Are you struggling to produce new blog post topics?
When you start blogging it’s easy. You have an endless stream of blog post ideas. The ideas come to you in never-ending waves, and you quickly jot them down. You write, happy that from one week to the next you’ll have something to write about.
But, as your blog grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to produce blog post ideas. From one week to the next, it becomes a chore. You struggle; you manage, but only barely.
If you’re an established blogger, you’ll know what I’m talking about. We’ve all been there. And if you’re newbie, you will face these problems in the future. Guaranteed.
The good news is that you don’t have to struggle to find new topics to blog about. You just have to make sure you’re using the right techniques. Here are 5 simple ways to guarantee that you’ll never run out of blog topics, ever again.
1. Use Quora: The Question and Answer Platform
When you write a blog post, you should solve a reader’s problem or answer a pressing question. How though, do you find these questions?
Enter Quora.
Quora is a social network where people ask and answer questions.
You can see what people are asking across many topics such as technology, freelance writing, business, marketing, finance, project management and healthcare, to name a few.
For example, let’s say you’re an online store that sells the latest technology products. Your blog will include blog post topics about all things technology.
To see what questions people are asking for your chosen topic follow these six steps:
Step 1: Sign up for a Quora account (if you don’t have one)
Step 2: Choose topics you want to follow
In Feeds, click edit, and type in and choose your topic.
Step 3: Analyze the question people are asking for a chosen topic
Step 4: Write a blog post that answers the question.
It’s as simple as that.
If you find scouring Quora too time-consuming use IdeaStream
2. Ideastream: The Question Aggregator
I recently came across IdeaStream after the co-founder commented on a blog post I wrote. IdeaStream aggregates questions for any topic on Quora.
You sign-up for an account, enter the topic you want to follow, and you’ll receive daily questions in your inbox.
Ther are two plans available:
- A basic plan which is free and gives you access to one topic and 10 questions.
- The pro plan which costs $5/month and gives you access to five topics. You can also set the number of questions per email and how often you want to receive these questions.
3. Leverage Keyword Research
Keyword research helps you understand your audience by seeing what they’re searching for in search engines.
It’s also from these keywords that you can come up with blog post ideas.
In the post How to Use Blogging to Run a Successful Online Business, we talked about how to do keyword research. We used the Google Keyword Planner and outlined six simple steps. Let’s recap those.
Step 1: Create a Google AdWords account (if you don’t have one)
Step 2: Create an Ad
Google prompts you to create an ad. You need to create an ad and pause it to use the keyword planner.
Don’t worry once it’s paused Google won’t charge you. I’ve had an ad paused for well over 6 months now.
Step 3: Access the keyword tool in Google
You can access this in the header under tools.
Step 4: Search for ideas in your industry.
Type any topic you want to search for.
Step 5: Apply filters
If you’re new to blogging, I’d suggest filtering by low competition keywords.
With will help you compete with the big boys who already have prime position in rankings.
Once you’re ready, click Get ideas.
Step 6: Find those keywords
Build a list of keywords, preferably long tail keywords. These are the three to four-word phrases specific to what you’re selling. If you target these keywords, you’re more likely to get customers who are in the market to buy.
Anyways back to the point of the keyword research…
It is from this list of keywords that you can generate blog post ideas.
For example, let’s say you have these three keywords:
- Small Business Accounting
- Small Business Accounting Apps
- How to Start an Online Business
You could create the following posts:
- 10 Online Apps That Will SImplify Your Small Business Accounting Process
- 9 Of the Best Small Business Accounting Apps That Will Help You Grow Your Business.
- How to Start an Online Business (On a Budget)
4. Analyze The Comment Section of Your Blog
As you write content and build an audience, you’ll start receiving comments on your blog. Often they’ll leave questions and highlight further pain points you can address with a blog post.
Even if your blog is new and you don’t have any comments, you can still analyze competitors’ blogs to “steal” ideas.
Let’s look at this in action. Here’s a response to an article I wrote on one of the blogs I manage (For context, it’s a freelance writing blog):
The reader told me he’s scared of making phone calls to land writing gigs because of his accent. He asked how to deal with such fears. There’s a blog topic right there. I could write a post titled “Why Your Accent Shouldn’t be a Stumbling Block to Landing Clients” or “How to Overcome the Fear of Making Client Calls.”
5. Analyze Old Posts
As your blog grows, you’ll soon have many posts. Use those old posts to your advantage. Review all your posts and see if they spark new ideas. Ask yourself the following questions:
Was it comprehensive enough? Are there sections I can expand on?
Can I break the post into smaller posts? For example, let’s say you’ve written a 6000-word post about “How to Write a Great Blog Post.”
You cover many sections such as:
- Searching for blog post ideas
- Writing catchy headlines
- Planning and researching the post
- Writing the first draft
- Revising the draft
- Bringing the copy to life with your personality
- Optimizing blog posts
Each of those individual sections can become a new blog post.
Conclusion
Producing blog post ideas can be challenging, especially as your blog grows.
But it doesn’t have to be.
In fact, if approached in the right way it can be a breeze.
You just need to use the right techniques and tools. In this post we highlighted five:
- Quora for viewing questions people are asking about a topic
- Ideastream to get Quora questions sent to your inbox
- Keyword research to see what people are searching for
- The comments section of blog posts to see what further pain points need addressing.
- Old posts for new inspiration
Are you struggling to produce blog post ideas? What techniques do you use?