I don’t know a blog writer who doesn’t go through writer’s block sometimes. Yet to keep your website fresh and current, you need to keep updating your blog with interesting content that keeps your visitors coming back for more. So what do we do when we’re really, really out of ideas and still need to write blog posts?

Fortunately, there are content generators we can use to get our brains storming. In the three examples I used, you input a noun or two and the generator spits out sentences (blog post titles, mostly) incorporating those nouns.

Many of the results are over-the-top SILLY and many of them you will find simply unusable. However, they take any key idea and instantly spit out such a baffling variety of possible directions that they can be beneficial to any blocked writer.

To show you how this works, I’ve decided to demonstrate for you what three free online content generators do with the phrase ‘writer’s block’. Check it out:

Portent’s Content Idea Generator has been a favourite internet destination of mine for a few years now. Its results are goofy and it’s not the most useful for serious or informative blog post ideas, but if you’re looking for ideas that are entertaining or eye-catching, its results are great for that. Here are Portent’s results for “writer’s block”:

• How Writer’s Blocks are Part of a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
• 17 Things Spock Would Say About Writer’s Blocks
• 7 Unexpected Ways Writer’s Blocks Can Give You Better Hair

Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator is suitable for ideas pertaining to serious or informative blog posts. In this search, a few of the results are usable, which isn’t bad at all for one quick search. Here are Hubspot’s generated ideas for “writer’s block”:

• 14 Common Misconceptions About writer’s block
• The Ultimate Cheat Sheet on writer’s block
• Think You’re Cut Out for Doing writer’s block? Take This Quiz
• Tools Everyone in the writer’s block Industry Should Be Using
• 20 Myths About writer’s block

Content Row’s Link Bait Title Generator offers ideas that, like Hubspot, are more suitable for serious or informative blog posts. It’s a convenient one because it spits out the most results per search so you’re able to scan through many results with a quick glance. However, most of them are completely irrelevant for our comparative search.

It seems some search subjects would generate much better results than others. For “writer’s block”, it offered a few pages’ worth of results; here are the ones from the first page:

• 5 incredible health benefits of writer’s block
• 11 things the media isn’t telling you about writer’s block
• 8 unbelievable things you never knew about writer’s block
• 8 reasons writer’s block will change the way you think about everything
• the most incredible article about writer’s block you’ll ever read
• 8 things the media hasn’t told you about writer’s block
• 8 deadly uses for writer’s block
• 20 reasons to stay away from writer’s block
• how to master writer’s block in 30 days
• why writer’s block suck/s
• how writer’s block can make you filthy rich
• 9 reasons you can blame the recession on writer’s block
• why writer’s block is/are destroying America
• the 7 worst things you could do to your writer’s block
• 6 reasons to be addicted to writer’s block

Which of these results would you be most likely to use? Is there one that stands out that you could run with in writing?

My personal favourite is from Portent’s Idea Generator: “7 Unexpected Ways Writer’s Blocks Can Give You Better Hair”. I tend to tug on and fiddle with my hair when writer’s block gets me frustrated. Next week I’ll blog about THAT!