Blogging Lessons

Generate Content Ideas for Your Blog?

If you have run out of ideas for generating content for your blog, here is a list of places to source new ideas from. 

First, listen to the following advice:

Let ideas flow freely – Write down your text and refine the output when finished. Let it sit over some time and come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes. 

Content marketing is really like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won’t be a second date. – David Beebe

Think of the format of your content – It can be a list of tips and tricks, a checklist, a how-to article, or a round-up post. Whatever it is you will present, plan the format so that it looks professional and flows coherently. 

Do not be afraid to ask for help from your audience because it is not shameful to do so. Instead, ask for their opinion and get inspired by what they contribute. Just the opposite, you will realize that they will appreciate that you care about their thoughts and value your honesty.

Here are 13 resources and strategies to help build your content and rank your blog high on Google.

How to get blog content ideas…

1. Repurpose Your Old Content

Breathe new life into your old content and continue to get value from it. With content repurposing, you are already a step ahead in the creation of new content. 

As a blogger, repurposing your old content is also a way to avoid the tedious task of creating content daily. What you do is tweak your old content and try your best to make it reach the hands of new people.  

There are many advantages to this strategy: 

Boost your SEO – Several pieces of content built around a topic present more opportunities to target your keywords. Also, if you post your repurposed content on other platforms, you increase your chances of receiving quality links, which is also a strategy for boosting your online presence and engagement. 

Effective for multi-channel marketing – With your repurposed content, you can reach out to a new audience by engaging with them in different mediums. 

Chance to repeat your message – Marketers recognize that buyers need to hear a specific message at least seven times before closing the deal. Repurpose your content to reinforce your brand’s messaging, and finally, close the deal. 

Gain niche authority – Republishing your content in a variety of ways and different places can create an impression of expertise in your industry, where key players will value your know–how, competence, and ideas.

So, scour through your old articles and look for those with evergreen content. Evergreen content is timeless and has high quality. Being timeless, the content remains relevant for a long time, and having a high quality means it helps your site to attract traffic. 

2. Search Through Social Media Platforms

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Quora, Reddit, and other social media platforms are a goldmine of topics for every niche or industry.

On these platforms, people ask questions and express their issues and needs. Those are your hints on what your audience wants you to talk or write about.

If you have been using social media for marketing, you must have already attracted a following. Even with just a few followers, throw questions like: What are your secrets for maintaining a healthy weight?

The replies you will get can be used to create new content.

On the reverse, you can also get hints from people you follow. Make a list of those people who usually are your ideal customers or best customers.

Follow these people, and note the content they read or engage with. Also, note the content that they usually share or reply to. Those are subject matters you must cover within your niche.

Another social media strategy for creating new content is using YouTube. When people watch videos on YouTube, the screen also shows related videos on the sidebar.

For instance, one who is watching a video titled Financial Planning 101 can also see suggested videos on the sidebar, such as titles like The Fundamentals of Financial Planning and How to Create Your Own Financial Plan.

Along with those suggested videos and titles, also try to scroll down and see what viewers are asking about and commenting. All of these and more are your reservoir of new content ideas into your existing content.

3. Collaborate with Others

Have you thought about collaborating with another blogger or an influencer in your niche? Collaborative posts are easy to write because you are only relaying spoken information. The only downside is that you have to reach out to people you hardly know. 

However, if you overcome the fear of rejection, the collaborative format can be your most favorite strategy. 

The collaborative approach takes the following forms: 

Interview article – Do you think your audience follows a particular influencer? Open a line of communication with that person and ask for a brief phone interview. You can then transcribe the conversation into a blog post to present new content. 

Crowdsourced article – Using email, pose a question to several influencers and niche experts. You can ask for a short response (not over 100 words). Collate the answers, publish an article about it, and link to the websites of the influencers that participated. 

They may share the information with their own audiences, and you increase your traffic in return. Note the new content ideas shared by the participants, and use them in your succeeding articles. 

Roundup article – Post a weekly or monthly series of useful content to share with your audience and potential customers. Gather several pieces of relevant content online, provide descriptions for them, and link to them in your post. 

Best of the web – This one presents leading services, products, and websites featured on the internet. If this strategy works, then you can continue providing such information regularly so that your audience will see you as a one-stop resource that can provide them with the best options available in one click. 

4. Use Paid and Free Online Tools

Learn how these online paid and free tools can help you generate content ideas. 

Ahrefs – This keyword research tool is one of the most comprehensive tools on the market. It is outstanding for carrying out basic keyword research and using it to search for new keyword ideas. You can also use Ahrefs to generate question-based ideas.

Answer the Public – This tool is a search-listening tool that provides idea visualizations by presenting complex mind “maps.” With this tool, you can understand content topics based on public consensus. 

Google Trends – This tool is a trend analysis tool, which can give you an overview of how a specific topic has trended over time. Of course, you should not write on a topic that has become obsolete quickly. 

Ubersuggest – You might want to check with the SEO guru, Neil Patel, who created Ubersuggest, a tool that provides users both keyword search volumes and cost-per-click (CPC) for every keyword idea. The CPC of a keyword estimates how much one will pay for every click they receive on their ads containing their chosen keyword.  

Hashtagify. me – This free tool allows users to search for popular hashtags and how they are used. You can also search for related hashtags on Instagram and Twitter and find influencers associated with those hashtags. After identifying these details, you can proceed to generate new content ideas and write about them. 

5. Create a Topic List

Every time you write new content, do not waste time sitting down and thinking about what you should write. That is an inefficient way of generating content.

