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Hey everyone, welcome to episode 11 of Write With Impact. Today I’m going to talk about how to break through what I call “blogger’s block.”

Yeah, you know what I mean. When you run into that wall and just can’t seem to find something to write about.

You might have too much to choose from and suffer from the “curse of choice”. Or perhaps you feel you have nothing to share at all. Or maybe you’re just having a hard time getting started on that idea you’ve been chewing on for a while.

When I first started blogging on LinkedIn and on my personal blog, I struggled with what I should write about. I think this is a common problem that all new bloggers face. In fact, it’s probably one of the main reasons why many people still haven’t even begun to blog. They think — mistakenly — they either have nothing to write about, or that what they do want to write about won’t find an audience.

By committing to posting on a weekly basis, I was able to slowly build a repertoire of posts — a body of work — that proved to myself, at least, that I did have something to write about. And judging by the views, likes, comments and social shares my posts generated on LinkedIn and my boo, people were interested in what I had to say.

As I look over my posts, I can spot a number of “post types” that each post could be categorized under. I’ll go through several of these now on this podcast. I hope they give you ideas for when you find yourself struggling to find something to write about. They might help you break through your own form of “blogger’s block.”

Okay, here goes:

1. Draw lessons from a personal experience

I did this in my post which I called “The 3 Dangerous Assumptions You Need to Avoid”. It was the story of how I almost got seriously injured as a young boy when I decided to hop on the back of my family’s truck camper and take a ride. I did it because I was curious about what it felt like to be a trash collector standing on the back of a large garbage truck.

The post was about how making assumptions can be dangerous. My dad, who was driving the truck, was unable to communicate with my mom, who was sitting in the camper. Each assumed that I was in the other compartment of the truck camper. Each was wrong. I almost got injured (or died) as a result of my boyhood stupidity — and their assumptions.

2. Inspire readers to take action in an area of work or life

In “Want to Kickstart Your Career? Learn the The Art of Asking” I offered suggestions on how to get ahead in your career and get what you want by simply asking for it. I included a few basic pointers about how and why you should ask for something. It was a simple concept, it didn’t require me to scour the internet and do a lot of research. It was just a piece of advice I received from my father when I was a kid that turned out to be very true and very useful later in life.

3. Write a how-to guide

This format offers an inexhaustible supply of potential ideas. If you know how to do something — even if it’s slightly better or different than how others do it — then it’s a good candidate for this type of blog post.

So take something you know about, break it down into steps, and then share those steps, and give examples to illustrate each step as well.

4. Provide a list of useful tips for doing something better

I wrote a post a few months back that I called “10 Timeless Tips to Write With More Impact”. In it I distilled lessons I’ve learned about how to not only write well, but to write with “impact” — the theme of this podcast, and a theme that runs through most of my writing about writing. I included a stunning stock image and a quote from a famous author for each of the 10 tips. I also compiled it into a nicely formatted PDF that readers can download for free. You can grab that over at writewithimpact.com/gift

5. Give your perspective on a trending topic or breaking news

When Spotify announced that it would be adding podcasts to its platform, along with music and videos, my friends in the podcasting community were buzzing about it in the forums and groups where we hang out. What this means for podcaster producers like us is the instant addition of 70 million potential listeners. Even if, say, any one of us persuades even a fraction of a fraction of one percent of that audience to subscribe and listen to our podcast, we’ll be able to grow our podcasts.

So I quickly sat down and started jotting down a headline and outline, and then fleshed it out as a blog post which I published last week on LinkedIn. I called it “Podcasting Just Got a Whole Lot Bigger This Week”.

When I wrote that post, I was in fact simply taking up the offer made by Senior Editor Isabelle Roughol, in her post that day where she mentioned the Spotify deal very briefly in her daily news roundup. At the end of each of her posts she invites readers to write their own posts on the topics of the day. LinkedIn’s editors like it when you weigh in with your views on a breaking news story. You can learn more about what their editors are looking for from my interview with Isabelle which you can find at writewithimpact.com/episode7.

6. Put your unique spin on a topic that has been covered elsewhere

I remember seeing a post on a website about how to find a job in the public relations industry. It was obviously aimed at recent graduates or those currently aspiring to work in PR. It was an okay post, but frankly it felt thin and I knew I could add my own perspective to the topic, especially since I’ve been working in the industry for so long and know so much about it.

