Is Asking a Good Strategy to Find New Post Topics?

As a blogger, there are moments when we will not have anything to write about. Our mind goes blank. We look at other sources such as forums, friends’ blogs, other blogs and in our blog comments, but we don’t find any idea. In that case, asking readers may seem to be a good strategy. However, I feel there’s something wrong in this approach. In my opinion, you should not ask this question directly to the readers in a form of a blog post. Instead, we should take an indirect way.

Why we should not ask what we need to write next directly to readers

I visit several blogs that bloggers tell readers about they don’t know what to write next and ask the readers to suggest some topics. I feel asking this way hurt frequent readers and damage the image of blog. Bloggers should never do it because:

• It can confuse the readers. Blog is the place so that blogger and readers can communicate on the topics that both of them care about. Blogger, of course, is considered an expert in the field, a “living” guide so that readers can discuss with him on various topics relate to the niche his blog is in. Asking readers what he should write next directly make readers feel he doesn’t know where he will head and what he should do next. As a result, readers leave the blog because they feel so confused about the blogger.
• Destroy blogger authority. For new visitors to the blog, seeing the question “I don’t know what to write, what should I write about next” will destroy their  initial impression toward the blog. While blogger should establish some kind of trust and authority to new visitors, asking that question directly only destroys the reputation to the new visitors.
• Low response rate. The direct question is not always effective in collecting the data. Not every reader is eager with answering the question directly so blogger will need to consider carefully traffic and his readers before asking the question.
• What true for one may not be true for another. What a reader ask the blogger to write about may not reflect the need for the entire readers of that blog. If the blogger ends up writing a post to meet the need of only one reader, it may disappoints the other readers who are more loyal to the blog. The result is, the blog can’t keep up with its readers and fail.

What you should do in case you don’t know what to write next?

Finding the inspiration for your topic

Here are the list of resources you can refer to when you want to find the inspiration for your blog:

1. 10 ways to find new blog topics
2. 20 Blog Topics To Get You Unstuck
3. 7 places I find Blog Topic Ideas

Consider the situation before you ask

In case those links above don’t work for you and you must survey readers to get some ideas or want to improve the quality content of your blog, you should put some important factors into consideration before asking them indirectly. Here are the few:

• Traffic: The traffic should be big enough to have a good conversion rate for your research. If you blog get 50 visitors per day, I doubt there would be one or two suggestion when you put up the question. So make sure you have enough traffic, at least 100 visitors a day, to do a research.
• New visitors vs return visitor: New visitor are not engaged in your blog as frequent readers so if you have high returning rate, it should do much good than having high new visit rate.

I have seen some bloggers use KISS to understand more about the readers. I think this is a good tool to collect data quietly from readers without causing them too much trouble in enjoy reading our blogs.

Another tip in asking readers is always choose the multiple choice question. It saves readers’ time and fun to do.

The hardest part, I think, is to choose the correct question form. As I said before, asking the question too directly may work against you so here are few templates you can use:

• Would you like to see more post in this topic on _________ (fill in the blank)
• Is there any way we can make our blog better for you?
• What are you interested in finding more about our blog?

In each question you should list 4 to 6 options, depends on your blog, and let the readers choose from.

What do you think?

Are you finding some bloggers who don’t know what to write about next make you feel sad, angry or you don’t care? If you can ask readers what you should write next, what kind of question would you ask?

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