Let me ask you a question: “Do you struggle to generate content ideas?”. Well, since you’re reading this article, I think we already know the answer. If it’s any consolation, we struggle sometimes too. Coming up with great content ideas on a regular basis is not easy, but it’s essential for growth. Luckily, there are many effective solutions that you can use in order to come up with fresh content ideas:
Stay up to date in your industry:
Digital media:
The digital world is full of media to immerse yourself in, every industry has a big number of blogs, newsletters, journals that publish the latest news and trends. First, check the free publications that you like regularly, then if you want to take it up a notch you can invest your money into a few subscription-based publications.
Social Media sites & apps:
Social media can help too, we know that you waste time everyday scrolling through your feed (Don’t worry, everyone does), but what you can do differently is like, follow, and subscribe to every page or account on social media that cover your industry, you can even choose them as favorites in the follow-settings so you can see their posts higher and more often in your feed. So instead of scrolling through memes and jokes all day, you’ll get to know about the latest trends in a fast and more familiar way. If you don’t enjoy reading, you can watch videos or listen to podcasts, there are informative podcasts and YouTube channels for nearly every industry and niche.
Networking/events:
Last but not least, events. Conferences, seminars, summits, meetings, social gatherings can all help you keep up to date, learn what coming down the pike, and network while you’re at it.
By staying up to date with your industry, you’ll constantly know what you should write or talk about, this way generating content ideas will become simpler and more intuitive.
Hangout with your target audience:
Quora:
Quora is a great Q/A platform, just ask a question and a group of users will surely provide answers, some with helpful links as well.
As a marketer, you can look at the hottest and most viewed questions asked by people in your industry, you can even check the answers that were upvoted the most to know exactly what your audience is looking for.
For example, if you type “Content Ideas” in quora’s search box, here are the top results you’ll get: “How do you generate content ideas from the real world”,” How do you come up with your content”, “What strategies work best for creating new content ideas?”, “How do you think about creative content ideas?” … Click on one of the questions and you’ll instantly get access to the answers provided by the community.
Reddit:
In addition to using Reddit the same way you use Quora, you can join subreddits related to your industry or specific niche and see what users are talking about.
Social media: (Yes, again! but we’ll be concise this time)
- Optimize your twitter feed and “trends for you”
- Join Facebook groups, you can even create one and build a community around your industry
- Go surfing on Instagram’s explore page
- Check Influencers
- Review comments
- Find and analyze hashtags
Use Google Options: (Free)
Google autocomplete predictions:
Autocomplete is a feature within Google search that makes it faster to complete searches that people start to type. To determine what predictions to show, Google’s systems consider not only common and trending queries but also the language and location of the searcher. So, a simple query of your keywords may result in multiple suggestions of content ideas.
People also ask:
Your target audience undoubtedly asks thousands of questions every month. With “People also ask”, you can extract the most commonly asked questions that follow your original search. You can build content answering these questions.
Related searches:
Related searches are 8 different searches located at the bottom of the first results page. They are related to your search terms. You can use them to discover what your audience is looking for.
Google trends:
Using Google trends, you can explore what the world’s looking for. Enter a search term or a topic, and check out how the interest changes over time in any region. You can get access also to related queries and topics in addition to daily search trends and real-time search trends.
Find keywords and questions using tools: (Free and Freemium)
HubSpot’s blog ideas generator: (Free)
All you have to do is enter nouns of topics you want to write about, and click “Give me Blog Ideas”. In a matter of seconds, the tool will generate blog ideas for you.
Blog about by Impact, Blog title generator by SEOpressor, Fatjoe’s blog post title headline generator, Inbound now’s blog title idea generator, in addition to Portent idea generator, and Content Row’s headline generator are all free tools similar to HubSpot’s blog ideas generator.
AnswerThePublic: (Freemium)
AnswerThePublic listens to autocomplete data from search engines then generates useful phrases and questions people are asking around your keywords. It helps you explore questions and problems that your customers have in order to create fresh creative content.
Buzzsumo: (Freemium)
Buzzsumo allows you to find the most shared content on social media platforms about every topic/keyword so you can create content that will be relevant and successful.
Ahrefs Keyword Generator: (Freemium)
Using “Keyword generator”, you can fill your content calendar for weeks in minutes by finding relevant keywords from Ahrefs’ database of over 8 billion queries. Every keyword comes complete with local and global monthly search volume estimates and other advanced SEO metrics to help you choose the best keywords to target across 229 countries. In addition, you can use the tool to analyze the competition by checking the key SEO metrics for the current top-ranking pages to see what you’re up against, and how difficult it might be to rank first page.
Moz’s “Keyword Explorer” and “SEMrush keyword magic tool” are similar tools.
Ubersuggest: (Freemium)
Ubersuggest was originally a keyword suggestions tool, enter a keyword you’ll get related suggestions, you also get key data in each keyword, including monthly search volume, average CPC, PPC competition, and SEO competition. But now the tool doesn’t provide just that, it has a feature called “content ideas” that lists out all of the articles written by other people in the past sorted by social shares, estimated visits, and backlinks. So, it’s like a combination of the previous tools.
Make the most out of analytics: (If you already have a significant audience)
Website Analytics:
Analyze your content using a tool like Google Analytics to know which of your existing pages is drawing more traffic? Which content pages are performing well? What keywords were used? This should help you determine what your current audience likes and arm you with new content ideas for the future.
Social media analytics:
Quite similar to website analytics, social media analytics allow you to determine which content is performing the best on each platform. Does your audience prefer video content or infographics? maybe long-form content? What type of content for which platform? Use data from your analytics to come up with the most suitable content for each platform.
We mentioned above every tactic we use to generate content ideas. Which one of them will you give a try? Do you have a special way you use to come up with content ideas you want to share with us?
Let us know in the comments!