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Finding topics for blog posts on an ongoing basis can be intimidating for beginner bloggers. But there are actually many ways that bloggers and content writers can find a never ending supply of content ideas.
Creating great content is critical and becoming even more important, not just for bloggers, but all website owners. Great content will get you higher search engine rankings from more links, increased visitors and subscribers, and credibility.
So in this post I tried to create the most comprehensive list of the best ideas for finding blog content topics. You don’t have to use them all, but find a few that work for you and be sure to bookmark this post in case you need more ideas in the future.
Ways to Source Content Ideas
Inspiration from Other Content Sources
1. Other Blogs in Your Niche – Follow other blogs in your niche using an RSS reader like Feedly. This will give you an idea on topics that your target audience finds interesting.
2. Email Newsletters – Sign up for email newsletters in your niche and see what type of topics they cover.
3. Spinoff other posts in your niche – Find a post that is interesting to you that someone else has written. Link to it and then provide your own opinion about it or additional comments to expand the article’s scope.
4. Yahoo Answers & other Q&A sites – You can get ideas from searching Yahoo Answers, Quora, Askville, and similar sites and sometimes just looking at the questions that are being asked in the category of interest.
5. Content Sharing Sites – Sites like Hubpages and Squidoo have a community of writers posting interesting content. You can even see the level of commenting and engagement on these articles and browse by niche.
6. Blog Aggregators – Check out blog aggregators like AllTop.com and view topics in your niche.
7. Book excerpts – Publish and comment on excerpts from your own books and infoproducts.
8. Public Domain Content – Browse through public domain content for ideas.
9. Out of print books – Look at out of print books and the topics they cover for ideas.
10. Slideshare – Browse slideshare presentations slides for ideas for content
11. Evergreen content – Evergreen content is content that will always be useful and generally never change, like how to plan a wedding.
12. Article Sites – Browse topics on article sites like Constant content or Ezine articles. Sites like Constant Content are likely to be better than free sites like Ezine Articles because the content is heavily moderated and they are extremely picky about the quality.
13. Amazon / Books – You can get a ton of ideas from books you read or just surfing Amazon. Create a wishlist of books you find interesting.
14. Book and infoproduct reviews – You can get ideas from reviews people have written on Amazon and other sites about your topic of interest. Sometimes these reviews contain unique ideas that are not even in the book.
15. Review something – Review a book or product in your niche and comment on the lessons learned from it.
Your Audience and Other People
16. Ask Your Audience – A simple way to get more ideas on what to write on is to simply ask your audience. You can do this in a blog post, by email, social media, or any other medium in which you can engage your audience. In fact, some blogs do posts with only Ask an Expert Q&A.
17. Ask a Friend – Asking your friends, relatives, co-workers, and other people around you can be a good way to brainstorm ideas, especially if they are interested and knowledgeable about the topic of your blog.
18. Blog Comments on Your Blog – Sometimes people’s blog comments and questions can be a good source for future blog posts.
19. Blog Comments on Other Blogs – You can also get ideas and inspiration from comments that people have posted on other blogs in your niche.
20. Experiences of others – Sometimes you can use other people’s stories and experiences and convey observations and lessons from their stories.
21. Contest – Hold a contest that will encourage reader participation. You can create several blog posts as your contest progresses.
22. Content Mastermind Groups – Form your own content mastermind group with a group of bloggers that you can share ideas with. Be sure to meet or talk regularly to keep the group active and share information and ideas.
23. Survey or Poll Your Audience – Surveying your audience can be a great way to create unique content for your site. Polls are another option and sometimes a simple poll on your site can provide some interesting info from site visitors.
24. Google Surveys – Google offers a way to survey people called Google surveys. You can even use demographic data to get specific about what type of audience you want to target. Here’s a quick walk-through of how to use Google surveys.
25. Outsourced Ideas – You can actually hire someone to think of ideas for you, especially if they are experienced or knowledgeable about your niche. It may take awhile to find the right person, but it is definitely worth it if you do.
26. Crowdsourced Ideas – There are ways that you can pay to get ideas from other people. Amazon Mechanical Turk can be used as a source of inexpensive ideas, although it will be helpful if you provide a little guidance on how to find these ideas in your job description.
27. Meetup – Host a meetup and share your experiences. Ask attendees for ideas or learn what topics they are interested in. Here’s an article about hosting an effective meetup.
28. Networking – Networking with people in real life can be a good source of ideas. Ask them questions and pay attention to what they talk about when you are discussing the topic of your niche.
29. Create an Interactive Experience – Sometimes you can increase engagement by creating an interactive experience or even a game for your readers. Like creating a quiz and asking them to guess which ideas are right or wrong.
30. Conference Agendas – See what top conferences in your industry are focusing on and blog about those topics. Most conferences will list their agendas on their websites, so you probably don’t even have to attend.
31. Events – Asides from Meetups, there may also be other events about your niche. You can often get ideas from talking to people at these events and watching presentations.
32. Guest Posting – Allow other experts to guest post on your site. This is good for both parties as it allows then to gain recognition while you get content created for your readers for free. Sites like My Blog Guest and Blogger Linkup can help you find prospects.