Never Run Out of Blog Topics Again — A Guaranteed Method

When was the last time you plunked yourself down at your laptop, ready to create some content, only to find yourself stuck for ideas?

Would it make you feel better if I told you that the writers block due to consistently generating fresh blog topics, is not only overwhelming, but common.

In my last article, I went through how to come up with 100 blog post ideas (based on one content category) in under an hour.

Today, you’ll breaking down the process into smaller, manageable chunks and you’ll use this technique to take 1 topic idea and expand it to over 125 sub-topic ideas (you can even push it to 3,125 sub-topic ideas if you’re feeling frisky.)

Hold your horses, isn’t this just a re-hash of what was done in the last article?

In the last article, you learned how to come up with 100 blog blog post ideas.

In this article, you will take “one” of those ideas and create another 125–3,125 sub-topic ideas. Think about that for a second…if you have 100 ideas from last week and today you’ll learn how to come up with another 125 ideas PER original idea… do the math.

Now this seems grandiose, if you actually have 100 topics, that would give you 12,500 additional sub-topics. Even if you blogged every single day, that would be 34 years of blog topic ideas, so I doubt you’ll use all of these and it wouldn’t be wise.

So why bother showing you? So you can learn how straightforward it is to use. I dig a bit deeper into the reason why I don’t recommend coming up with a large number of topic ideas that go past 6–12 months a little further into the post.

So now, instead of staring at your computer screen, tapping your keyboard hoping for a brilliant blog topic to magically appear, think of that one ideal customer and start by asking yourself some simple questions.

• Who am I creating content for?
• What problems are your clients facing?
• What questions do they frequently ask?
• What are they searching for on Google?
• What are some industry trends worth discussing?

By focusing on the questions that your ideal customer is asking, you’ll be able to brainstorm topics that are relevant for them.

The Idea Bank Experiment

This could be a digital document in Notion, Trello or Excel, a physical notebook (which becomes bit more challenge to quickly scan) or my favourite, Post-it notes and a wall.

Whenever an idea pops into your head, and it’s relevant to your ideal customer, get it down on paper immediately. Don’t say “I’ll do it later”, because later will be forgotten.

When you’re not intentionally brainstorming blog topic ideas, they usually pop up into your brain at the most unusual times,

• while on the toilet (don’t tell me you’ve never had an idea while doing this natural thing)
• in the shower
• the while reading
• talking on the phone
• watching tv
• while taking the dog out before bedtime
• or even in the middle of the night (only write them down if you are sure you can fall back asleep)

You can also do a brainstorming session on one sitting. Whatever works for you.

Why paper? if you have to spend even a minute opening a digital app, you may lose the idea. You can carry a small notebook and pen with you. You’ll always be ready. At the end of the day, transfer these ideas to whatever method you’re using for your idea bank.

Let’s Do the Math — How One Topic Idea Turns into 3,125 Topic Ideas (yes it’s ridiculous)

For the record, you’ll see below how you can turn one topic idea not into just 3,125 topic ideas, but into over 100,000. This is to illustrate the math only, I would never do this amount of work.

Why?

Let’s pretend you blog once a week and come up with 156 blog sub-topic ideas. That’s 3 years worth. What happens if you pivot or change your niche or ideal customer in 6 months?

But if you’re blogging daily, you’ll have about 5 months worth of blog sub-topic ideas.

If you have a team or you outsource your blog writing so you can write daily articles, I suggest getting AI to help you come up with the topics over 200. For me, brainstorming topic ideas, my limit is around 150 and then I’ll get ChatGPT to give me a hand.

Using my Post-it note method, I write down the questions and complaints that my ideal customer is asking. I also look at social media comments on other accounts and see if there is a pattern to the comments.

Since I published the article last week, my wall of post-it notes has over 145 human generated topic ideas.

Here’s where it gets fun.

Take 1 topic, then come up with additional questions or ideas based on what was written on the Post-in note. They can be ideas based on a different perspective, comparisons, your personal experience…anything.

The math below gives you a sequence of taking 1 topic and come up with 5 additional sub-topics in each round to come up with a total of 3,125 sub-topics.

Note: in this article, I use topics and sub-topics interchangably.

Starting with 1 topic:

• Round 1: Take that one topic and come up with 5 additional topics = 6 topics
• Round 2: You have 5 new topics (don’t include the original) * 5 additional topics = 25 blog topics
• Round 3: 25 new topics * 5 = 125 blog topics
• Round 4: 125 new topics * 5 = 625 blog topics
• Round 5: 625 new topics * 5 = 3,125 blog topics

Note: you don’t have to do each round in one sitting and you don’t have to do all the rounds. I suggest limiting it to 3 Rounds so it’s manageable and do this exercise over a week.

Mind-blowing right?

Let’s Explore 3 Sub-Topics per 1 Main Topic to Come Up with 243 Sub-Topics

For each topic, come up with 3 new sub-topics.

Starting with 1 topic on a Post-it note:

• Round 1: 1 topic + 3 sub-topics = 4 blog topics
• Round 2: 3 new topics * 3 = 9 blog topics
• Round 3: 9 new topics * 3 = 27 blog topics
• Round 4: 27 new topics * 3 = 81 blog topics
• Round 5: 81 new topics * 3 = 243 blog topics

Let’s Explore 10 Sub-Topics per 1 Main Topic to Come Up with 100,000 Sub-Topics

This example is so ridiculous, but it’s to show you the possibilities. I did get Joe and ChatGPT to confirm the math and I still find it hard to believe.

Starting with 1 topic on a Post-it note:

• Round 1: 1 topic + 10 new topics = 11 blog topics
• Round 2: 10 new topics * 10 = 100 blog topics
• Round 3: 100 new topics * 10 = 1,000 blog topics
• Round 4: 1,000 new topics * 10 = 10,000 blog topics
• Round 5: 10,000 new topics * 10 = 100,000 blog topics

Let’s Visually See What 3 Rounds of 5 Sub-Topics per 1 Main Topic Looks like

Here is a graphic that shows another way of doing it. You’ll start the process with the niche in mind, coming up with 5 topics based on that niche and then going through 2 rounds of additional brainstorming.

Even if you just use half the blog topic ideas, you’d position yourself as an authority to Google because all of this content is based on one original topic. Every sub-topic under it revolves around it.

• 1 main topic category = your niche
• Round 1: Brainstorm 5 topic ideas for your niche (questions, complaints etc.)
• Round 2: Brainstorm 5 additional sub-topic ideas for each of the 5 topics above
• Round 3: Brainstorm 5 additional sub-topic ideas for each of the sub-topics above

Keep it Relevant

While creating all these new blog topics is nice, you’ve got to make sure that they’re relevant to your niche/main content category.

For example: you’re a dog trainer that specializes in obedience training for senior dogs. Your content category or niche could be: obedience training for senior dogs.

For your blog topics ideas to be relevant, you’d not going to to come up with ideas based on obedience training for puppies. Get where I’m coming from?

And when you pick a topic to write about, ask yourself, “How will this specific topic idea benefit my reader?” This helps get you into the right mindset and keep your audience’s needs, interests, and challenges at the forefront of your content writing process.

Wrapping it Up

So there you have it! The task of brainstorming blog topics doesn’t need to be an uphill battle anymore. With a creative strategy in place, you can keep your content fresh and relevant for your ideal customer.

Action Step: take one blog topic idea from last week, or come up with a new one and use the 3 ideas per topic method and see how many new topic focused ideas you can come up with in one sitting.

Until next time, stay inspired.

Gisèle

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