I’ve found that having a reservoir of resources to draw from has helped my blog writing efficiency. I’ve started an idea bank and I urge you to do the same. Here’s how to do it.

When forming an idea bank, start off by writing down as much as you can. In a college copywriting class I was taught to write down 50 ideas, then go back and pick the best ones. Sometimes I’d end up with 20 useable ideas, and other times I’d end up with only one. Don’t get discouraged if you aren’t producing a ton of good ideas. You’re looking for good ideas, and the more you do the exercise, the more ideas you will have to add to your idea bank. This exercise is a great way to get the creative juices flowing, and good practice to get in the habit of doing.

Explore and analyze the ideas you’ve picked. Read them aloud to yourself and to someone else. Then go back and try to write 50 more ideas. This is how idea generation is formed. Try to consistently add to your idea bank. Treat it like your personal bank account. If you take some ideas out, make sure you put some back in, otherwise you’ll end up broke.

You can also use your idea bank for other blog purposes like titles, links and pictures, but I’ll touch more on that later.

I use TextEdit to write down all of my ideas. I like the ease of use and the transferability that the editor gives me over Microsoft Word. It does everything a word processor is supposed to do, along with the ability to work with HTML and add music and video files. An added bonus is that you can switch from plain text to rich text format. This functionality definitely comes in handy when using WordPress.

Do you have any blog tips you would like to share? Keep watching us on Facebook and Twitter to see the ideas we’re constantly generating.