I created a list of 82 possible blog post topics over a year ago.  It was a bit tongue-in-cheek and wasn’t done with a whole lot of thought.  Oddly enough, it’s my most popular post in terms of traffic.

I’ve never been happy with the job that I did on that post.  I could have written something much better if I’d taken more time with it.  I decided to do a better job this time.  The post will help you generate more than 20,000 possible mini-outlines for your blog, articles, essays, or other content, whether it’s personal, business, or something else.  If you publish five posts a week, it could take you until the end of 2099 to use all of these ideas.

Image by dan paluska

A Content Idea Matrix

The way this works is simple:  create a content idea by combining the following three elements:

• a topic
• the subject of the content (who it is about)
• the theme/focus/lesson of the content.

They are all listed in this Content Idea Matrix:

Topic	Who the content is about	Theme/focus/lesson
The community where you were born	You as a child	Creativity (idea generation)
The community where you lived (longest) as a child	You as a post-secondary student	Inspiration/motivation
The house/apartment where you lived longest	You and your first job	Innovation (making exciting new stuff)
Your bedroom	You in your first long-term relationship	Discovery
Your favorite toy/hobby/pastime	You in your current long-term relationship	Teaching/demonstration of skills
Your nemesis	You in your favorite job	Life lessons
Your favorite place to hang out	You in your current job	Entertainment (non-humor)
Your favorite TV show	You as a parent	Humor
Your favorite music	You as a grandparent	Analysis
Your greatest achievement/your favorite creation	You as a senior citizen	Critique/review of some product/service/article
Your biggest disaster or failure	You as you approach death	Hypothesizing/thinking/writing a manifesto
How you mastered a skill	Write any of the above about a sibling	Bragging/celebrating
Your best vacation or trip	Write any of the above about a parent	Marketing/selling (business oriented)
Your worst vacation or trip	Write any of the above about a grandparent	Promoting a cause/pleading
Your hairstyle (good, bad, or ugly)	Write any of the above about a friend	Calling out bad behavior
Your clothes (good, bad, or ugly)	Write any of the above about a neighbor	Thanking/displaying gratitude
Your favorite food	Write any of the above about a teacher	Recognizing/acknowledging/spotlighting
Your super power (your greatest strength)	Write any of the above about a lover	Warning
Your super challenge (aka disability)	Write any of the above about any authority figure	Teasing (dropping hints with the promise of a future benefit)
Your underdog moment	Write any of the above about a celebrity	The importance of practice
Your king/queen of the world moment	Write any of the above about a master	The importance of hard work
Your favorite area of interest (school, work, hobby or otherwise)	Write any of the above about a fictional character	The importance of timing
Your story about having a serious illness	Make a concept or idea the subject of your content instead of a person	The importance of luck
Things you did when you were bored while…	Make any business or organization the subject of your content instead of a person	Business skills/smarts/lessons, etc.
Your biggest fear	Write from the perspective of an animal	The importance of interpersonal skills
Ritual that you loved	Write from the perspective of a plant	The power of faith
Ritual that you hated	Write from the perspective of an alien	The power of reason
How you saved or damned someone	Write from the perspective of the Earth
How someone saved or damned you
Your “aha” moment
Any life changing moment
A world event that provoked an emotional response (happy, sad, angry, etc.)
A world event that you didn’t care about
How you reacted to the introduction of a new medium (e.g. computers, Internet, cell phones, blogs, microblogging, etc.)
What you think (or thought) freedom is
What you think about the implications of free products and services
A time when you had no idea what to do
The best conversation that you ever had
A time when it was better to listen than speak
A puzzle or mystery that you solved
A difficult friend/colleague/customer situation that you had to deal with
A conflict that was never resolved
A community event or cause that you participated in (charitable or otherwise)
Open markets versus regulation (in any situation; micro or macro)
A miracle or event that you could never explain
Something ugly
Something beautiful

Bookmark this on Delicious

Here are some examples:

