Writer’s Block. The Pain and Panic are Real.

By Lisa D. Jenkins

There’s nothing quite like that feeling of knowing you owe the readers of your blog several hundred words and realizing you’ve got no idea what to write about. The realization that you can write on just about anything only makes it worse. It mires your brain in some sort of one track spiral that does nothing but turn around and around on itself.

Sorry, there are no blogs coming out of the station today.

So you take a walk. You open up the Google machine and surf around. You browse your book collection. You check your blog roll. Hoping for some sort of inspiration to drop an idea into your head.

Been there?

We’ve all seen the lists of X Ways to Beat Writer’s Block and there are often some great bits of advice in them. The problem is sometimes when you’re so stuck you can’t string a cohesive content thought together to save yourself, light prompts usually don’t cut it. You need serious, focused help.

Enter the blog topic generators of the world!

They aren’t perfect, they won’t write for you and they can’t be held responsible for everything, but topic generators have saved me more times than I can count. Here’s a look at 4 blog topic generators you can use to get writing, right now.

BlogAbout by Impact Branding & Design

“BlogAbout was an idea born out of frustration.”

Start by clicking the refresh button in the center of the screen until you find a prompt that strikes a spark.

Clicking it 5 times has given me:

• preparation
• the customer experience
• customer service
• a challenge
• saving money

I’ll use preparation.

Now, click the Next button that generates a fill-in-the-blank phrase you can use with your own keywords. Hit the refresh button to get a new phrase or hit the heart to save a phrase to your notebook.

Here’s what I got:

• When It Pays to
• Why __ Timing is Everything
• 7 Things that Really Great X Do
• 7 X Tools No X Should be Without
• 4 Ways to Make Your X More Successful

And that’s how I ended up here with a post on blog topic generators no blogger should be without. How great is that?

Here are a few more generators for you to check out.

ContentIdeator

Enter in a single keyword and click Get Ideas. Pages of existing headlines come up and all you have to do it choose whether you want to see 10, 20 or 30 ideas at a time. Use what you see as inspiration for you own post.

Portent’s Content Idea Generator

Enter your keyword and click the arrow to get started. I’ll use content. Next, you’ll get a title with helpful descriptors. Don’t like it? Hit refresh for another, and another. Here’s the second title I was given:
That’s workable, right?

Blog Topic Generator from Hubspot

You’ll need three nouns for this. When you’re ready, hit the Give Me Blog Topics button. I used content, productivity and business and was given these 5 blog topics.

So. I’m not saying these generators will fix everything but they’ll get you focused on a single thread that’s more likely to turn into a blog post or article than, say, aligning your writing utensils from left to right in order of frequency of use will.

And now I give a round of applause to Impact Branding & Design, Portent, Content Forest and Hubspot for helping us all to find our way out of the desolation that is writer’s block.