Brain freeze!  Gotta get the blog post out and feeling fresh out of ideas?  Here are 6 great places to find ideas for your new blog post.

1.  Questions on your Facebook Page.  Are people asking questions there?  If so, turn it into a blog post!  Or even a recent discussion you had with people there can be turned into a post.  If you don’t have a lot of activity yet on your page (make sure you are letting people know that they can post questions there), go to a competitor’s page and see if there are questions posted on their page that might be a good post.

2.  E-mail questions.  If you have a list of e-mail subscribers, you may be getting questions or comments from them that could be handy.

3.  LinkedIn Answers.  Go into your LinkedIn account, click on the More button on the menu bar and select Answers.  See what questions are being asked there in your area.  Type in some keywords into the search bar to narrow it down to your niche.

4.  WordTracker Questions.  WordTracker is a keyword search tool but they also have a feature that tracks what questions are being asked on the search engines.

5.  Other blogs.  Make sure you are subscribing to other blogs with Google Reader and keeping track of blogs in your industry.  You can also find blogs listed by category at Alltop.

6.  Twitter Search.  Do a search on your keywords and see what people are talking about.  You don’t have a Twitter account to do this.  Click on the Advanced link and put some question words in the search along with your keyword to see if people are asking questions about your topic.

Watch my video to see how to use these tools.  I also give away my secret to good meatloaf in the video.  How about you, where are your best places to find blog posts ideas?

If you have never commented on a blog before, now is your time! Stop lurking around and post a comment! Why? Here are some fantastic reasons:

1. Participate in the conversation.  Commenting on blog posts is a great way to enter in the community.  You don’t have to have any deep insights, you can just say thanks or you  don’t agree or whatever people, don’t overthink it! Put the Social into Social Media.
2. Get more visibility in your niche.  Find blogs in your niche and when you have something intelligent to say, people will start to look to you as an expert.  Plus you are connecting with the blogger – bloggers love comments.  Unless they are spammy – don’t be spammy!  You know how Grandma feels about spamminess!
3. Find new people to visit your site.  When you leave a comment, you leave a link to your website that people can click on (usually by clicking on your name) and visit your site.  I regularly get a lot of new visits to my website from the comments I leave.
4. Sometimes you will get a backlink to your site which Google loves.  Some blogs have the “no follow” tag set up so you essentially don’t get credit for the link back to your site (to prevent spammy people from gaming Google).  But that’s ok.  Participate anyway!

Allrighty – now you know why, let’s get to how.  Before you comment on a blog, you want have your picture next to it.  All that branding you are doing out there.  First go to www.gravatar.com and enter in your e-mail and upload your picture. Do the same at www.disqus.com

Then you are ready to comment! Do it here, do it now or find another blog – just go! Watch the video for more information.