This post is Day 5 of the 28 Day Blogging Breakthrough Challenge. You can chat about the challenge on social media using the hashtag #BloggingBreakthrough. Click here to view all of the challenge prompts.

Want a Breakthrough with Your Blog? Introduce Something New

As we come towards the end of the first week in the 28 Day #BloggingBreakthrough challenge, I wanted to give you just one tip. A tip that for me, completely changed the way people looked at ABOH. It was a breakthrough moment. And it’s actually not that difficult. Plus, it’s got nothing to do with strategies, SEO or burning yourself into the ground. The only thing it involves is you and your ideas.

If you truly want your blog to grow, you can’t stay static. It’s like anything. You want to move up the career ladder, right? You know you won’t be able to do that by staying in the same job. This is true for your blog, too. It’s all about coming up with new ideas and really, the whole point of day five of this challenge - introducing new things.

But I get it - you’ve got to come up with so many blog post ideas on a daily basis. You’re thinking, I can’t come up with a whole new series or feature idea too!

That fear is natural, friend. Many of us have felt that way at some point, myself included. Earlier last year, I felt like I didn’t have any ideas left. I wanted to do something different with ABOH. I wanted to introduce something new that wasn’t just another blog post. I wanted it to be bigger and better. But could I find the idea? No.

I tried so hard to search for this that the idea just never came. I’ve always believed that when you look for something, you won’t find it. It’s like when you go shopping and think, “I need a little black dress.” Chances are you won’t find it, because you’re set on looking purely for that.

So I decided to stop looking. I stopped forcing myself to look for this new idea.

And that’s when it came to me like a light bulb.

Introducing something new to your blog is no easy feat. I’ve seen a lot of bloggers say that there’s no original ideas anymore, because they’ve all been taken. It’s partly true. Take my post yesterday on creating an editorial calendar. So many bloggers will have written a post about that topic.

But mine will be different. Their’s will be different. Yours will be different. Because they’re coming from each of us as individuals.

The way Blogger A creates her editorial calendar will be completely different to the way me, Blogger B creates mine. So yes, it might not be a different idea. But it’s still a different perspective and way of doing something.

So you might think that you can’t introduce something new to your blog, because it’s all already been done. But that’s just not true. You’ve got more ideas within you than you know.

So how do you find this “something new”? What could it be?

It can be anything that’s on a bigger scale to your blog posts. A long video, a podcast, a series, a course, an eBook - something bigger that’s going to push you, challenge you and take your blog to the next level.

If you’re still feeling lost, don’t worry. I’ll talk you through the story of how I came up with one of my “something new” ideas from last year - hopefully it will inspire you.

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The funny thing about introducing something new to your blog is that it’s usually right in front of your nose.

I’d been searching for the idea of introducing something new to ABOH and given up looking, because I just wasn’t finding it.

One day, I was going through my Bloglovin’ feed. I’d recently found lots of new websites and I was working my way through reading and commenting on lots of blog posts when I had a thought:

All of these websites are SO good and I bet loads of people don’t even know about them. Wouldn't it be great if you had them all in one place?

Ping. Lightbulb moment. The penny dropped.

That’s when the 101 Best Websites Online Right Now series was born. This was the something new - the big idea that I’d been searching for.

Of course, I could’ve just included all 101 websites in one blog post. But what fun would that have been? Why not split them up into categories and launch one a month to keep people interested in the series?

So that’s what I did. I made a list of 101 websites, put them each into one of five categories and included them in a list. I even contacted each site to ask them for a quote about what makes them different.

That was a key factor in how this gave my blog a breakthrough.

I could’ve just listed all the sites and not told any of them about it. But I thought they deserved to know. And when they found out they were going to be included in the series, what do you think they did?

They gave me a quote and shared the hell out of that blog post.

Seriously. My traffic spiked. If you’re talking about going viral, this series went viral.

That was the breakthrough I needed. And that’s exactly the breakthrough you can have too.

Today’s Task

Try and come up with something new that you can introduce to your blog. It be big or small - whatever you want it to be. A new weekly feature, a brand new monthly series, free stock photos, a special eBook opt-in offer - anything you want!

All you need to come up with today is the idea. Then it’s up to you how you go about creating it.

As always, if you’re stuck or want to run any of your ideas by me, feel free to leave a comment or chat to me on Twitter at @abranchofholly - and don't forget to use the #BloggingBreakthrough hashtag!