Ever find that sometimes you’ve got tons of content ideas and you’re raring to go?
But…other times you’re wondering what the heck you’re gonna write about and feel uninspired?
This used to be such a common problem for me.
After too many times of finding myself not knowing what to write about, I decided to create a failsafe list of ways to generate content ideas which I’m going to share with you in this post.
This is a list that I turn to time and time again and it never lets me down.
Before I get stuck in I want to highlight that when researching ideas for your blog content, it’s important to remember that the topics you choose to write about must solve your readers’ problems.
Always keep this at the forefront of your mind during your research.
Right, now onto the good stuff…
How to find content ideas your readers will love
Brainstorm
I’m a firm believer that you should be your ideal reader. I know this won’t be the case if you’ve started a blog that appeals to a different demographic to yourself.
But, if you are the reader that your blog speaks to then have a think about what problems you’re struggling with or struggled with in the past in relation to your niche.
What are the most important questions you can answer? Are there any trends in your niche you can write about?
Ask your audience
Remember what I said earlier about focusing on solving your readers’ problems? Well who better to ask what you should write about than your audience? Send out a newsletter or post a message on your social media platforms asking if there are any problems your readers would like you to tackle in your content.
Check forums and Facebook groups
Where does your target audience hang out? Which forums or Facebook groups can you find them in?
Find this information out and I guarantee that’s where you’ll find lots of content inspiration. I’ve found so much content inspo for my blogs from Facebook groups and Quora. Quora can be a real gem for getting lots of ideas.
Find your competitors most popular blog posts
Make a list of 10 to 15 competing blogs and have a look at which posts of theirs are really popular. How can you improve on what they’ve written?
Also, look at the comments section of these posts. Check for additional questions that have been left by readers which you can answer in a blog post.
Pinterest & YouTube
Both Pinterest and YouTube are great for finding content ideas that you can expand upon.
Type in any one of the keywords related to the ideas you already brainstormed and see what comes up. Write down all the topic ideas that you feel you can confidently write about.
Okay so you can use Google to find content ideas in a number of ways. Firstly type in the search one of the topics you’ve brainstormed and head down to the ‘people also ask’ section’ to see what people are searching for.
Then click on any one of the articles in the search results and hit the back button. Underneath that article you should see a ‘people also search for’ section.
Finally head to the bottom of the page for more questions and keywords people are searching for….
Take a look at your popular posts
Find your most popular posts using Google Analytics or any other tool you use to track your traffic and go hard.
Write more articles about the same topic and surrounding topics too.
Use the methods I covered above (YouTube, Pinterest & Google) to find related posts you can write about….then link to the new posts you’ve written in your old posts and vice versa.
What next?
Right, so now you should have a healthy list of content ideas to get stuck into.
At this stage, I like to put all my ideas into an editorial calendar. I feel less overwhelmed when I know what I’m supposed to write and when I need to write it by.
In fact, I actually set up an editorial calendar for the following year and whenever I come across relevant content ideas, I schedule it in, so that by the end of the year, I already have an editorial calendar that’s nearly full for the year ahead.
Doing things this way also means when I have some extra time on my hands, I can batch my content ahead of time without the extra hassle of searching for content ideas.