So, I wrote a post which I called “5 Tips for Aspiring PR Pros”. My piece was completely different of course, but I have to credit that post for giving me the initial idea. The lesson I took from this experience is that I can find ideas from stuff that’s already been published. As long as I add my own unique perspective and analysis to the topic, and I don’t simply copy what the original post is saying, then the topic is fair game.

7. Write a case study based on your own experience

This is another type of post format that offers a virtually inexhaustible supply of potential topics to write about. If you’ve done something that has generated tangible results in an area that people are struggling with or trying to do better at, then it’s likely they’ll want to know about it. What digital marketer doesn’t want to read about the person who added 2,000 email subscribers in one week, or increased organic traffic to their website by 263% in one month? I like to read those posts, and I often get something useful out of them.

8. Write a case study based on someone else’s experience

I had been following the daily tweets of astronaut Reid Wiseman for nearly the entire time that he was on the International Space Station. So when he finally made it safely back to earth after his six-month journey, I decided to write a post about his social media prowess in space. I called it “How Reid Wiseman Tweeted at 18,000 Miles Per Hour”.

It was a fun post that allowed me to highlight a very special example of how social media could be used in a highly unusual context: how to tweet while hurtling 18,000 miles per hour through space.

9. Write a round-up of surprising factoids about famous people

One of my favorite books of the year is “Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors.” When I read the book I immediately reached out to the author, Sarah Stodola, to invite her on my show.

We had a fun conversation (check out our conversation at writewithimpact.com/episode3), but I was wondering how I could build off what we spoke about, and the content of her book, in a blog post.

So I chose 7 of the 18 authors she covered in her book and I wrote a post that highlighted one quirky thing about their writing process. I threw in an image of each author, a quick take-away about that writer from Sarah’s book, and I had my post: “This is Why Great Authors Are So Productive”.

My lesson from this one: people are fascinated (obsessed perhaps?) by famous people. Writers in particular seem to love to read about famous authors. And, as the cliche goes, a picture is worth a thousand words: so besides the quirky facts, the photos of the authors were a compelling draw for readers.

10. Provide your commentary on a provocative or particularly interesting podcast conversation.

I’m surprised by how little cross-pollination there is between the world of podcasting and the world of blogging. It’s like they exist in two parallel universes.

What I mean by this is, why isn’t anyone diving into the amazing content that is being produced in the podcasting world each and every day, and using that content for their blog posts?

Well, I tried it once and it was a lot of fun. I had just finished listening to a great podcast conversation between James Altucher and Dan Roth, the executive editor of LinkedIn.

I actually met Dan in LinkedIn’s office in New York last August, but I didn’t have the chance to tap his brain on everything I wanted to know about LinkedIn. He had an empire to run, after all, and he was running from meeting to meeting.

In his conversation with Altucher, Roth went into a lot of detail on the philosophy and strategy driving LinkedIn’s publishing platform, which they had only recently — and gradually — begun to open up to its membership.

I thought, “Hey, this would make for a great blog post!” And so I wrote one. I called it “This is Why LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform is Crushing It.”

11. Peg your topic to a recurring holiday or event

Last year when Mother’s Day rolled around, I sat down and wrote a post that I dedicated to my mother. I called it, “This is Why Apple Owes My Mother a Huge ‘Thank You’ Today.”

It was the story of how my mom and dad took me to the computer store way back in the early 1980s to buy my first computer, an Apple II Plus. It was very short — no more than 700 or 800 words — and very personal. And the reaction to the post was phenomenal: it rose to become the third most popular post on Pulse for a day or two. I followed up the next month with a post on Father’s day about what I learned about life from fishing with my dad.

By pegging your post to a major holiday or another recurring event like college graduation, you can make your post more timely and relevant to what people are talking about.

12. Interview someone and write a summary of lessons learned

Since launching my podcast, I’ve had the benefit of having a weekly interview where I pick apart the writing process or dive into the sources of inspiration of the writers that I interview. This has created a tremendous backlog of potential material that I can mine for my blog posts.

One example where I turned an interview into a post is the one that I called “How to Get Writing Feedback (Without Having a Nervous Meltdown)”. It was inspired by the story Laura Brown shared in episode 1 of the time she studied screenwriting with a teacher in London many years ago. It was an amazing story in that she clearly hated the teacher and disregarded almost everything he said. Yet, she stayed in his class simply because, as she put it, 10% of what he had to teach her was excellent, and worth enduring, just for that.

You can find that episode at writewithimpact.com/episode1.

