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It happens to all of us! You need to write a new blog post and your mind is mush and you are out of blog topic ideas. This list will give you plenty of mojo to get some new content ideas no matter what niche you are in!
If you are a blogger dedicated to making your website a success – finding new content can be a struggle. Bloggers have a bigger challenge because it is critical to post more frequently to keep your readers engaged with new fresh content. But how do you always come up with new topics and ideas for engaging content?
If you are a business that has a blog it is important to offer content that is directed at the type of clients or customers you want to reach. But when you are busy running a business, the blog can often take a back seat – so how do you save time but still create valuable content?
There are so many ways to find content inspiration and we hope all of the ideas and tools below will help you find enough content ideas to last all year!
Personal Experiences
Think about your daily life.
Articles you read on the web, trade journals you use, events that you attend and people that you speak to.
If you “listen” to these things they can be a great way to come up with new angles on topics!
CLIENT QUESTIONS – have you had clients or customers ask the same question that you are constantly repeating the answer too? Do they always ask how a service works or what a product does? These questions can be a great way to create a useful blog post that will make you look like a superstar.
FACEBOOK/BLOG COMMENTS – do you review your Facebook and Blog comments to see the feedback people are leaving. Are they offering great ideas/inspiration or asking great questions about something you have already written that you can expand on?
INDUSTRY “HOT BUTTONS” – think about the issues in your industry that may be “controversy” worthy. Most businesses and bloggers are afraid to write controversial posts for fear of the backlash, but if there is a topic that no one talks about – that may be the one that can bring you new exposure. Do not be afraid to push limits – while you may lose a few readers or upset some people, chances are you will have a great result in the end with new found fans.
READ INDUSTRY BLOGS – when reading your competitors blogs and industry relevant blogs you are opening an opportunity to find opportunities they have missed! Often in the post or in the comments you will find additional questions or be inspired to answer questions the post may have skipped over. I often see things like “we won’t cover that in this post” — within posts – this is an opportunity for me to write a post about that piece they missed!
Websites To Find Content Ideas
The resources below are websites we have found that can inspire you with new creative content ideas. Most will either show you hot topics that are being socially shared or will give you insight into questions people are asking so you can outdo the content others have done or answer questions people have.
Some of these resources also act as content distribution services meaning you can share any found content directly to your social networks or blog – so you can use other peoples content with attribution.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a great way to get content ideas for blog posts about topics that are up and coming right now.
Although limited in what it offers – it can be a kick start to finding current events related to your industry. For example, when I tested the word “SEO” I saw some breakout related queries like “freelance seo consultant” and “semroot seo” and can dig a little deeper to see how I can use these terms in new content.
AllTop
AllTop is a new aggregator that is separated by category making it is easy to find content ideas for your own blog. You can create a free account and keep track of your top competitors to easily keep an eye on their content too.
Quora / Yahoo
Visit Quora
Visit Yahoo Answers
Quora and Yahoo are just 2 of many forum style question and answer websites where you can source content ideas based on what readers are asking. Simply enter in your keywords, industry or general topic and it will return questions that people have asked. Look around and see if a specific question is being asked a lot!
As an example, I typed in “animated gifs” in the search box – then from the dropdown I chose the topic “Animated GIFS”.
In the below image you can see the results – of course this is a broad term – you can refine it but just from this I can see that questions like “what are the most hilarious animated gifs” and “what are the best cat animated gifs” – if you have a blog about cats – you can do a post about the “The 10 most hilarious animated cat gifs”. Using the filters on the left you can further refine your search as well. Play around – you may be surprised to find some really great ideas here!
Visit Reddit
Reddit is one of our top picks for finding content. With sections dedicated to just about every area of interest you can find what people are sharing, questions that are asked and see what people are discussed. By using all of this you can compile some pretty great posts.
AMAZON – Free
If you are a blogger you can head over to Amazon and dig into the categories that are most relevant to your niche. For example, if you are a pet blogger – you can go to the pet section and see the products being offered. If you see cat trees being popular – you can not only write a post about why cat trees are great for cats – but a second post about the best cat trees.
Tools For Generating Content Ideas
Below are tools that can help you fill up your blog post calendar for months! Some of are free and some have a fee – but there will be no shortage of blog content ideas if you use any of these content idea tools.
Although some of the tools below do have a monthly fee – it may be worth it to sign up for a month and generate all the ideas you can within that month!
Answer the Public – Free/Paid
Visit Answer the Public
Answer The Public used to be a free tool but went to a pay model. You can still do a free search but it is limited to a couple of searches a day. The monthly fee is either $99 ($79 with an annual payment).
Type in your keyword, choose your country and you will see a cool page with a variety of variants of questions with your keywords. So let’s use our “animated gif” example again – we put that term in, chose US and here is a small sampling of what the page returns. (You can also view a list if you do not like the example below) – we love the simplicity of this tool!
ScoopIt – Free/Paid
Prices for Scoop.it range from free to $79 per month (discount for yearly payments).
Discover content based on the keywords you choose. The free plan has limited capabilities and monthly plans offer more to help you curate and publish content.
You can retrieve content ideas, submit your own content and publish your Scoop.it page with others. If you sign up for a free account you will get a free 7 day trial of the business version.
UpContent – Free and a paid plan for $10 per month
UpContent was developed with help from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. They say they have a unique algorithm that pulls news articlas and blog posts and allows you to sort them by things like social influence or recency. .
ContentGems – Free/Paid
There are a few plans from Free up to $199 per month with discounts for annual payments.
ContentGems scours hundreds of thousands of articles all over the web. Use your keywords to find the content and filter as needed to further refine the content that best matches your brand.
You can use the content in your own social outreach or be inspired to create better content!
UberSuggest – Free/Paid
Still a favorite here at 2 Dogs Media – even though a nominal fee of $29 now applies for Ubersuggest we do think it is worth every penny for all that it offers!
Enter your keyword and it will return a large list of associated phrases that will inspire you. When you click on the keyword you can view the Google Trends to see if the volume is increasing or decreasing too. This tools pulls from Google suggest – it just puts it into an easier to read format with related topics
QuestionDB – Free/Paid
You can get 40 results per search for free or for $10 a month get a complete list of results.
Another great “find the questions your readers are asking” tool that will give you a list of questions related to your keyword as well as the source of the question.
Portent Content Generator – Free
This is a fun one that may inspire you to write something “snarky” and more fun. I entered “dog toys” in the subject box and it gave me this awesome idea! Seriously can you imagine how fun a blog post about “6 facts about dog toys that will keep you up at night” could be.
This could be so much fun if you have the creativity! When I hit refresh – I got “Why dog toys are hotter than Jennifer Lawrence” – really – how fun is that!
Final Thoughts
Even for those of us who have been doing this a long time – coming ip with fresh content ideas for our blogs is a challenge.
But as we all know creating content is part of the job – and key to your success! We hope you find a few of these resources useful to adding new content ideas to your marketing calendar.
Have another idea or tool that is not listed here? We would love to know so we can add it!
Great list!
If you like Answer The Public, you’ll probably also like QuestionDB (https://questiondb.io/). It’s a lot like Answer the Public, except that it gets data from community sources rather than just Google.
Hi Dale! Thanks for the addition – at first glance it looks like a good option as well – will add it to the list! Jill