How 4 Different Bloggers Come Up With Blog Post Ideas

Last updated on 17 August 2026

This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase with one of these links, I recieve a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read the full Affiliate Policy.

“Where do you get your ideas from?” is one of the questions I get asked the most, both from readers and from the women inside The Blogging Room. And it makes total sense, especially because I’ve been putting out at least one blog post per week for over 16 years now. That’s a lot of blog posts.

And staring at a blank draft, trying to will an idea into existence, is one of the fastest ways to talk yourself out of blogging altogether, and it can be so so easy to do.

So when I sat down to interview four different bloggers, I asked every single one of them how they come up with what to write about. And after all four interviews, one of the things that really stood out for me was that none of them came up with blog post ideas the same way.

Yes there were similarities across them, but each brought out a particular way of going about things that really stood out to me.

Four bloggers, with four different systems … and I wanted to share them with you today (with all of their permissions, of course!).

Here’s each one, so you can find the one that actually fits how your brain works.

💡 Want to watch these four interviews? Join us inside The Blogging Room!

4 Ways to Come up with Blog Post Ideas

I think we’ve all fallen into the trap of reading a blogging tip and thinking, right, that’s the way, that’s what I need to be doing. Then it doesn’t work for us, and we assume it’s because we’re doing it wrong, or worse, that there’s something wrong with us. 

But don’t panic. Different brains work differently. Some people need a spreadsheet (me!).  Some people need a walk and a strong coffee. Some people love winging it; others love to plan out months and months in advance.

And as long as you’re actually putting your ideas onto paper/Wordpress/whereveer you blog, that’s the main thing, right?

The “use your everyday life” method – Rachel, The Wandering Tourist

Rachel from The Wandering Tourist writes about slow, low-key family travel, and her ideas come almost entirely from what she’s already doing.

A cabana she rented at the beach in Florida became a full post about why more families should rent one instead of hauling everything themselves. Friday night pizza and a movie with her boys? She could turn that from just one blog post into four or five, once she starts digging around and pulling out various threads.

It ends up not just being about the family movie night. She then gets to write about great family snacks, how to pick movies out for your kids, how to actually get your kids involved in choosing said movie etc etc.

She also keeps her ideas sorted into broader buckets from the start, rather than treating “blog ideas” as one giant, overwhelming pile. For Rachel, she uses buckets like lifestyle, Airbnb hosting tips, and travel trends. And when she has an idea, she knows which bucket or category it’s going to go in.

In our chitchat, Rachel told me that her actual process for getting it all down was by setting aside a day (usually a Monday), opening up three or four documents at once, and emptying everything out of her head into whichever doc it belongs in. Then through the rest of the week, she goes back and fills each one in properly.

I actually love this idea, and have done it a few times myself when I’ve had one event or place I’ve visited and I wanted to create multiple blog posts out of it.

 

The “write for Past Me” method – Emily, Emily Who Explores

Emily from Emily Who Explores spent years writing for other people’s brands before she started building her own. And when it came to figuring out what to write on her own blog, she went back to a simple question: what did she want to know five or six years ago, before she knew any of this? Before she was where she is now.

This is a clever way of coming up with content: looking at Past You.

Instead of trying to think like an expert (which can leave you staring at a blank page, wondering what’s even worth saying), she thinks like the person she used to be. And that might be a super curious version of yourself, googling things at midnight, asking questions to anyone in the niches you were interested in, binging YouTube channels.

Writing for your past self is a great way to come up with those blog post ideas. Even easier if you had a diary or you were/are an avid journaller, and you literally go back and look at what you were talking about and thinking about 3, 4, 5 years ago.

I write a lot on This Splendid Shambles about things I would have loved to have known back when I started blogging – it’s the same concept. Also one of the reasons I created The Blogging Room – for Past Me.

💡 Want to watch these four interviews? Join us inside The Blogging Room!

The “Seasonal and/or Project” method – Rachel, The Barefoot Crafter

Rachel from The Barefoot Crafter doesn’t really research her ideas at all, which, you know, makes a lot of sense when you realise she’s a craft blogger. 😂

She follows whatever craft has her attention that season, whether that’s a knitting project in winter or art journaling in the warmer months, and lets the blog post follow the making rather than the other way round. Which you really need to do when you’re a craft blogger or a blogger who needs to do something like a project in order to get the blog post ideas actually onto paper.

She also films little bits of behind-the-scenes footage as she works, so even on the weeks she hasn’t got a finished project to show, she’s still got something to share. And she’s got a recurring weekly feature, so on the weeks nothing else jumps out at her, there’s already a built-in prompt waiting.

When I posted a lot more creative blog posts (you can still find some here on the blog), I used to do this a lot, too. I’d turn whatever projects I was working on or had finished into blog posts (at least one!).

The “Research Trends” and “Archives Diving” methods – Deanna, Life by Deanna

Deanna from Life by Deanna has a bit of a different approach, which is much more research-led. She checks bigger sites and online magazines in her niche to see what’s trending, then works out how to bring that back into her own topics. She’ll also use ChatGPT and other AI tools when she’s stuck, purely as a brainstorming tool to get some options in front of her.

But the part I found most genius is that she regularly goes back through her own top-performing posts (her journal prompt posts, for example) and looks for what else she could write in that same vein. Rather than always hunting for something brand new, she’s building on what already works, and what she knows is already working. How can she reuse those past blog post ideas and create even more posts from it?

This works really well for lots of niches, too. Head back to some of your top-performing blog posts and see why they were doing well, and you could replicate it again.

So which one should you actually use?

No actual answer for you, sorry. 😂

But if any of these ways of coming up with blog posts intrigue you, give it a go and see how you get on! You don’t need to pick a system and marry it for life (thank goodness!).

Rachel from The Wandering Tourist uses her everyday life. Emily thinks back to who she used to be and where she was a few years back. The Rachel from The Barefoot Crafter follows the seasons and also what kind of projects she’s working on at the time. And Deanna both researches trends and news in her niche and also revisits older posts.

All four of them have been blogging for years, and all four of them come up with blog posts in a completely different way.

If you’ve been stuck wondering what to write for your blog next, give one of these ideas a go (or a couple! Or all four!) and then come on back here and let me know how you got on!

And if you’re looking for more content like interviews with bloggers, masterclasses to help you grow your blog and your confidence, and a supportive community full of bloggers ready to cheer you on and keep you accountable, come and check out The Blogging Room. We’d love to meet you!