Keeping a consistent flow of ideas going for new blog posts is a challenge a lot of bloggers face.  Here are 7 ways you can monitor your niche area for new ideas to keep your blog fresh with regular new content.

Google Alerts

Think of Google Alerts as an automatic Google search, with the newest results for your search keywords sent to you every day by email.

You should set up Google Alerts for the main keywords and search terms that relate to your blogging topics.  Multiple searches can be combined into a single string just as you would with a regular Google search.

For example, a Google Alert for “wordpress” will return a lot of results every day for blogs hosted on wordpress.com, even if they are not blogging about WordPress.  To avoid this you can exclude “wordpress.com” from your searches.  The search string would look like this:

wordpress –wordpress.com

Similarly you can combine search terms, for example:

antivirus OR anti-virus OR virus OR viruses OR “computer virus”

Set up some Google Alerts for your blog topics and tweak them over time to get the best results.  Then spend just a few minutes each day checking your email alerts to see what others are talking about and to get inspiration for your own blog posts.

Other Blogs

Another great way to receive inspiration is to subscribe to other blogs within your niche.  When you are reading their blog posts there are a few ways you can be inspired to write your own posts:

1. See what they are writing so you can avoid writing the same thing as everyone else (avoiding the “echo chamber”)
2. See what they are writing so you can expand on their point, or offer a contrary viewpoint
3. Assemble lists of posts to link out to as “link roundups” for a particular topic

Newsletters

Newsletters in your niche are a great way to keep up with the latest news.  Some of the foremost experts in their field will publish a weekly or monthly newsletter.  These vary from summaries of online articles to full length, in depth articles.

Often a newsletter is a good alternative to following the daily updates from a blog, instead you can wait for their weekly summary in the newsletter.

Newspapers and Print Media

Although old media such as newspapers and magazines has a reputation for being behind the times they are still a good resource for in depth, accurate information.

You can also learn a lot more from print publications such as effective article layout, headline strategies, writing styles, and general editorial quality.

Also if you think you could write a good article for your favourite magazine then get in touch with them.  Being featured in a magazine is a great way to enhance your credibiity as a writer.

Social Networks

Social media or networking sites such as Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Twitter are great ways to find out what kind of content is appealing to readers.

By analysing the blog posts that are successful on social media sites you can generate ideas of your own, and similarly to print media you can find out what kind of headlines or content are drawing the most visitors.

Twitter Search is also an easy way to locate problems that people are having, allowing you to write blog posts with the solutions to those problems.

Forums

Forums are one of the most lucrative ways of finding out what kind of problems people are trying to solve in your topic area.  Take a few minutes to look at the questions people are asking on a forum and then write a blog post that solves that probem.

Press Releases

They may be a bit heavy on the marketing hype but press releases are still a good way to keep up with new developments from the major players in your niche.  Subscribe to the mailing lists or press release RSS feeds so that you are the first to know when a new product or service is released to the public, and then write a news or review post about it.

What are some of your techniques for keeping up with your niche and finding new blog post ideas?

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gerlos/

Tagged as: Blogging, Forums, Google Alerts, Social Media, Twitter