You know that blogging is a great way to stay in front of your clients, provide new content on your website, participate in your professional community, and establish yourself as an expert in your field. But what do you do when you have no clue what to write about??!

It happens to everyone – you’re sitting at your computer with a blank screen in front of you and you feel like you’ve written about every topic related to real estate and your local market at least twice. Next time you hit a wall (hopefully not literally!) and can’t come up with something fresh to write about check out this list of ways to come up with topics for blog posts:

• Browse Q&A sites. Take a look at the online question and answer sites such as Yahoo Answers or AOL Answers and see what people want to know. Search for “real estate” and you’re likely to find several recently posed questions. If you end up doing a post that relates closely to the question you can even answer it on the Q&A site with a link to your post as suggested further reading.
• Read other industry blogs. Peruse the blogs of colleagues, competitors, and professionals in related industries. I’m not suggesting that you copy or steal their posts or topic ideas, but you’re likely to get inspired by reading what others have written. For example, a post directed towards first time home buyers might inspire you to write something for retirees looking at downsizing.
• Ask for ideas. Post something on Facebook, Twitter, or shoot an email out to family and friends. Ask if they have any real estate related questions, or if there are any topics they’d like to know more about.
• Look through the archives. Read through posts from a year or more ago. Are there any topics that could be revisited, updated, or expanded on?

Hopefully you’ll end up with more topics than you have time to write at the moment. Keep a running list of posts to work on later, and add to it as you have additional ideas.

Tags: Blogging, content, content creation, Marketing