You don’t need to be stumped when you’re trying to think of what to write about. You may be struggling with ideas for blog posts, social posts, ebooks, and/or videos, but a wealth of ideas are out there and at your fingertips. You just need to know where to look.
My top sources are:
1. Reddit
Gather a list of subreddits relevant to your business, sort by top posts, and then dive deep into the comments!
2. Social media groups
These are like niche forums. People discuss interests and challenges, try to make sense of trends, and dig into other hot topics in their industry.
3. SEO tools / keywords
First, brainstorm your keywords, then plug them into Moz’s free keyword explorer. You’ll get lots of choices to ponder. The longer tail ones are GREAT topic ideas. You can also try Keywords Everywhere which is a free Google Chrome extension.
I like keywords under 55 difficulty and with at least 1000 searches.
4. Google auto-populate feature
You know the 10 or so other choices that come up when you type in a search? Gold.
5. Competitor’s websites
Look at competitor content—often in a resources center–including ebooks, blog posts, quizzes, customer stories/case studies, and videos. See what topics they are covering and assess if you can cover them better or with a deeper focus. Don’t forget to check out their FAQs to see what people are asking about.
6. Quora
Quora is a massive forum where people ask questions about anything you can think of. You type in the topic your readers might be interested in or the name of your industry, and you will start finding questions to turn into content. Search for your niche and find the most popular threads.
7. Customers
Customer content is literal gold. Look at testimonials, customer stories, recorded interviews, etc., and listen for what they are concerned about, the problems they are solving, the problems they cannot solve, on and on.
Also, don’t forget that salespeople are in constant communication with customers and can be a great source of content ideas.
8. Your SMEs or thought leaders
These technical and accomplished folks always have their hands in a problem and often have an opinion about how to (or not to) get something done. Connect with them from time to time to see what they are thinking about or working on.
9. Answerthepublic
AnswerThePublic, a tool from NP Digital, maps out in a cool-looking circle what other topics people ask about when they type in a search. It makes it easy to find specific, pressing concerns that many users have.
The output looks like this:
Super cool.
Lastly, there’s one thing should do before you plan for a raft of new content. Look to your old stuff! Repurpose it. You probably have some nuggets of gold in there that you can just update or rework: turn it into a ‘how to’ or ‘how not to’ post or a listicle, give current examples or a newer quote, add more resources, etc.
And, if you think my list of 9 wasn’t enough, check out Neil Patel’s post with 103 ideas.
