Blogging Truths Be Told: 5 Places to Find Blogging Inspiration (Part 1)

So, I have to admit right off the bat that the inspiration for today’s “Blogging Truths Be Told” totally came from last week’s post, entitled Blogging Truths Be Told: You Won’t Always Feel Inspired. Please give it a read (if you haven’t done so already), and then wholeheartedly delve into today’s content. Checking out the prelude to this blog post will provide you with some background context that leads into the widely sought-after topic of INSPIRATION.

Now, I’ve been known to be a little chatty with my commentary, and why not? I love to chat with you. But, I’ve decided to take the route of getting straight to the heart of the matter — straight to the inspirational places that have allowed me to keep going for these three years of my blogging career.

Oh, by the way, I received a WordPress notification wishing me a happy anniversary yesterday. It’s absolutely mind-boggling to think that I put up my first blog post on August 12, 2018. Whoo hoo! My . . . how time flies by! And if you have any desire to see how my humble beginnings began, you can feel free to go back to my very first post, The Journey Begins, and work your way up. I’ve definitely grown in my blogging know-how since then, but I still have much, much, and much more learning to do.

Well, wouldn’t you know? I got a little sidetracked, didn’t I? In the paragraph before last, I said I was going to get to the topic at hand, and then I just abruptly transitioned into a whole anniversary discussion. Or, did I?

Actually, the anniversary discussion leads me to giving you a call to action in looking at my old blog posts, which (by the way) brings me to #1 of the list for today — looking at YOUR old blog posts to help jump start your new posts in the present and those coming in the future.

#1 – Read Your Old Posts

Reading your old posts is great for idea generation. I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed that I can always find better ways to say things or write things the second or third or fourth times around. This very thing is what makes the book editing process such an undesirable one for me. I could literally spend as much time editing my book as I spend writing it.

And I’ve learned that, eventually, I just have to stop editing, because I can always find some better way to say something in the book every time I attempt to read through it. I don’t do this as much with blogging though. I think I have more of a comfortability with the blogging process than I do with the book writing process. I tend to be more conversational (okay, chatty to a fault, perhaps) with blogging and less formal. I can be “MEEEEEEEEEE” with the imperfect sentence structure, nonsense words, and all of that. I love it.

Okay, so I’m getting chatty to a fault and I wasn’t going to do that. Let me get back on track here. We were discussing the idea of reading through old posts and making them better. So . . .

case in point: I’ll probably repurpose this post in the future sometime and make it more comprehensive than it is now. And with my first few months’ worth of blog posts, where I had no idea what I was doing (but knew that I just needed to start somewhere), I can definitely create some more seasoned discussions of those topics. At that time, many of my posts were pretty short and lacked development of the content. So, they can use some sprucing up a bit (well actually, a lot).

In fact, some of today’s tips came from an old post (dated 12/4/19), entitled When You Don’t Know What to Blog About. Please go ahead and take a couple of minutes to read it if you wouldn’t mind. (Believe me, it won’t take you long.)

Okay, now that you’re back, see what I mean about lacking development? I do think I provided some helpful suggestions, but I could have given some substance to what I was suggesting. Just sayin’.

So, my call to action for you is to go through your earlier posts and see if there are opportunities to expound upon them and give them more life.

#2 – Read Your More Recent Posts and Develop Post Series or Topic Spin-offs

I don’t know if you happened to notice, but I used a recently “old” post, last week’s (mentioned above), to provide me with the inspiration for today’s content. And I would probably call today’s content a “spin-off” scenario. Last week, I blogged about the fact that we can lack inspiration from time to time; and today, my topic is all about finding some inspiration.

But let me just talk to you about the series posts for a minute or two.

I promise I’m not using the series strategy just to be doing it. I have a valid reason for its implementation. I simply find that you can only hold individuals’ attention for so long. And, my posts aren’t dissertations. I like to create the majority of them to be around 1000-1500 words, which I think is plenty to keep an audience engaged.

Also, to keep me from putting the fluff in my stuff, I have to give myself somewhat of a limit in my blogging, or I could keep you here for awhile. Basically, I don’t want a reader to be turned off by my content because he or she finds it losing zest as it increases in length or because I simply packed too much information into one blog post and made it a bit overwhelming for the reader.

So, I happily take on the role of series advocate. 

My suggestion is to spread the love. Dividing a reeeeaaalllly long topic post into two is much more preferably than writing a mini book post.  

#3 – Read Others’ Posts

I’m not going to take a whole long time on this section. It means what it says. You can absolutely draw an incredible amount of inspiration from reading others’ creative works. In fact, you should be doing this anyway as a member of the blogging community.

As a blogger, get out there and support your blogger friends and associates. And, encourage them with likes, and comments, and feedback from time to time. They love hearing from you.

And as far as drawing inspiration goes, read others’ content and be inspired to create YOUR OWN. Don’t rewrite their work as yours and give yourself credit for it. That’s an epic fail — an emphatic “NO-NO”! So, DON’T do that!

#4 – Read the Comments Left on Your Posts and Create Posts From Them

Reading the comments generated from your blog posts is an excellent way in which to draw inspiration. Your readers will drop you some profound knowledge in those comments that can spark a discussion for future blogging. You just need to make sure and carefully read through your comments because you can usually find some brilliant gems in there — readers’ questions that can be answered in a post, more discussion points that readers would like you to cover on a topic, or comments that lead to brand-new topics you may not have thought of yet.

Oh, and make sure you’re responding back to those comments. If your readers take the time to share their sentiments with you, you better be taking the time to acknowledge their feedback.

As I’ve always stated, the blogging community is one of the best supporters a blogger could ever hope to have. So, treat your community well.

#5 – Just Read

Just as I stated in my aforementioned post, “When You Don’t Know What to Blog About”, you can get reading information from a lot of different sources, including the ones above. Here are some of the honorable mentions that were outlined in that post:

• Chapters from an inspirational/self-help book
• Quotes and positive affirmations
• The Bible
• Trending news for the day
• Children’s books with your child (reading to him/her or with him/her)
• Comics/Funnies
• Social media posts
• Your notebook of blog post ideas

Did you notice the whole reading theme here? Reading is fundamental to your blogging inspiration, people. So, use it frequently.

Furthermore, you won’t be able to say that I don’t use my own advice, because I’m totally going to use tip #2 and make today’s discussion a series. I didn’t really know I would be creating a two-parter going in to this post, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome with you on this fine day. So, I’ll save some more places and spaces to draw your inspiration from for the next “Blogging Truths Be Told”. Until then . . .