This is a guest post from Gary Kohler from the free life insurance quote. Be part of this engaging community by following the guest blogging guidelines.

There are lots of ways to find writing ideas and inspiration from your daily life. Translating that into great blog posts is another story but lets look at the basics first.

Start by carrying around a notepad or have a file saved on your smart phone that you can use to save good ideas that you get during the day.

Finding inspiration in real life is the key so here is a list of places in the offline world where you can get ideas for your blog.

The newspaper

• They write short headlines that are supposed to catch your attention.
• They write 200-500 descriptions of current events and things that are interesting to lots of people.
• They need to continually entertain and inform, otherwise people will stop reading it.

Bingo! The newspaper is a great place to start and find ideas for things to write about and stories that will interest others.

Your friends

What are you and your friends always talking about? What movie are you excited about seeing? What hobby are you interested in that you know a lot about and that you like to share with others?

These are all real world examples of things that you enjoy. If you can get excited about them in conversation then that can likely translate to your blog.

Write about something that you’re passionate about and your readers will be passionate about your writing.

Television

People that watch a lot of television share a trait with people that spend a lot of time on the internet: a short attention span. Just like television commercials and clips for TV shows, you need to catch your reader’s attention right away.

You can also use TV to catch up on news and events that you can write about on your blog. You can also use video elements in your blog posts… so study up on what makes a good video and then give it a try!

Your job

This is likely an indirect inspiration but your job can be a great idea factory too. Many jobs leave people with some free time during the day. You should be jotting down ideas for blog posts and articles during this time.

If your employer is pretty relaxed you can probably write down ideas all day in your note pad. Perfect, you can get paid and work on your blog at the same time.

Nature

Sometimes being inspired and coming up with new ideas requires an empty mind and this is where nature can come in handy. Get out of that house and into the great outdoors.

A weekend away from your computer can be great for your health and for your creative juices too. You might even find that at the end of a weekend of camping, you want to start a blog about camping!