How To Find The Best Topics To Create Content About

We all know that our website needs a blog and we all know that for an effective blog, you need great content. This is all well and good, but we’ve all been there when we get a little stuck trying to come up with new content ideas. Google likes a site that is regularly publishing something new but, when you look at your competitors, you may be left wondering how to come up with article ideas quite so often. 

Rather than sitting there and staring at a blank page, take a look at our top tips. Taking a read of these will see content creation ideas coming to you much more easily. We know because we’ve been there and we’ve had to go through the same process to keep the ideas coming thick and fast. 

What Role Does Competitor Analysis Play In Identifying Content Topics That Resonate With The Target Audience?

Competitor analysis plays a significant role in identifying content topics that resonate with the target audience. By analyzing the content produced by competitors within your industry, you can gain valuable insights into what topics are popular and engaging for your target audience. Look for the content that generates the most engagement, such as comments, shares, and backlinks, as this indicates topics of interest. Additionally, pay attention to the gaps or areas that your competitors have not covered extensively. This presents an opportunity to create content on unique or overlooked topics that can differentiate your brand and provide value to your audience. By understanding what your competitors are doing well and identifying their content gaps, you can strategically craft content topics that will capture the attention and interest of your target audience.

How Can Customer Feedback And Inquiries Be Leveraged To Generate Content Ideas?

Customer feedback and inquiries are valuable sources for generating content ideas. By paying attention to the questions, comments, and feedback received from your customers, you can identify common pain points, areas of confusion, or topics they are interested in learning more about. This information can serve as inspiration for creating content that directly addresses their needs and provides helpful solutions. Monitor customer support channels, social media interactions, and email inquiries to gather insights into the specific topics or issues that your audience wants to see addressed. Additionally, consider conducting surveys or interviews with customers to gather more in-depth feedback and gather ideas for content that will resonate with them. By listening to your customers and addressing their concerns through your content, you can establish a stronger connection, build trust, and demonstrate your expertise in addressing their specific needs.

What Is Content Ideation?

When searching for new content ideas, you may have come across the term ‘content ideation’. If you have, then there is a good chance that you won’t know exactly what it refers to. What content ideation means is a process of first identifying, and then selecting, relevant topics. These are topics that are capable of engaging your audience. 

What do we mean by engaging content? This type of content should appeal to your audience and:

• be interesting 
• be useful
• provide entertainment 
• boost awareness
• be sharable 

Not all content ideas, regardless of how engaging they are, will play a significant part in your audience’s buying decision. You need to ensure that you approach new content ideas while having an aim in mind. Many pieces are likely to be around brand awareness. They are there to position you as the expert in your field and so that you become the go-to company. This type of content is great when there is a healthy balance of other articles that directly influence/encourage a buying decision. 

Now we know what content ideation is, let’s get stuck in and find out exactly how you can come up with great new content ideas.

Create Lists To Keep Your Writing Time Productive 

It could be that you set aside a certain time and day of the week to produce new content. Perhaps it is not possible to do this and so, instead, you just take the opportunity whenever you have the time to do so. No matter which approach you take, your time sat writing should not involve looking for content ideas. When it comes to opening your blank document, you should know exactly what topic you’re about to start writing about. 

The way to ensure that your writing time is as productive as possible is to plan in advance. Set time aside to blast through, and list, as many new content ideas as possible. The longer your list, the better. The ideal is knowing that you have at least one to two months’ worth of content creation ideas ready to work on. 

The Power Of Social Media

With billions of people around the world all using social media platforms, these offer a great solution when looking at how to come up with article ideas. If you have followers on social media, tap into all that you can find out about them. Click through to their profiles. Find out what they are posting about, what photos are coming up, and the brands that they seem to be taking an interest in. If this doesn’t leave you with a bunch of content creation ideas then the next step is even simpler: just ask your audience what they’d like to see you publish content about. 

If you’re using Facebook, you can also gain insight by taking a look at ads from other companies. All you need to do is find a page that is relevant to your sector. The page will allow you to look at all of the ads that are being run. It is likely, that if a company is paying for ads that focus on a particular topic, that topic will be worth writing about.  

Review Your Blog Comments

Hopefully, your blog posts are already getting eyes and your audience is interacting with them. If so, this means that you have another source of new content ideas: the comments that your readers are leaving. Even when you’re not looking a how to come up with article ideas, it is always a good idea to stay on top of your blog comments. Reading, and responding shows your audience that you’re not some faceless brand.

In terms of using these comments for content ideas, you need to be focusing on ay questions that are being asked. Maybe your readers are seeking more information non a topic or looking to learn about one that is closely linked. You can tinker with the question that has been asked and, almost instantly, find that you have a title for your next price of content. 

What Are Your Competitors Publishing?

