ starting point of my journey. It’s posts like this one which make me believe it’s possible for me.

  33. Dear Sophie,

    This is indeed an elaborate, informative read and feed for the brain. It is a good start to pick up ideas for my guest posts. Thank you very much.

    Keep posting!!

    Best wishes!

  34. Awesome stuff Sophie! One of the toughest things to get over as a beginning freelancer writer/blogger is coming up with ideas that haven’t already been done to death. Will definitely be trying this method out in the near future!

  35. Interesting! I hadn’t thought of it that way but definitely have to put these tips to use. I especially like some of the tips that were in the comments like using Google’s suggestions on the bottom of the page.

    Love reading your blogs for advice and tips to improve since I’m a newbie to blog writing.

    Thanks!