By Jodi Wiley After I made a very rash resolution to update my blog every day this year (well, every weekday - I'm not a complete masochist) my husband bought me a book with quite possibly the best title of all time, No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog by Margaret Mason.

The title alone is worth the price of the book as far as I'm concerned. Happily, it's also chock-a-block full of great ideas to fill your blog with interesting content.

A blog is just about mandatory these days for any creative business, self-employed creative or individual wanting to connect with an audience for the purposes of showcasing their work, art, craft, design or writing. But how do you fill those posts with content that others want to read? Where do you get your ideas? And how do you build an audience and get people coming back?

U.S. blogger extraordinaire, Maggie Mason, is probably the best expert on that topic and so the perfect candidate to write this book. Her personal blog Mighty Girl, draws hundreds of thousands of readers a month. Her writing is engaging and conversational and good. It's really good. And laugh-out-loud funny. You can hear her voice in every post and can't help but feel like you know her.

She covers a wide range of topics from fashion to design, travel to personal stories. And her book reflects this diversity of interests. No One Cares What You Had for Lunch is aimed at anyone who wants to blog (rather than a specific blogging sub-set) and so the suggestions are intended to appeal to the widest range of readers. Depending on what kind of blog you write (business, personal or along a particular theme) not all of these ideas will appeal, but many can be tailored to suit your particular style and audience.

As you can see from my bookmarks, I found plenty to re-visit.

Here are some ideas I bookmarked:

 

#11 'Curate the web': refer and link back to other people's posts when you have a case of writer's block or are going on holidays.

#15 'Fill the gaps': use memory triggers, such as a photo or a book, and write everything you remember about it.

#18 'Spill everything': catalogue the contents of a private space: medicine cabinet, bookshelf, laptop bag, wallet. This can be done photographically or in writing.

Here are some more I like; the abridged versions!

With 100 short chapters, each containing a single writing idea, this is an easy read and a great reference for when you're stuck for ideas for your next post.

And really, how can you resist that title?

Jodi Wiley is an artist, writer, teacher and blogger. She has written freelance articles and book reviews for magazines and newspapers, as well as education curriculum. She has been a finalist for several art and illustration prizes and has won awards for her artwork. Jodi is currently on maternity leave from high school teaching and is on a (quite frankly deranged) quest to update her blog daily: artbywiley.com