8 Resources Jumpstart Your Blogging

At last, this year I'll publish my blogging book

Do you hate to blog? More specifically, do you feel at a loss because you can't think of anything to write about? A lot of people dread having to blog.

Anyone trying to establish online name recognition is told to blog often, but many have no idea how to consistently create topics so they have new--and interesting--content all the time.

Writers and others with products to sell often fall into the trap of talking about their product until their blog begins to sound like an infomercial. Readers don't want a "buy my book" of "buy anything" promotion every time they visit a blog.

Readers do want to be entertained and maybe learn something when they visit blogs. So blogging about interesting or relevant topics is a good strategy. Now, how do you find those interesting and relevant topics--day after day after day?

8 Go-To Resources to Jumpstart Your Blogging

1. National Day Calendar

This website lists what each day of the month commemorates. For instance, today is January 4 which is:

• the 1st Monday in January this year
• National Spaghetti Day
• National Trivia Day
• National Thank God It’s Monday Day

Okay, right there you have 4 possible topics or jumping off points to lead your imagination to a topic.

You can right about Mondays as the worst day of the week, the best day to get going on success, or anything dealing with the day Monday, etc. Or, you can talk about spaghetti--eating it or cooking it, give a recipe for spaghetti, give the history of spaghetti, talk about regional food, or any number of other topics.

You can talk about National Trivia Day from the aspect of trivia games, i.e. board games, TV shows, trivia games on cruise ships, or you can give trivia questions and answers.

National Thank God It's Monday Day...this may go back to the first Monday of the entire year being either great or terrible. Do you know anyone who knew that there was a TGIM Day? You could do a poll among readers or other bloggers about this. You could write a post with suggested ways to celebrate.

Honestly, the sky is the limit! In fact, the sky is the limit if you let your imagination soar with any of the following that I list.

2. Birthstones By Month

This website lists the birthstones for each month and has a link to The Healing Power of Birthstones which explores some of the myths and legends about them. There are many such websites dealing with birthstones, flowers, signs of the zodiac, etc.

3. This Day in History

This website is sponsored by The History Channel. There are many other such websites, but I subscribe to this one. On each day of the calendar year, something significant happened, someone famous was born, and someone famous died. Some of these events or famous people may have particular resonance for you. Blog about it. Or you just might find the event particularly interesting. Blog about it.

For instance, on this day in 1999, "...for the first time since Charlemagne’s reign in the 9th century, Europe was united with a common currency when the “euro” debuted as a financial unit in corporate and investment markets."

Also, on this day in:

1785 Jacob Grimm was born
1847 Samuel Colt sold his 1st revolvers to the U.S. government
1896 Utah entered the Union
1964 the Boston Strangler killed again
1965 Poet T.S. Eliot died in London
1974 President Nixon refused to hand over the secretly-recorded tapes
1996 GM announced their first electric car,

Surely, there is something in the above list that stirs your imagination.

Try a dictionary or word/phrase resource. There are many covering quotations, proverbs, and other linguistic devices. Try these to start...

4. The Book of the Cliches

5. The Sports Cliche List

6. Portent Content Idea Generator

Just enter a word, and this cool website generates ideas about it.

7. Google Trends  or 8.  Google What's Hot

Find out what people are searching for on Google or what's currently hot. For instance, after the football games Sunday, these were the main topics on Gooogle What's Hot: Broncos, SteelerNation, GoHawks, KeepPounding, Vikings, FeelTheBern, NewYearsResolution, COTW (Character of the Week), and Texans. If I had checked an hour later, I'd probably find different topics.

Takeaway Truth

When thinking something about blogging, be careful not to overthink. Sometimes, the harder you rack your brain about what to write, the more elusive the ideas become. Use a resource like the ones above to kickstart your blogging.