You will hear from us time and time again, blogging is a great tool for connecting with your audience. The great thing about blogging is, there aren’t really any “rules.” The goal is to generate content that is both relevant, and interesting to your audience, in whatever creative ways you choose.

Generating blog ideas is not an easy thing to do, so to help you guys out, we have listed some great ideas for you to get the wheel rolling on your creative wagon.

Lists, Benefits, Tips, and How To’s

1. Point out common problems or mistakes in your industry and then try and offer up solutions on how to fix them.

2. Share a list of some things companies in your industry should try to avoid.

3. Offer a list of benefits of doing something, such as using a blog, or social media, etc.

4. Relate your how-to content to a current event or a celebrity. By doing this, it will give your content more of a personal and readable touch, making it more interesting and likely to generate some interaction.

5. Write a “how-to” article. This can be very successful if you keep it relevant to your audience. Be sure to give instructions with photos or infographics that help illustrate your point.

Use Existing Content (Yours and Competitors)

6. Do some research on other companies in your industry. This will help you find tips from their content, which can help you generate similar and competitive content.

7. Share an excerpt from an upcoming webinar with a call to action to get the rest of the content in the webinar.

8. Find someone else’s article that you agree or disagree with. Introduce your blog post with what you specifically agree or disagree with it, and support your argument with a few concise points.

9. Share conference takeaways.

10. Share your slides from a recent presentation.

11. Share an excerpt from an ebook or white paper with a call to action to download it for the rest of the information.

12. Do a weekly or daily links-roundup of relevant news for your community.

13. Re-interpret existing content: Collect the top motivational YouTube videos for your audience, top ebooks, top webinars or infographics.

14. Do a round-up of last year’s/last month’s/last week’s most popular posts.

Make it About Your Community

15. Run a contest and give away something relevant to your community.

16. Interview your favorite customer.

17. Post a Flickr slideshow of pictures from a recent event.

18. If you have company news to share, talk about it in a way that makes it about the reader. Example: If someone gets promoted, talk about how why were successful. Inspire your audience.

19. Outline the top practical use cases for your product, service etc.

20. Publish a post relevant to the current season or holiday.

21. Ask for guest posts from community members.

As you can see, these ideas allow for plenty of wiggle room and creativity. This shouldn’t be seen as a task, but more as a fun way to interact with your audience! At the end of the day, the most important thing is to be generating content relevant to your audience, separating you from the completion. Hopefully these get you started!