Surefire Ways To Find Blog Post Ideas for Every Topic
When you’re writing articles on a daily basis, your work routine resembles a curved line. Sometimes you believe that a whole life won’t be enough to realize all your blog post ideas. On other days, you might feel like you’ve already covered every existing topic in your niche and there’s nothing more to write about.
To overcome a creative block that comes to every writer, both a professional and a beginner, you shouldn’t wait for inspiration. It might not come in the nearest time but you will miss the deadlines. To not let yourself and your team down, there are surefire ways you can turn to to find interesting and trendy blog post ideas. Get ready to explore!
Where to find blog post ideas that would interest your target audience
1. Check the holiday calendar
When you’re out of blog post ideas, the first place you should look into is the holiday calendar. Whether you’re running a personal blog or a brand media, being in the know of approaching events and occasions will allow you to quickly generate ideas for thematic content. In addition to can’t miss holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, there are also many other occasions that can serve as a great starting point for a single article or an entire series.
As holiday-related content is a surefire way to engage with your audience and boost traffic to your blog, try to look for occasions that would relate to your blog’s theme. For instance, on Depositphotos blog we cover three main topics – design, marketing, and photography. While creating a content plan for August, we found out that August 19 is World Photography Day. To inspire and motivate our creative community (photographers in particular) we decided to reach out to professionals from around the world and ask them what makes photography special to them. As a result, we published a thought-provoking piece that got thousands of shares on social media and encouraged photographers to continue creating.
2. Explore Google Trends
Another way to find ideas for articles is to explore popular topics in Google Trends. It is a free tool (a treasury of ideas) that helps you stay on the same page with your audience but can also bring more organic traffic to your platform.
Here’s how it works. You choose the location on the right top corner of the screen. Then you type in a request or a theme in the search field in the middle and press the loupe to see what’s trending. The tool has filters that allow you to explore the most relevant content on the topic and in a particular category as well. Thus, you get blog post ideas for almost every niche that you can later adjust according to formats that you feature on your platform.
In addition to trends search, you can also explore popular requests in real time and during the previous day. This tool is especially useful if you have a news category on your blog and need to stay on top of the latest events in the industry or in the world.
3. Surf on social media
A decade ago, we used social media to communicate with our friends and for entertainment. Today, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and even TikTok are more than just platforms to have fun. They are sources of inspiration and education for many. Social media is also full of content ideas that you can find on the feed and reinvent in your own manner.
However, simply surfing the feed or turning to news media accounts and other blogs on social media is not the only source of inspiration for content. Pinterest, TikTok, and, most importantly, Instagram are platforms that spot the birth of major trends and by being present there, you can be among first to notice an emerging tendency.
You can also analyze the content and trends on social media to build case studies and create unique research-based articles for your blog. If your target audience are Generation Z and Millennials, you can write a guide that would examine the difference between TikTok and recently introduced Instagram Reels. For older generations, for example, you can create lists of niche social media accounts worth exploring. The advantages of social media as a place to search for ideas do not end there but you already have something to start with.
4. Use keyword research tools
Keyword search tools are extremely useful when you need to optimize an article but also when you’re out of ideas or would like to better connect with your audience.
Let’s take Ahrefs and imagine that you need to write an article on social media marketing. The internet is flooded with guides and trends on the topic and you’d like to come up with more original and useful ideas for your target audience. You type in your request into the keyword search field and get transferred to the page with dozens of relevant topics that you can cover on your blog.
You can start your exploration under the “Keyword ideas by search volume” subtitle. It showcases the keywords (and article ideas) that have the same terms, questions people ask, as well as newly discovered topics. With one simple action and in a matter of seconds, you get these interesting blog post ideas on the topic of social media marketing:
- how to start a social media marketing agency
- how much does social media marketing cost
- impact of social media marketing on business
- social media marketing strategy
- social media marketing jobs
For more advanced users of keyword search tools, there are even more ways to find ideas for your articles. You can start by exploring a parenting topic and long-tail keywords that will give you a wider picture of topics related to social media marketing.
5. Draw inspiration from your competitors and their blogs
Today many businesses include blogging in their content marketing strategy. This gives you an opportunity to draw more attention to your product or service but also to get inspired by your competitors and their blogs. The simplest way to find content ideas on other blogs is to steal like an artist. In the book of the same name, a writer Austin Kleon suggests drawing inspiration from already existing ideas and reinventing them in your own way. This strategy can help you rank higher than your competitors on certain topics in Google but only in the case that you manage to produce truly useful and original content. Otherwise, this approach will work against you and your brand.
A better way to use your competitors’ blogs for your benefit is to explore the topics they have not covered and try to fill the gap with your content. For instance, if you and your rivals both write about graphic design and they have not covered the trends for the year, you can use this fact as an opportunity to become first and create high-quality content on the topic.
6. Read books and magazines on the topic
This simple advice is often neglected by copywriters who are used to turning to social media for blog post ideas. But traditional ways to draw inspiration remain effective nowadays as well.
When you’re reading a non-fiction book or a niche-specific magazine in your free time, don’t forget to make notes of all the ideas you come up with. You might not use them straight away but when you turn to them later, you might come up with an unusual way to cover the topic.
Frankly speaking, this is how some of the pieces on the Depositphotos blog appear. Reading dozens of articles in magazines on marketing and business that share advice on how to appeal to Millennials, we realized that there should be one place to which people could turn to if they want to understand different generations. We researched the topic further and created a guide ‘Generations Explained’ that gives an overview of every generation but also how to market to them.
7. Turn to old content on your blog
When you’re completely exhausted and don’t feel enthusiastic to look for ideas with the ways mentioned above, you can turn to your old content and think of how you can improve it.
You can simply update the articles you wrote a couple of years ago to make them relevant or ever-green. However, you can also rewrite the topic providing new statistics or seasonal updates. Did you cover social media trends in 2019? In 2020, you should also share them. Have you published a list of summer photography ideas? Why not create a similar article for the fall, winter, and spring? If you devote some time to scroll through your blog, you will realize that you can find new content ideas directly on your blog without going anywhere.
To finalize
Searching for blog post ideas is easier than you think. You can find them basically in everything that surrounds you, from social media to the blog you’re running. Try to keep track of all ideas that you stumble upon and remember that inspiration often comes in the process. It’s just waiting for you to start writing.
