How I decide what to blog about

I love blogging, and I love coming up with ideas for things to blog about. I like to blog regularly about lots of different things, and I hope that there are at least a few people out there reading what I write!

I realised that I get inspiration for the blog from lots of different places, so I thought that I'd share some of the ways that I come up with blog post ideas, and how I decide what I'm going to blog about.

* Most of my blog posts come from the long list of vague blog post ideas that I keep, both in a notebook and transferred over to my blogging Trello board. Some are sorted by season, for example when a craft that I'm working on over the summer sparks an idea for a Christmas variation. Or one craft idea will lend itself to other similar crafts that I can come back to at the same time next year. Every now and then I sort through my ideas and pick out the ones that I feel inspired to write up into full blog posts.

Related post - How I use Trello as a blogger

* If I'm really stuck for some seasonal content, I can often find some inspiration in lists of blog post ideas which have been created by other bloggers. I even refer back to the lists that I've written and shared myself, as I can often think of a new take on something!

Related post - An entire year of blog post ideas and inspiration

* Sometimes a post by another blogger will inspire me to write my own take on an idea (credited back of course, and shared with the original blogger if I feel brave enough). I like to keep up to date with reading other blogs, and follow them mainly via Feedly and on Twitter.

Photo credit - Jen Theodore via Unsplash

* Similarly a news story or current event might make me think about something that I want to share.

* Lots of my blog posts are inspired by conversations with friends, particularly those about issues that I'm facing with my parenting. Sometimes writing it all out helps me to think about and decide how to manage a situation.

* I'm always working on one craft project or another, and so I enjoy sharing my progress. It also helps me to keep track of what I've been working on and inspires me to keep at something!

* I like to round up ideas from previous blog posts. I've been blogging for over 8 years now and I've covered a lot of ground, so it's nice to dust off some of those older posts and bring them back out for a new audience as part of a round up.

* Looking back through old blog posts also often gives me ideas for writing an updated post, or re-writing an old post with a new take on the idea.

* I enjoy sharing holidays that we've been on and places that we've visited, and it also makes a nice memory for me to look back on, especially if we visit the same place more than once and you can compare the photos.

I find that once I begin making a list of blog post ideas the ideas keep flowing, and even if many of them never end up as full blog posts, the very act of brainstorming helps to unleash my creativity and makes me feel full of possibilities. Blogging is definitely a creative outlet for me!