Too many ideas for your blog? Have you though about different blog post types so you can vary your approach and angles?

I blogged about creating content but also some various ways of getting content ideas, either from other sources or yourself.

Indeed, I mostly recommend involving your own creation genius, because you actually know enough.

You just need to tell a story or document whatever you’re doing, researching and investigating, what are your results, what you found interesting and what could benefit your audience.

So you may now already have tons of content ideas tha you wrote down for future development. If you have few articles written, awesome, fear not to publish!

This post is going to be about planning your content, and various post types you can use to write those.

What I mean by that is…

What are your next 100 posts?

(or 10)

Are they going to be in complete random order, or do you want to give those a direction, almost like writing a book with various chapters.

Since I restarted this month (September 2016), almost all my posts were about “writing” or somewhat related…

What it involved such as hitting that damn publishing button, not fearing others reactions…

Beating procrastination by making writing the easiest thing ever…

Changing the mindset of doing the task: I do it and who cares if it’s not perfect.

As long as I write at my current highest level. I guess I really wanted to populate the blog with some posts because I left it almost empty for 2 years.

Though I had ideas that I wrote down, expanding a bit here and there in my drafts, I just created posts about writing and didn’t have any plan.

This must be said too: you may not need a plan if you’re in a highly creative mood.

Post by post I saw I consistently averaged 1000+ words posts. Which was not even a goal.

But it brings us to setting goals, and goals are the end of a plan.

Now what if you don’t have ideas yet?

Well I bet you already know the topics, sub-topics, sub-niches in your niche.

These are all filled with ideas.

Choose the ones that you want to write about the most so it gets you motivated to start.

It’s going to be much easier to write if you are more interested. This alone will give you even more ideas.

Then, just start.

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STRUCTURE YOUR CONTENT IDEAS

This is valid for each individual post, as well as all your content. See this as a table of content.

Your goal could be to have all your 100 content ideas developed into full posts within 100 days. So with a 100 posts goal, that’s right, one post a day. And each is part of the content plan.

So as a blogger/internet marketer, you may want to have your first 10 posts about blogging or writing.

Then 10 posts about creating a report or lead magnet, showcasing various examples which leads to how to create compelling optin forms and pages…

Of course you don’t want to forget about about marketing your content.

At least just share it. You can have mini posts on your social network accounts linking to the original post on your blog.

Because your content can be the best ever, it’s there to get read by others.

Now 100 posts looks a lot of work, but planning ahead already gets your creative juices working a bit.

Here’s how you can make it work:

• Focus on one topic (chapter) at a time.
• Find the top 10 questions or problems your readers may have on this one topic and serve them a solution. It can be the top 20 questions, it really depends how deep you want to go.

You may sometimes find articles listing problems people have, or mistakes they make, as well as the top methods and practices to fix those, or any kind of list post.

But the original authors didn’t explain too much about each point. Well you can take over each point and make a full post for each by simply expanding with your own ideas and research.

Or the opposite: the articles you read are so damn extensive, too technical, or it’s a top 97 stuff post.

Make it shorter, keep the essential.

Or reorganize everything in multiple posts with a more comprehensive angle.

This way you can really come up with a lot of helpful content.

Tip: One of the blog post types you can create following this idea is a blog series (Part 1, Part 2…)

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6 BLOG POST TYPES TO INCLUDE IN YOUR PLAN

Let’s now see various blog post types you can include in your plan (there are many more but those are the one I can think of now).

Depending on your niche, you may only need use one of those blog post types. But of course, you can mix them all in your plan.

Lists!

Just like you can research those list posts and expand their ideas as explained above, you can of course create your own list posts.

Those are the “Top 3 Ways to…” or 7 Best Apps To Change Water Into Wine (I may get traffic to this post with this keyphrase).

Lists are certainly the easiest of the blog post types, and certainly why it’s at the top of my… list!

Other type of lists can be checklists (i.e, SEO Checklist for bloggers)

How To 

Definitely an article type you want to have. “How to” articles are proven to attract clicks and links, they can end up going viral.

People expect to learn something. So these can be tutorials or step by step, illustrated by screenshots or videos.

Case studies

Awesome content type, a favorite among readers. People love seeing what people were able to achieve (or not) using a particular method or tool as well as their journey into a business.

People expect some kind of results and also to learn something. You may actually have seen such titles “How I [INSERT RESULT] with [INSERT METHOD] in less than 30 Days (Case study)”.

This is documenting at its best. It can be a mix of How To/Review.

Reviews

I could repeat the bit of text about case studies. People using a particular method or tool have thus an opinion and a recommendation.

Of course, it’s better you recommend something you actually have used, or at least are sure the product you recommend is good.

A lot of blogs have taken advantage of all the new info products getting released every week or day and they’ve been very successful.

Reviews and lists maybe the 2 blog post types that some blogs are using as their only content site model.

Note that a negative review, if honest – because the product is actual crap or doesn’t work at all or is complete rehashed outdated stuff while the sales letter said it’s never seen before – can be a good thing.

I let you the choice the harshness level you want to express in those cases.

But what I mean is that preventing your reader from falling into the trap of false promises adds some trust. Just be honest, don’t do negative reviews for the sole purpose of bashing a competitor.

It brings me to…

Controversy

Controversial posts are long time known kind of post that can drive passionate comments. If you also want to see more engagement and interactions, this maybe a good post type for you.

Now of course if you go against most people opinion, you may just start a virtual battle. You are warned, so make sure your points are valid (or find a way to make those valid).

If you’re in the cat niche and you share your “Why I Hate Kitten Pics” blog post on your facebook page, you will know what crazy cat lady mean.

Even if your post was actually a joke, some people won’t even read the pos and just react to the headline.

Life, random writing

Those are where you express whatever you want to. It can be any story you feel comfortable sharing. It is as personal as you want (well maybe not too personal).

Sometimes it feels great to just write down your negative thoughts, to clear your mind, as well as sharing a SUPER awesome recipe, or something cool.

You see this on social networks all the time. It doesn’t have to be super long posts, you can even just share your funny idea of the day. Something that turns out to being a great joke.

These can definitely be part of your plan.

So you commit to share something that is totally non business related. Or you include those in your plan at any time.

Your favorite band released a new album, or you discovered an amazing artist and wanted to give him/her a shout out.

Or there’s this video that made you laugh, and everyone should laugh, right? Ryan Levesque shared this video review of the iPhone 7.

From the comments on YouTube, context, and type of content it’s a mix of review, life, list and controversy. 😉

There you have it, 6 blog post types to develop and plan content with. And actually 7 if you spot the blog series one 🙂

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A resource for planning lots of content on your website…

I recommend you check Aidan Booth blog post on content trees that show you how to inject traffic to your blog by creating a big 3,000+ words super posts, branching out to about 25 complimentary articles.

It’s way simpler than it sounds.

It involves writing the BIG posts first with lists, and linking to other sites while you write the other articles.

Then, edit your content an link to your own articles. Aidan’s post contains a video explaining it all and an infographic.

This is a very nice way to get a content plan and populate your blog or website with very theme-focused articles, and it comes with SEO benefits.

Thoughts, comments, questions and what blog post types do you use? I’d love to hear those and there’s a box below just for that 😉