Instead, when you are ready to write new content, you already have a list of topics you can write about. If you publish new content three or four times per week, you would want to always be ready with about 25 ideas to write about.

Create a bucket of lists, whether it is via Google Docs, an Evernote account, or a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet holds all inspirational insights that have occurred to you, your team, and every stakeholder that you have.

Every time it is time to generate new content, open your list bucket. This strategy can lead to diverse perspectives that are necessary for generating new ideas consistently.

One of the most effective strategies for this is structured brainstorming, where you gather the creatives and everyone else in your team.

Give everyone a post-it note. Then observe silence for about five minutes. Afterward, put the notes on a wall and read them aloud. Make sure that you give everyone a chance to generate new ideas on their own. You can also talk about repeated ideas that might have a strong potential in your niche at present.

Hold such sessions as regularly as possible, and when you hold such sessions, put your customers in the brainstorming exercise and think about how you can provide them with something valuable and unique.

Always come up with customer-centric ideas that help stimulate creative thinking. Such a list bucket can help you post new content at regular intervals.

Here is data on how frequently bloggers post new content. In 2017, most bloggers publish posts several times a month (22.7%) or once a week (21.9%), while other bloggers post two to six times per week (18%).

6. Find Your Water

Research has shown that people respond to the sight of bodies of water. The brain goes into a meditative state, while the eyes flow with the waves, and the ears capture the sound of flowing water. 

In such a state, your brain gathers information and processes it faster. A marine biologist, Wallace J. Nichols, explains in his book the Blue Mind the reasons why people respond positively when seeing a body of water. The book explains the psychological, emotional, and behavioral connections that keep humans so enchanted with water.

7. Keep Updated with Trends

Keep up with trends by reading, reading, and reading. It also involves understanding things in traditional news and what people talk about, write about, and discuss on digital platforms.

In 2016, the content was focused on mental health awareness, but this one continues until today. In 2017, on the other hand, people generated content mostly on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. In 2018, the topic became more highly specialized, where Blockchain technology took the helm in content creation.

These are just examples for you to be able to identify what is trending in your niche and generate content out of it.

8. Practice, Practice, Practice

To be well-versed in anything, practice is the underlying technique. Repetitive practicing is your road to mastery. Put your practice to work on platforms such as Quora and social media. 

Content is available around you, and many influencers, professional writers, YouTubers, and videographers are consistently creating new content. What you should do is: understand and reverse-engineer their craft. Through that strategy, you can work and develop your own methodology.  

9. Steal Content Ideas from the Competition

You must have been reading your competitor’s content and following what your industry peers are working on. If they are targeting the same audience you are also targeting, their star content might also appeal to your prospects.

Also, the searches you can do through online tools can be run to analyze your competitor’s content as well. Enter their URLs to look at the pages that work for them. Facebook also offers competitor analysis with their Pages to Watch tool. Once you add a brand’s page to your list, you can see the following stats:

Page likes The frequency of their post for a particular week Engagement count for the week

10. Use Your Real Story

Your brand’s story is unique, and it is why your customers engage, follow, and buy from you. You can always use your real story to drive new content ideas. As you generate your content to tell your story, highlight your values and brand personality within the text.

The top four benefits of telling your brand’s story:

It makes you stand out. You have a different story from everybody else.

It allows the humanization of your brand. There are people behind your products and services. Your customers want to know how these people have been through these years of service to your company and their plans for the future.

It helps in attracting the right consumers.

With your story, you can communicate your values.

11. Align Content with the Buyer’s Journey

Understand your customers’ buyer journey. Is your content aligned with your prospect’s thoughts and the obstacles they face at every step of the journey?

Avoid the pitfalls of creating bad content. If your audience does not like your topic, the result is zero engagement, and if the topic has been covered excessively in existing online content, it will result in extreme competition and lack of visibility.

Again, when potential customers have doubts, the tendency for them is to ask questions. Make sure that you are ready with the answers all the time, so it is easy for you to help them move forward in the buying process. In turn, you can establish yourself as a trusted resource.

So, there is actually no need to produce tons and tons of content that do not help in the buyer’s journey. Instead, make your content authentic and accurate, understand what value your customers are looking for, and show them how you can deliver such value.

12. Browse Amazon Book Reviews

Look for the top 5 books on Amazon that cover your topics or the topics that your readers love to consume. Check the reviews that are also written on those pages and look for:

What people learned from the book

The suggestions and comments

Then write an informative post that fills in the knowledge gap. When browsing through Amazon books, make sure to check the sections or chapters in those books. You can use chapter titles and sub-headers as an inspiration for creating new content for your blog.

13. Create Different Formats

When generating new content or repurposing your old content, you can experiment with the different formats available. The right format for your blog is custom-fitted, depending on the interests and expectations of your audience.

Whenever you can, make content using these various formats:

Guest posts

Interviews

Podcasts

Lists

Guides

Videos

How-to articles

Case studies

Company news

EBooks and more.

Conclusion

While bloggers occasionally suffer from writer’s block, you should never struggle to come up with new content ideas. Social media is a free resource at your disposal, as well as what other bloggers write about in your niche.

On social media, Twitter is a rich resource. There, you can search for relevant hashtags. On Reddit, look at relevant subreddits, and on Quora, search for the main topic to find out what people ask about that topic.

Also, there are tons of questions people post every day. Your job is to search for the most popular questions. That is where your oasis of content ideas is hidden.

Also, avoid the pitfalls of creating bad content. If your audience does not like your topic, the result is zero engagement, and if the topic has been covered excessively in existing online content, it will result in extreme competition and lack of visibility.