13. Predict a trend

In late December I was spending a lot of time thinking about podcasting. I was listening to them, read about them, and even took a course on CreativeLive taught by Alex Blumberg, the NPR producer and creator of Start Up, the wildly successful podcast that has shaken up the podcasting world.

I was not new to podcasting. In fact, I started producing my first podcast back in December of 2011, and I continue to produce it to this day. It’s been downloaded nearly a million times in 190-some countries.

But I sensed an acceleration of momentum in podcasting, a growing swell of interest and buzz around the topic. So I decided to take a stand and write a post that put forth the argument that 2015 would be the “Year of the Podcast”.

Since I had never been in the business of trendspotting, and I knew it was a fairly risky venture if I didn’t have some facts to back up my claims, I poked around the internet and dug up some relevant research that supported my assertion that 2015 would be a turning point for the podcasting industry.

I wrote the post and hit publish on December 31, 2014, right before diving into the new year. That post was featured on LinkedIn Pulse and generated a lot of discussion and sharing of the post.

It was probably one of the hardest posts I’ve ever written because I wanted it to be solid in its argument and backed by facts and statistics. But it was definitely one of the most rewarding.

My lesson from this one? Read the tea leaves once in a while and call out a trend you know is brewing. Just be sure you’ve got some evidence to back up your claims.

14. Write a fictional email to a friend

Last year I wrote a post that was framed as an email to a friend of mine who was a sophomore at college trying to figure out how to balance the competing demands on his time. He’s an incredibly bright guy and didn’t seem to be having any particular trouble, but the thought of him trying to pack so many activities into his already crammed academic and extracurricular schedule made me wonder if I could share a few lessons I learned from my undergraduate days. He could choose to ignore the advice, of course, but I thought I’d share it with him — and my followers on LinkedIn.

So I wrote him an email — of course I didn’t use his real name — and published it. It was an easy post to write because I wrote it as though I were dashing off another email to him.

15. Write a fictional conversation between yourself and someone else

I did this with my recent post, “Advice For a 22-Year-Old Me”. It was in response to LinkedIn’s call for posts on what we would do if we could turn back the clock to when we were 22 years old.

It was the first time I wrote a post like this: a fictional dialogue between myself and a fictional character who offered some words of wisdom as I was about to embark on my post-graduation career. While I made up the dialogue, the scene — standing on a beach, in front of a nest of sea turtles that were hatching and scrambling down the beach and into the ocean — was actually based on a real experience I had when I was 18, when I had just graduated from high school and was about to leave home for college.

It was a fun piece, and I would definitely consider trying it out again when the time and topic are right.

16. Write a tribute to someone who has had a major impact on your career or life

When my favorite writing coach, William Zinsser, passed away recently, I wrote a brief tribute to him. You can hear it at writewithimpact.com/episode9.

This one obviously had a very personal meaning for me, and there was so much I could say about him and his impact on my writing, that it was a piece that flowed fairly easily.

In fact, it was the second post I wrote about Zinsser. The first one was about the enormous influence Zinsser has had on generations of writers. I called it “The Man Who Taught a Million People How to Write Well.”

***

This list is of course by no means exhaustive. I could go on. But I hope it gives you something to work with the next time you run out of topics to write about.

One final note: while most of these topics are “evergreen” and will probably work regardless of when you publish it, some of these are more time sensitive.

Sometimes you’ll find that your choice of topic will be driven by a sense of urgency around the timing. Something happens — or is about to happen — that compels you to get your voice heard on the topic sooner rather than later. At least before everyone else piles on and starts writing about it.

Just remember: you do have something to write about, and there is an audience for what you have to say, especially for the unique perspective you can add to the topic. All you have to do is choose your topic, write the post, then hit publish.

I hope you found this coffeecast episode useful.

If you’ve got questions or suggestions for topics you’d like me to cover on future coffeecast episodes, please send me an email at glenn@writewithimpact.com. I read each and every one and will reply as well. Thanks to all of you who have sent me helpful suggestions and feedback.

And finally, thanks so much everyone for making this podcast #1 in the New & Noteworthy section on iTunes recently. There are a ton of podcasts out there and I’m grateful you’ve chosen to listen to mine.

I’ll leave you with the full song that I’ve been using in my intro and outro to this podcast. I’ve only played it in full once, in my introductory episode to this podcast — episode 0. It’s called “Something Unreal”, and it’s by the group Ex Norwegian, a band from my own hometown of South Florida. They were kind enough to let me use the song for my podcast. You can find their discography and information about them on their website at exnorwegian.com.

See you next time!

 

Image: Will_Arthur / flickr