The Internet has come a long way as people are using it to connect with friends, family, and use it to find information online. It’s our most influential source of information and it’s critical for the business to be well represented online. This why blogging is one of the best ways to connect with today’s market. If you aren’t blogging then you are missing out on traffic generation.
So now you want to start blogging…but just like many writers or content marketers the challenge is idea generation. If you are feeling like you have no ideas and wondering “What do I write about today?” You are not alone, many of us share the same feeling, however, there are lots of useful tools to help us generate ideas for blog posts. If you have trouble coming up with blog ideas, no worries, read on.
Content Strategy Helper Tool – Version 3
Website: http://builtvisible.com/content-strategy-helper/#gettingstarted
Starting Price: Free
This an interesting tool for generating blog topic ideas. In a nutshell if you have a general idea of the topic you are thinking to write about, by entering a keyword, this tool can instantly scan the web for latest news and articles related to that keyword and then spits out all the latest topics found on the web from popular sites such as Twitter, Reddit, Google News, Yahoo Answers, etc. Let’s take a closer look and see exactly how this tool works and how it can be helpful for you.
The tool is based in a Google Sheets format, so you would need a Google account to be able to use it. The setup is fairly easy, just follow the link provided above, it includes all the instructions in order to get to it working.
Once you have everything set up, let’s generate some topic ideas here. Today I’m not quite sure what I want to blog about however, I do know I want to write something health-related. Let’s see what’s trending out there right now to help me come up with ideas. In the Search Query box, type ‘health’ and press enter to see what articles come up with that keyword.
We can see many columns now with major news sources from Google News (UK) and (US), Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, Youtube, ONS, Yougov, Data.gov, Google Scholar and numerous other ones. So that’s a great number of sources, you can scroll through the list and see if anything stands out to you that would spark an idea. For example, looking at the topics from Digg, you can see numerous articles about recent health topics, such as Psychedelics Not Bad For Mental Health or Health Myths About Cold Weather.
So as you can see there are lots of data and lots of topics. If you want to read more about the article, some of the sources have a direct link to the article, while others you can simply Google yourself by copying and pasting the exact article name.
These different articles can certainly give you many ideas for you own blog topic and understanding your basic objectives would help you to assess the information in this tool. When developing your ideas, you can bear in mind that changing the format of an existing story can be enough to create fresh buzz on the web. Just take a look at some topics posted on YouTube. A great thing is that this tool also provides you with some statistics. You can check out Viewcount of each topic that’s been recently found on YouTube.
This can indicate how popular that specific topic is. Spotting a successful topic can allow you to expand on it, why not provide an update on your blog with fresh data or research. If you can’t update the story, why not create a fresh angle or providing your own opinion on it. Just remember to keep an eye on what content is performing better on different networks.
Portents Content Idea Generator
Website: http://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker
Starting Price: Free
This idea generator tool is easy and simple. The great this about this you don’t need to sign up, no logins…no usernames. Just like many other tools, it has a search box where you can enter your keyword. It also suggests not to capitalize on your keywords and use a singular version of your keyword for best results.
The good this about this tool is that it doesn’t create huge lists of information. The interface looks great with a simple fading black background. Once you enter a keyword, instantly a unique idea for a post will be generated. If you are not satisfied with the result, you can hit refresh and another idea will pop up instantly. So let’s take a look at what kind of title it can generate again for our beloved topic of ‘health’.
Some ideas could be silly, but you can play around and perhaps something will stand out.
Website: https://twitter.com
Starting Price: Free
One of the most overlooked tools to generate blog topic ideas is actually Twitter. Even though it’s not an actual tool that was designed specifically to generate blog ideas, it’s a social network. However, people are always posting and discussing various ideas. You can run a Twitter search using your keyword proceeded by a hashtag to come up with a list of tweets containing that keyword. Probably the greatest thing about Twitter is that the conversation is the most up-to-date you can find on the web. So you can definitely see what’s trending right now and what is the hottest topic of discussion. A Twitter search for #health brings back tweets that mention this topic.
Quora
Website: https://www.quora.com/
Starting Price: Free
A great way to generate blog ideas is to look beyond general tools and take a look at questions people want to know more information about. Quora can be a great resource for discovering these commonly asked questions. It does require the user to sign up. Creating an account is a bit of a hassle but you can get great results in terms of ideas. By entering a word or phrase into the Quora search box, you can see what questions users are asking related to that topic. After results are displayed, you can click on “Top Stories”, “Trending”, and “Questions” to get better results. If we search for ‘health’ and click on Top Stories, here are some results that were generated by Quora related to that topic.
You can dig a little deeper by clicking on the specific result and reading more about it. Usually, a question is answered by many other users who are interested in the topic, so you can read some of them to see if any ideas will interest you.
