Know your audience.
The first step in creating relevant and valuable content is knowing your audience. It's the key to identifying what makes a great blog topic idea, because knowing your audience will ensure that you find something of interest to them.
Many amateur bloggers have their own ideas about what they want to write about and create content that doesn't fit their brand or appeal to their audience. They focus on broad topics for a wide variety of audiences and then wonder why no one is reading or sharing their posts. As a result, they become discouraged and end up quitting before they see any results.
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| address specific niches within your industry |
One way to avoid this common issue is by narrowing down the scope of your content marketing strategy so that it only addresses specific niches within your industry or field of expertise. It's important not to make assumptions when you are trying out different topics; instead, take some time researching where other successful blogs have found success with these types of posts in order to get an idea for how yours can too!
Write about what you know.
While it's not always easy to know what you want to write about, the best blogs are written by those who have something to say. They're written by people who know their craft, and they're often written based on life experience.
As an example: a blog post on how I helped my friend with her son's homework assignment is probably going to go over better than a blog post on how I don't really like chocolate cake (which is true, but chocolate cake happens to be delicious).
The best way for me to come up with ideas for blog posts is to write about what I know. This has worked well for me because I am a writer and have had several years of professional experience writing in different formats. When I started writing this blog, I was able to figure out which topics were most important for me and write about them in my own unique voice. This has helped my readers get an insight into who I am and why they should care about what I have to say on any given subject matter.
If you are unsure of where your expertise and passions lie, start by thinking of things that interest you or make you feel passionate. Write them down somewhere safe so that when inspiration strikes again, they'll be at hand!
It can also help if your blog posts focus around something specific like food (it could be restaurant reviews), travel (it could be trip reports), sports (it could be game preview), movies/books/TV shows (it could be reviews), etc., so try finding some topics related within one area first before branching out too far!
Use hashtags to see what people are talking about.
Use hashtags to see what people are talking about.
There's no better way to get a sense of what is trending than by seeing what people are saying in real time on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.
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| use hashtags to see what interests people |
So, if you want to write on the latest news topic or reference a current event, do a search for related hashtags and see what comes up. You'll be surprised by how many great blog topic ideas you can get just by paying attention to social conversations.
Use the trending topics on Twitter.
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Read the news for inspiration.
Reading the news is a great way to find inspiration for your blog. And, as you may have learned from history class or from watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, it’s important to stay up to date on current events.
What is the news?
The news might be what CNN, Fox News or your local newspaper says it is. Or you could find out about breaking events by reading blogs or listening to podcasts.
Which news sources are the most reliable?
There are many different ways to get your news, but not all of them are accurate. That’s why you should read more than one source about a particular issue and then decide for yourself if the information you’re getting is truthful and complete.
How can you use the news to find blog ideas?
Let’s say there’s an article in your local paper that talks about problems at restaurants in town where food has been contaminated with E. coli bacteria because employees were sick but still working (yuck!). You could write a post on how businesses need better policies when it comes to letting sick workers stay home so everyone else doesn’t get sick too!
Check out this list of blog topic generators.
The internet is already very well-stocked with blog topic generators so I'll keep this section short. Below are a few of my favorites:
HubSpot's Blog Topic Generator
Portent’s Content Idea Generator
Tweak Your Biz Title Generator
To use them, simply input up to three nouns that are related to your niche, or just input a single noun if you want to see what wild ideas you can come up with. These tools will then spit out 5 different blog post title ideas based on your input and the “seed keywords” they have in their system for each category. You can also enter a seed keyword into the tool yourself and it will provide 5 related titles for that topic.
Do a little Googling.
Despite the fact that this is a blog post about how to get good ideas for your blog, I would be remiss if I didn't recommend one of the easiest ways to find good topics to write about.
Do a little Googling.
I can't tell you how many times I've started by searching on Google and found exactly what I was looking for. You can search in several different ways, depending on what your final goal is:
Search for product or industry keywords. If you're writing content related to a specific product or industry, start by looking for keywords related to those areas. (If you want help with keyword research, check out my free guide here.) That should bring up some more specific ideas that are relevant to what your audience will be interested in reading about.
Do a search for popular blogs on the topic. This should give you an idea of what other people are writing about so you can see if there's anything missing from their coverage of the topic area that you'd like to cover as well.
Search for relevant forums and discussion threads in Facebook groups or other places where people talk about the topic at hand. Sometimes it's useful to see how others are talking about the problem—in their own words—so that when you do write something, it really resonates with them because it's using language they're already familiar with and comfortable using themselves.
Read magazines in your niche, and write about trending topics they cover.
Read magazines in your niche. Don’t just read them, study them. Magazines have a lot to offer. Don’t focus on the latest issue, though—pay attention to what was being covered a few months ago. Magazines often publish articles on emerging trends and news that may not hit the mainstream until later.
So how exactly can you make those magazines work for you? First, find out which ones are considered authorities in your field or industry. Then, look for coverage of topics that are relevant to your audience but don’t get much attention online (or get so much attention that there isn’t anything new to say about them). Pick a topic that interests you as well—you want it to be something you care about so much that writing about it will be effortless.
When you think you’ve found one, start working on your post!
The opportunities to find inspiration are endless!
Search for blog topic ideas
With so many places where you can find inspiration, it'll be hard to ever run out of ideas. You can get your next blog post idea from:
Magazines
Blog topic generators
Hashtags
The news (or just the headlines)
Your own experiences
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