For a writer, nothing’s worse than getting hung up on a blank slab of paper — staring at that blinking cursor, lacking fruitful words to share. Inertia. For a business, nothing’s worse than churning out a stream of superfluous content that has no real purpose for its intended reader. Quantity.
Fortunately, there are many approaches to brainstorming excellent blog topics that your readers will find insightful. We’ve found that a simple comment, testimonial, email from a friend, or conversation we’ve had can be the “magic bean” for our best articles. Consider these eight methods of topic curation to burn the fires of inspiration.
[clickToTweet tweet=”8 Quick and Easy Ways To Brainstorm #Blog Topic Ideas Your Audience Will Love” quote=”8 Quick and Easy Ways To Brainstorm Blog Topic Ideas Your Audience Will Love”]
1. Facebook Groups
One of the reasons social media has endured is that people LOVE to offer opinions, suggestions, and share personal experiences. Naturally, Facebook Groups can be a goldmine of information if you have a question that needs answering. We could ask: “What are the biggest challenges you face with your business blog?” If you create content based on a NEED, people are more inclined to comment, share it, like it and befriend you. Sometimes just entering a topic of interest in the search bar will pull up questions and similar topics you can use.
2. Google Suggestions
Don’t overlook one of the most obvious topic mills — the “king of search,” Google itself! If we type in “blog topics,” before we even hit ENTER, we get a drop-down list like this:
These ideas are based on what people are actually searching on Google, so it makes sense to use them if you want traffic. Once we hit the magic button, these additional ideas appear at the bottom of the results page:
These suggestions may be too general for your purposes, but they can be a starting point to get you thinking anyway.
Want to know one of our favorite, FREE SEO tools that incorporates Google Suggestions? Übersuggest – check it out!
3. Hubspot Blog Topic Generator
HubSpot has always been a master of content, so it’s not surprising that they offer an awesome tool for coming up with a bunch of topics within a couple seconds. Simply think of three nouns to describe your areas of interest and get quick, relevant suggestions. For instance, if we put in “blogging,” “topics,” and “content curation,” HubSpot recommends the following:
Pretty good, right?
If you want to block out another full week of content, simply hit the “try again” button and you’ll get these:
While there are other topic generator sites out there, we feel this is one of the best.
4. Blog Comments (your blog and others)
Be sure to take the time to skim through blog comments for cherries of thought. Instead of responding with a trite comment, spin another’s cares or concerns into a question or a topic to cover in-depth in your next blog. If you don’t have many comments at this point, find a popular blog in your niche and read their comments for clues of what other writers may be failing to touch upon in their original pieces. Create a spreadsheet to keep track of questions, comments or topics that you can refer to later. In addition to Google, we like to use AllTop and SimilarSiteSearch.
5. Portent
Titles can be the most daunting part of writing for some. Portent Title Maker is a tool to help you get going. Simply enter a topic (the simpler the better) for a few unique ideas. For instance, if we put in “blog writing,” Portent recommends: “8 Facts About Blog Writing That’ll Keep You Up At Night” or “Why No One Talks About Blog Writing”. The site also offers tips for best results and a few recommended resources you might refer to in your post.
Note: Blog topic generators aren’t perfect. You may need to tweak your results.
6. Forums
Forums are designed to link curious people with quick answers and information, so it makes sense to scour these sites for areas of opportunity. We start by typing “blog marketing forums” into Google for a list of sites in our niche. Be careful to avoid time-draining sites that just a place for other bloggers to dump links.
Blog Forum is one of the top results that appears to be a true Q&A style forum. A quick search for questions today yields a few promising topics for future posts:
- – Do you take days off from blogging?
- – How can I start a blog in WordPress?
- – Can I use Google Images legally?
- – Is blogging still useful for making money?
You can use the questions “as is” or create titles like:
- – What I Do On The Weekends When I’m Not Blogging To Make My Week More Productive
- – How To Start A Blog In WordPress In 10 Easy Steps
- – Google Images & Other Ways To Find Royalty-Free Visuals For Your Blog
- – 5 Reasons Blogging Is Still The Best Method of Making Money Online
Go ahead and search out a forum now and brainstorm at least 20 ideas to add to your list. You can also use these same principles by looking at the comments and questions on popular Facebook pages and Twitter profiles. Doing so should give you another 20 to 40 ideas for future blog posts.
When you go where the people are, you’re basically letting them do the idea generation for you. All you have to do is take notes on what you see.
7. Quora
Quora bills itself as “the best answer to any question.” Here you can create a personalized feed based on seven areas of interest, your social media pals, and your areas of expertise. Top stories recommended to us based on keywords like “blogging,” “marketing,” “creative writing,” “words”, and “psychology” include:
- – What are some cool psychological hacks?
- – What is a good piece of random advice?
- – How can I stop wanting to learn everything and focus on one thing?
- – What are the best tricks you want to know and share?
- – Is it really so easy to sell a product on Amazon?
As you can imagine, these posts contain a lot of potential cannon fodder for blogs — not to mention opportunities to share our expertise and link people to our posts once completed.
8. Polls
Few can resist a quick, fun, easy poll. People love answering questions about their likes and dislikes. They like to see how their preferences stack up against the masses. Ask your readers to vote on their biggest challenge, worst nightmare, or best insights on a particular topic. You can try Polldaddy, or Survey Monkey to get started. You can also use Twitter polls to connect with your audience there.
[Poll] CMOs: Does your current in-house #MarketingTeam have the skill-set to meet your top goals? #CMO
— Mod Girl Marketing (@ModGirlMktg) November 16, 2016
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