If you’re feeling stuck and looking for tips on how to generate content ideas, read on fellow bloggers. We all get stuck in creative ruts. But unlike fiction novelists, bloggers can use many tools to help Inspire content for their websites. In fact, I would venture to say that a serious blogger should rarely if ever, write purely off the cuff.
What I mean is fiction novelists must continually create characters, develop storylines, and string together interesting scenarios to keep the reader engaged. Bloggers, more often than not, are writing about real life experiences or offering real solutions to actual problems.
The beauty about blogging is that we have dozens of tools at our disposal to help Inspire content and kick us out of our writing paralysis. This is because a real pro blogger will often right on topics that are being searched for. In fact, the vast majority of a blogger’s posts should be based on real search data.
That’s why I always refer to keyword tools. I know this sounds like nothing new but knowing how and what to use for your keyword data can actually create so many content ideas that it can be overwhelming.
Google Suggested Search For Blog Topics
Most veteran bloggers have figured out how to generate content ideas and avoid “the writing rut”. They’ve also, and more importantly, figured out that writing about what people are looking for is the key to longterm content marketing success. So what is the process? For a beginner, look to search dropdowns. It’s called “suggested search”. In other words, as you type a keyword into Google, you’ll see a dropdown menu of search ideas. Google suggests these keywords because they are being used by other searchers.
What I like to do is use incomplete keyword phrases that end in “for”. This will bring up a slew of ideas that can inspire content.
In this example, if you are a content marketing expert teaching other how to do so, each one of these suggestions can either be a separate post or you can create a massive cornerstone piece and feature a section for each of these.
Use Pinterest Suggestions
As with Google search suggestions, Pinterest provides a very valuable tool in their own right. The beauty of Pinterest’s tool is that these suggestions are coming from their own user database. That means there’s an audience waiting for the answer because they are searching in fairly significant numbers. And, it is much easier to get in front of the Pinterest audience than it is to rank on Google – at least in the short term.
What I do is then drop the suggested keywords from the dropdown and put them into Google’s keyword planner. If there is search volume it gets highlighted. I then search the term on google and if no article with that exact keyword appears in the title, it’s a go.
Use BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a great tool for blog topic research and analytics. Most marketing giants use this tool which tells you everything you need to know about its value.
If reveals everything including viral posts and the number of shares and likes they garnered.
So it’s not complicated. Here’s how it works:
- Bo to BuzzSumo.com
- Type in a keyword in your niche or a keyword you found in either Google suggested search or Pinterest suggested search. This is how you drill down.
- Make a list of popular topics and add them to your writing calendar.
- Give your own spin and if you are directly siting info from another’s post, give the proper attributes.
How To Generate Content Ideas with Subreddits
If you’re unfamiliar with Reddit, get familiar! While Reddit can be a social cesspool in the sense that people are rude and generally anonymous, it is also very useful if you enter the right subreddits or interest pages. The below subreddit is r/yoga, a forum for those interested in yoga. As you can see, members ask questions in large numbers. There is a subreddit for nearly any topic. This really gives you lots of clues as to what people are interested in and questions they are seeking answers to.
By the way, when you finish your article, post your article in the related subreddit. And use the title of your post as for the subject line. One of the great things about Reddit is, Google loves them. Your post may rank thereby funneling traffic to your site.
At the time of this post, a Reddit post is #7 on Google for “intermediate japanese”.
Curate Social Media
I love this strategy and because it is so easy, entertaining, and potentially educational. And it’s a no-brainer if you’re looking for tips on how to generate content ideas. For example, if you run a Blog about yoga you can have a “Yoga Tweets of the Week” and an “Instagram Yoga Poses of the Week”. Every week you seek out 10 tweets and 10 Instagram photos and create separate posts. That’s two weekly pieces of content that will be there automatically for you.
Best of all, both Platforms embed beautifully.
Try Sama Vritti Pranayama (Box Breathing) when you’re stressed, anxious, or upset.https://t.co/qYDDKUsSyp
— Yoga Journal (@Yoga_Journal) September 7, 2019
How To Generate Content Ideas – Read Blogs In Your Niche
I’m certainly not suggesting you rip off your competition. But, reading your competitors blogs can inspire some great ideas. And if you have the ability to add to and improve the content, or even dispute it, you will win the audience over. Great content will always rise to the top. If you’re not a great writer and/or you can’t afford a writer on staff as of yet, there are some great AI Content Automation tools that can really help nudge forward your creativity.
Using the yoga blog as an example again, if you can bookmark 5 to 10 websites that have been around for years, and have consistently been posting, they can be a gold mine when it comes to inspiring content for your blog. You can either create an updated and better version of they’re content, or you can give your take on their content.
I suggest you curate and offer attributions. For example, if you follow 10 blogs that all wrote articles on “tips for beginner yoga”, you can write a piece titled “my 10 favorite yoga tips for beginners from around the web”. Then as you construct the content, you take a bit from each site an offer the corresponding attributions. It’s a fast and easy way to create useful content. And readers love it if you do it right.