• The community you were born + you as a child + bragging/celebrating:  If you were born in New York City, you could write a post describing all of the ways in which New York City has a lot of fun opportunities for children including links, photos, videos, testimonials, etc.
• Your biggest fear + you and your first job + business skills/smarts/lessons, etc.:  You could write an article about your first experience giving a presentation or speech at work and what you learned doing it.
• How you reacted to the introduction of a new medium + write any of the above about a grandparent + discovery:  Write an essay about how one of your grandparents discovered the Internet and what they chose to do on it.
• Any life changing moment + a master + the importance of practice:  Create a post about someone who mastered a skill through lots of practice and their “tipping point” when they realized that all of the practice was making them great at their chosen field, career, or skill.

These are just a few examples.  I’m sure some of them seem obvious and you may have already used them.  Some of these elements might not combine together very well and they might be difficult to work with.  On the other hand, something that might seem awkward or tricky could turn out to be a great piece of content.  As you’ve probably guessed by now, the 20,000+ ideas number comes from the combinations of each of the three elements.  If you do the math, it’s actually more than 30,000 potential ideas but some of the elements might not combine together well, as I mentioned above.

To add more flexibility and possibilities, you could also use different media (text, images, video, sound, or combinations thereof).

A final word about the Content Idea Matrix

This is a creative tool to help you come up with outstanding or remarkable content, but it is only a starting point.  Creating excellent content takes time, effort, patience, thought and skill.  This post, for example, has probably taken about eight ten hours of work from start to finish. My hope is that this tool can help stimulate your thinking and get your creative juices flowing if you’re not sure what to do next.

I hope that you find this matrix to be useful!  If nothing else, I hope it will help you develop some ideas of your own.  Please feel free to share it with other content creators!  If you have links to other good posts on this topic, please feel free to share them in the comments section!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

(sorry, I couldn’t resist…)

If all of these ideas weren’t enough… here are some links to other great ideas from other bloggers:

Problogger.net – Darren’s created a great 2009 year end series of posts about blogging (click on this link)

Problogger.net – here’s another post from Darren about using mind mapping to help develop blog post ideas

The Future Buzz – Adam Singer created a list of 45 Blog Post Ideas That Always Generate Buzz

SEO 2.0 – Tad made a list of 101 Blog Posting Ideas

Chris Brogan.com – Chris’s list of 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write was followed by 20 Blog Topics To Get You Unstuck and 20 Blogging Projects For You

Darren Barefoot – Darren was inspired by Chris’s 100 Blog Topics and then wrote 55 More Blog Posts I Hope You Write

Bakersfield.com – this is just a huge list of blog topics, like 18132 of them…

Vertical Measures – 50 Corporate  Blog Topics

Sparkplugging – Wendy created The World’s Largest Blog Niche and Topic Idea List

Life in Student Ministry – 100 blog topics I hope YOU write (and some of them will surprise and even shock you) – I included this because some of these ideas may be jumping off points to other ideas that aren’t necessarily religion or faith based or they might work very well if you do write about religion, faith, Christianity, etc.

Louis Gray – while not necessarily a list of blog topics, Jesse Stay wrote a post at Louis Gray’s blog called To Blog Or Not To Blog – That Is The Question with some advice on writing posts, including some topic ideas.

Remarkablogger – Michael Martine wrote a post called How to Decide What Your Blog Should Be About When You have Many Interests which can offer some insights into blog material at a macro level and then break it down to lower levels of detail.

Skelliewag -  Skellie wrote a great post on 37 Viral Post Ideas You Can Use Today

Techipedia – Tamar Weinberg shared her Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content

Big Huge Thesaurus has an interesting tool which displays random blog post topics

Acknowledgement: this post was partially inspired by the Visitor Grid at I Help You Blog.  However, I believe this tool is significantly different in that it comes with suggested idea elements.

Other posts that you might enjoy reading:

• Social media blog post ideas for desperate people
• A new blogging resource – The Blogging Lens
• Thought wrestling – the sport of different thinkers
• Why do you blog if not for money?
• Thoughts from Seth Godin