Your blog must produce content – and a lot of it. You should publish new pieces almost every day.
Here are some sobering statistics about the amount of blog content being published:
- Of 1.94 billion websites, 600 million are blogs
- 4,000 blog posts are published each minute
- 5,760,000 blog posts are published daily
So, you need to publish a lot, and often. More than 65% of bloggers who publish at least one piece of content daily, report getting strong results from their blogs.
You’re ahead of the game since you’re already bringing traffic to your site, but now is the time to take it to the next level with a steady stream of content.
Every day, over 4 million new blog posts appear across 1.94 billion websites. If these sites can produce new content, so can you.
Now, you’re probably asking yourself: “How am I going to come up with an endless pool of content ideas?” Thinking of fresh ideas, even if you have a team of ten writers who can brainstorm topics, can feel like a daunting task.
I’m here to put your mind at ease. Content ideas are all around you. All you need to do is know where to look and how to dig them up.
There’s no time to waste. Let’s jump into the best ways to come up with all the content ideas you need.
Leverage Google in Multiple Ways
There are a few ways everyone’s favorite search engine can help you find content topics.
Google Suggestions
Start by Googling . Type a few keywords related to the topic you want to cover. Based on the most popular searches, several automatic suggestions will appear, so you know that content interests your audience.
Say your publication is all about celebrity news. Today, some of the biggest celebrities are also professional models, so let’s look at how that angle can give you a stack of ideas. Here are the search results on Google:
This is a great starting point. Don’t forget to head down to the bottom of the search results to see more related topics for even more content angles.
Google Trends
When you’re producing daily stories about celebrities, finding new topics is exhausting and overwhelming. Take advantage of Google Trends’ Trending Searches results to see what the most popular articles of the day are. The top results here mention Matthew Perry, John Cena and Ashley Graham.
Boom – in a few seconds, you’ve got three celebrities to write about!
Google Alerts
Get ideas delivered straight to your inbox by setting up alerts for keywords. In this case you could create alerts for:
- Celebrity birthdays
- Celebrity breakups
- Movie premieres
- Kim Kardashian
With Google Alerts, you can make your topics as broad or as narrow as you want. You see a preview of what the results will look like before creating the alert, so you know if your keywords will bring you the news you’re really interested in.
Bonus tip: Create alerts for competing publications too, so you can see what they are writing about without having to check their sites constantly. Don’t copy their content. Use it as inspiration for your own.
Tap into Social Media
You’re already sharing your content on social media, but are you using social media to help you generate more content topics? There’s a wealth of ideas waiting for discovery.
Social Media Analytics
Look at the analytics dashboard for each social media platform to see which posts perform the best and have the highest engagement. If you write follow up articles to your most popular posts, you can feel confident that these will interest your fans.
Dig a little deeper into the comments that your followers leave for insight into what interested them the most or what questions they still have. Create content around that too.
Social Media Groups
If your publication is about parenting, join the Facebook groups about that topic and see what people are discussing, then you can develop content around those topics.
LinkedIn is especially useful if professionally-oriented content interests your website’s niche audience. Rather than combing through the content of every group you’re a part of, check your notifications to see articles recommended by the group’s moderators.
Ask Your Fans Directly
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram let you create posts with embedded polls, so you can ask your audience which topics they want to know about. Prioritize topics based on their feedback.
A publisher focused on travel-related content could run a poll similar to Airbnb’s below, for example, and then create an article around destinations with incredible mountain views, since that’s what people are most interested in.
Become a Cyber Sleuth
Identify your most engaged followers and check their profiles to see the kind of content they share with their followers. Beyond your fans, create a list of industry influencers and check their profiles too for content inspiration.
Try TweetDeck
If you’re not familiar with TweetDeck, you must become familiar with it. It’s a Twitter-specific dashboard that allows you to see your feed, mentions, notifications, and more. But what’s truly great about it, is that you can use it to follow hashtags and general topics.
If your site is for the health and wellness niche, you can track what Well + Good and The Balanced Blonde are sharing, for example, as well as individual influencers. This will help you stay on top of trending ideas.
Topic and Title Generation Tools
Hubspot offers a tool that gives you five blog topics for free, based on a single keyword. It couldn’t be easier to use, and it spits out great titles that are ready to go.
Another one of my favorite tools, mostly because it comes up with some seriously creative options, is Portent. Again, you enter a keyword or two and then toggle through an almost infinite list of potential titles.
Taboola Trends features a useful tool to test and analyze the headline options you’ve generated.
Let’s say you gear your site towards entrepreneurs and tech early adopters. A hot topic for them is becoming more productive. Check out this great title – and, if you’re experiencing writer’s block, it gives you a creative angle for the post, without any extra effort on your part!
Experiment with Different Types of Content
When coming up with content ideas, remember that not every piece needs to follow a traditional article format. There are plenty of other ways to present information. Take these ideas for a publication all about food and adjust them to your own niche:
- How to guides: How to cook a healthy meal with 3 ingredients
- Listicles: 10 best burgers in Seattle
- Infographics: Low calorie foods that pack a punch
- Product reviews: The best instant pots on the market
- News and industry roundups: What top nutritionists eat for lunch
- Videos and memes:
Now that your mind is overflowing with content sources, remember to keep a list or file handy so you can jot down content ideas as you discover them. You’ll start to see them everywhere, and the anxiety you had when you first read how many blog posts are published each day will melt away.