If you’re anything like me, you probably have days when you sit down to write a blog post and nothing comes to you. What do you do?

Here are a few things that have worked for me when I’ve needed inspiration.

Read Other People’s Blogs

I’m not suggesting you plagiarize content, or even steal ideas, but it’s amazing how often reading something that someone else has written will spark an idea. Develop a system for keeping track of posts to go back to when you need something to blog about. I simply copy and paste the link into an ongoing task in Outlook called “Blog Post.” You might prefer to bookmark them or flag them in your RSS reader; the system you use isn’t important, as long as it’s easy for you to find those ideas when you need to.

Motivational Quotes

Sometimes a great quote, with or without a picture to support the message, can be very powerful. Very often I’ve gone to post a quote, and by the time I added my own comment to it, I found I’d written a full length article! One of my favourite sites for quotes is The Quote Garden, which is nicely organized and not full of pop-up ads like many of the others.

I’ve also signed up for Neworld Coaching’s Quote of the Day. I set up a rule in Outlook so they all go directly to a “Quotes” folder, then I go there when I want a quote for my blog, a newsletter, or some other purpose.

Special Days / Weeks / Months

It’s no secret that a lot of my posts are based on these themes! This month alone, I’ve covered Make a Referral Week, International Women’s Day, and International Ideas Month. You can download a free Blogging Calendar and lots of other great resources from BlogEnergizer.com.

When you’re feeling stuck, keep in mind that you don’t NEED to write every day. It’s better to miss a day than to post something that won’t capture the attention of your readers. You might get away with it once in a while, but do it too often, and they may stop coming back.