If it’s one of those months when you really don’t know how to come up with article ideas, why not take a look at what your competitors are up to? Now, we’re not suggesting that you simply go ahead and plagiarise what you find. Instead, you should be using blogs for your competitors purely as inspiration for your own content ideas.

It could be that your competitors have covered whole topics that you’ve not yet touched on. This could inspire a whole series of blogs that you can produce. No matter what you come across, you have a great opportunity to go ahead and produce content that is better than your competitors. There is nothing to be gained by stealing content, but you can generate real interest by reworking articles and making yours the best.

Get Inspired By The News

There are so many events taking place each and every day. Of course, not every news story, if any, is going to be relevant to your industry. That doesn’t mean that you cant use it for content creation ideas though. While some things will have a closer association to your sector, there will still be other news stories where you just need to get a little creative. While national and even international news may give you some ideas, be sure to pay attention to your local news too.

As well as giving you new content ideas, there is another benefit to using the news as inspiration: it gets more eyes on your content. Breaking news stories often start to tend. By keeping an eye on stories that are emerging, you can ride on the back of these. Getting your keywords right, and even exploring hashtags if you’re going for a social media post, can see you benefit from a popular news story. 

Let Google Lend A Hand

Let’s be honest, when it comes to our content ideas, we all want nothing more than for Google to love, and rank, them. That being the case, it makes sense to tap into Google and allow it to help you to identify new content ideas. There are a couple of ways that you can do this:

Search Suggestions 

It could be that you know the general topic that you’re wanting to cover. the area where you may struggle is narrowing down exactly what to write about. The solution is simple: start typing into your Google search bar. As you do, you’ll see Google suggest search terms and these are often great title ideas that you can build upon.

Adwords

You don’t need to be paying for ads to take advantage of Google’s keyword planner. As long as you have an account, you can start exploring keywords and learning how popular they are. You’re able to see how many searches are made per month for long-tail keywords that could make perfect blog post titles.

Topic Generators

We think that there are plenty of sources that can help you with content ideas. However, if you find yourself really stuck one month, it could be with exploring some of the topic generator platforms that are available. The platforms, such as UberSuggest, can provide some great ideas for your next articles.

All that you need to do is type a keyword, or phrase, into these generators. They will then come back with numerous other terms that are all relevant. Some of these will also give you extra information that shows the popularity of a topic, how many times relevant content has been shared, and the competition that you’re facing. If you don’t need all of this extra information, you can just take advantage of the search results to come up with article ideas.

YouTube

While YouTube can be a great platform for boosting brand awareness, it is just as useful when it comes to new content ideas. It is easy to search for videos and then look at the number of reviews and comments to see which topics are popular right now. Even looking at something as simple as the likes and dislikes can give you an idea as to how popular certain content is.

What’s great about YouTube is that, when you find one video that you want to watch, it will then show you numerous others that are related. These related videos can provide you with a while string of content ideas for YouTube that you can then use for your blog posts. 

New Research In Your Industry

No matter what industry you’re operating in, you’re bound to see new studies being carried out that are relevant. Often these studies come with an abidance of interesting data that your audience will want to know about. You can help them simply by writing about it. Remember, your blogs are not just about the buying process and trying to make a sale. They are there to entertain and educate too. Tapping into research is a great way to educate your readers.

It doesn’t matter if the research isn’t yours. As long as it is relevant, and you properly reference it, there’s nothing to stop you from producing content about it. If you ever do carry out your own piece of research this can add to content ideas and also elevate you to the position of expert.

Your Back Catalogue

If you’ve been operating online for a while, there’s a good chance that you’ve got a pretty extensive blog already. You’ve probably got page after page of blog posts, many of which you may have even forgotten about. Plenty of hard work will have gone into these at the time, so don’t let them simply die off. use them as inspiration for new content ideas.

It could be that you look at your old blog posts and just tweak the titles to create something completely new. It may be that you repurpose what you already have and turn the information into another format such as an infographic or a video. You can keep old blog cineast working for you for years into the future.

Newsletters

With newsletters, there are those that may be from competitors and there are those that come from trade organisations. Sign up for any that you come across. The next time that you don’t know how to come up with article ideas, you can review these newsletters.

Newsletters should be filled with the latest industry news and allow you to see what the current trends are. That’s why they’re a great source of new content ideas. 

Final Thoughts 

No matter how long your website has been up and running, you can always find inspiration for content ideas. There are almost unlimited sources of ideas as long as you know where to look. We hope that we have given you some direction so you know where to go when you’re next on the lookout for content ideas.

When you have your idea, there is always the chance that writer’s block will strike. If you have some great ideas for new content but are struggling with the time, or the know-how, to turn them into great pieces, get in touch and let us show you just what we can do.