Interesting, I guess one could always just meet up with a good friend or two and do some brainstorming over a cup of coffee?
The first thing I do is go to https://app.buzzsumo.com and type in a keyword that is relevant to my niche. For me, this could be "spirituality", "Buddhism", "New Age", etc. For you, it might be "marketing", "SEO", "Fly Fishing", or whatever. In the results, there will be blog posts that have ranked well and been shared a lot. I'll use this information to generate blog post ideas that seem popular and I'll create a list of topics. I usually have around 30 - 60 topics in my list. Next, I'll begin writing an article for each topic. Each article gets scheduled for posting on my blog, one per day. Once I have about a month of posts scheduled, I can sit back and begin working on my next round of posts without feeling rushed or overwhelmed. Generating high quality content on a niche blog to engage your readers is not as difficult as it may seem. It just takes a little work! This will at least give you an idea of what to write about. If you end up hiring someone else to write for you you can give them examples of the content you want written. Hope this helps!
You can blog about anything other than your niche. Or if you want you can try something near your niche. If it is currently about your local area, try going to topics about places nearby. That should give you a lot of topics to write about. Or you can also try blogging once a week about your experiences or reviews or viewpoints on certain stuff. It can be categorized to opinions under your blog.
My favorite trick on blogging is to re-use old blog posts. It is both time-saving and allows you to highlight your favorite content once more. Here are some tips about it: http://www.snugsocial.com/2014/12/29/new-ways-to-use-old-blog-posts Hope it helps!
Consider doing local interviews. For example, you could do a blog series about the history of the area and find people to share their perspective. Ask people about their experience at the local attractions. You could also ask people to do guest posts from their perspective.