Never Run Out of Blog Topics

Not too long ago, author, Jenny Schwartz mentioned stockpiling blog posts. It's a great habit to have especially when life gets busy. The second best thing you can do is stockpile topics.

Jenny cheats er...gets creative by using Toby as her scape-dog for when she runs out of ideas. This is, of course, a brilliant strategy because nothing draws me to a blog faster than a cute dog. Just ask Sarah Falen and Yvie. It's like crack to me.

While I'm just as guilty of using my dogs as topic fodder, it's not my only secret weapon. I have enough files on potential topics to make J. Edgar Hoover roll in his grave.

My notebook averages around 125 topics. Some I will never use because they're too controversial or no longer relevant.  But every idea births a dozen others. If something is too volatile, I can narrow my focus and discuss a topic, minus the gasoline and match.

Jenny and Shelley Munro plotted to bribe Tank and Iko out of my idea book, but it doesn't have to come to that. You can create your own idea bank. Here is a list of where I harvest my topics.

Idea Banks

• Eavesdropping on forums. (I get my best questions from there.)

• Current events in the news. If it's news that affects me, it might affect my readers too.

• Movies and tv. TV not so much, since I watch very little. But I am an avid movie watcher.

• Other blogs. Sometimes bloggers say things that spark a tangential idea from their original posts.

• Comments. Yes. YOUR comments. You guys constantly give me new material for another day.

• The homestead. I could write a blog post every day about what happens on this place. But that would limit my audience so I try to keep my homesteading posts in balance with my other posts.

• The dogs. Well, duh. :grin:

• Greg. I have LOTS of material on him. While you would be thoroughly entertained and amazed, I probably wouldn't be married long if I started a tell-all. Let's just say he keeps our marriage interesting.

• Slices of life. Every time I think of some giant drama going on in my life, I break it down to a single moment and share that little piece of it.

I keep a little notebook in my purse (and my bedside) and jot down everything that interests me, deciding later whether it's got the bones to be a good post. Even something as incidental as dinner conversation can find itself in my idea bank.

Things I never write about:

• Politics. Hate to read it, so I won't write it.

• Drunken monkey attacks on authors, agents, or publishers. There are enough drunken monkeys out there. They don't need me.

• Memes, excerpts, and blog challenges. I did one or two early in my blog career, but they're like dead air to search engines. You might as well be invisible.

Time is my enemy. I have way more topics than I have time to discuss them, especially now that I've cut my blogging to twice a week.

Since adding my Frugal Facebook page, Twitter has fallen by the wayside, too time-consuming to do it justice. 

It's a bear I still wrestle...and a topic for another time. :o)

Where do you get your blog topic ideas? Have you ever stockpiled posts to use on later dates?