70. What If I Run Out of Ideas?

Stephanie: [00:00:00] It's a common concern for bloggers. The fear that one day you'll wake up and have absolutely nothing left to say. If the prospect of running out of blog post ideas fills you with dread, we need to chat. Welcome back to the podcast. This month we've been tackling common fears that teacher business owners experience in their organic marketing efforts, and I saved what I think to be the most scary of fears for last,

and that is the fear of running out of ideas. Because the fact is that bloggers need a steady stream of relevant topics in order to create consistent content. We all dread that moment when we're looking at a blank page with a blinking cursor and have nothing to say. This fear hits the same, whether you're just getting started with a blog and are having trouble brainstorming topics, or you've been blogging for a long time and feel like the well has run dry.

That's why we're going to face this fear head on [00:01:00] during this episode. We're going to talk about why creative dry spells can be such a problem for bloggers. I'm also going to give you some reassurance that you probably won't truly run out of ideas, and then we'll end with some tips for how to keep the ideas flowing.

Blogging is a creative endeavor and we all know that creativity comes in waves. You cannot force it, so that's why creative dry spells can be so disheartening. When you're already not feeling inspired to blog. It gets even worse when you don't know what you're even going to write about. I can't even begin to tell you the number of times that having a blog post topic ready to go has saved me from completely ditching my plans to blog for the day because I just wasn't feeling it. But having that topic ready to go

reminded me of, okay, I'll at least give it 10 minutes. And then luckily, usually that 10 minutes was all I needed to then get [00:02:00] going. But I think what makes dry spells so scary is that they can become a source of blogging burnout. This summer I presented at the Teacher Seller Summit on how to avoid blogging burnout, and one of the major factors that I mentioned in the presentation is feeling like you're constantly struggling

to come up with blog post topics and as a teacher business owner creating products for teachers, your creativity reserves are being taxed every day. Adding blogging to the mix can feel like a challenge on its own, but then when you add blog topic selection to the mix, it's no wonder if you start to worry about running out of ideas.

But it's highly unlikely that this will happen, and let me tell you why. First, you already have a bank of idea generators for your business. Your TPT store is a gold mine of blog post topic ideas. We've talked about [00:03:00] this on the podcast before, but you can use customer comments, questions, and the products themselves to inspire blog post topic ideas.

For example, let's say you notice that many of your comments on TPT talk about how customers use your color by code printables as a station during their literacy centers. And so when you notice that pattern, you might decide, Hey, I could write a blog post all about print and go literacy station ideas.

And then you would include that color by code printable in the post. And next, you likely won't run out of ideas because teaching is cyclical. Even though seasoned teachers have their tried and true solutions for common pain points when it rolls around each year, even veteran teachers will be open to reading or learning about a fresh perspective or solution.

So just to illustrate what I'm talking [00:04:00] about, we know that desk pets and all their little accessories have been a popular idea for classroom management over the years, but teachers in 2025 and this economy are likely looking for a more budget friendly alternative. And so you could create a blog post that shares low cost alternatives to desk pets.

And so that was just a quick example, but there are other ways that even though the rhythm of a school year is so similar from year to year, teachers are always on the hunt for things that will help to keep it fresh. Which leads to the final point, and that is that education is always changing and your teacher business will be changing with it.

Teaching standards and best practices change. Student behavior evolves. There will always be fresh issues to address and new products to highlight with your content. So to sum it up, ideas are floating around your business. The key is to find a way to [00:05:00] notice and catch them so they're ready to use when you are ready to write.

So let's talk about how you can do that. I know that saying you'll never run out of ideas is one thing. Having them ready to use is another. So here are five tips to help you make sure you always have a steady stream of ideas flowing for your blog. First and foremost, have a place for your blog post ideas to live.

I've talked about it before and I probably will talk about it again. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just make sure it's somewhere that you will actually use it. You'll have it handy when an idea comes to mind and you can add it to your bank, and then also you have it somewhere where you can look at your gathered ideas when you're ready to plan your blog content.

Two, set aside time to revisit and update your blog post Idea Bank regularly because [00:06:00] your business priorities change. Keywords become more competitive over time. You just really don't want your list of ideas to get stale. And so this is why I suggest a quarterly revisit of this list on refresh day, which we talked about back in August.

Number three, regularly visit Google Search Console. This is one of the best places to gather blog post ideas that are relevant to your business. You can see the queries that are bringing people to your website. Are there questions in there that you haven't actually addressed with a full post? Add them to your list.

Number four, read through your older blog content. Don't just post and ghost. When you look at and revisit your older content, you might decide that a post would benefit from a complete rewrite, and that is something that you can add to your blog post queue. You also [00:07:00] might notice that you were pretty vague in one particular talking point and realize that your audience would benefit from a deeper dive into that one talking point from an older post.

So what I love about that is that you have an immediate internal linking opportunity because once that new post is written, you can go back to that older post where you just briefly mentioned it and add an internal link to the fresh post. And finally, when you feel like you are running out of ideas, I want you to frame it as this

instead. It's time to pause and connect with my audience. Spend some time in the comment section of your social media account. Go back through customer emails and dms. There are likely signals that your audience is sending you in the various business touchpoints that you have in the customer journey, so don't try to force creativity

by just coming up with topics out of thin air. [00:08:00] Your audience is leaving you breadcrumbs, so go ahead and gather those whenever you start to feel like you're running out of ideas. I hope that this episode has given you some encouragement when you feel like you're just running out of things to say on your blog.

Don't feel discouraged if you are feeling uninspired, because it happens to everyone. Just do what you can to prevent total burnout. If you haven't grabbed my free guide with 37 places to find blog post ideas, be sure to check it out. These are all places where you can gather those breadcrumbs from your audience and come up with relevant content topics for your business.

If you want to grab this free guide, you can find it@stephanieroyersolutions.com slash podcast. You can also find the link in the show notes.