Every so often, the perfect blog post idea drops out of the sky and into your lap. But for many small business owners and entrepreneurs, it’s rarely that easy.

Creating and maintaining a blog takes time and effort — and finding fresh new blog post ideas is no exception.

But with the right tools and inspiration, you can hunt down great new content ideas with ease. It’s all about knowing where and how to look.

 

Establish your audience

Before you start thinking of ideas, you need to know who you’re writing for and what they want to know. This will help you stay focused on your objective.

Consider the age, gender, income, wants and needs of your ideal buyer. Note these down. Now you have a broad picture of who your reader is, you should be able to focus on finding the most relevant content for them.

Knowing your audience is crucial to any good content marketing strategy. If you don’t know who you’re writing for yet, figure this out before you go any further.

Establish your objectives

Once you know who your readers are, you can start to hone in on your objective. Do you want to help them solve a problem? Spark their imagination? Educate them about a subject? All of these — and many more — are valid objectives in your blog.

You’ll also want to consider your objective from a business perspective. Do you want better SEO? To be seen as a thought leader? Or shareable social media content?

When you start searching for blog post ideas, hundreds will suddenly dawn on you — so knowing your objectives will help you sift through your ideas to find the golden ones.

 

8 ways to find great new content ideas

With your audience and objectives nailed down, you’re ready to start hunting for content ideas that will help your readers find your website with ease. Use these 8 tools and techniques to find brilliant new blog post ideas.

1. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner should be the first port of call for any business blogger looking to boost their SEO.

Open up the tool and enter some keywords associated with your product or service. Keyword planner will then tell you how often these terms are searched each month, and offer alternative keywords that could also be relevant to your business.

Choose the best keywords and form titles around them, using common phrasing like “how to” and “10 ways to.”

2. Google Trends

If you’re looking for ideas on a broader scale, take a look at Google Trends. You can search the popularity of your entered subjects and search terms over time, and use this information to plan future blog posts.

Google Trends also offers geographical search data, so it’s ideal if you’re looking to reach a global audience. Plus, it recommends other relevant topics, helping you find other topics you can blog about that you may not have considered.

3. Reddit

Reddit is a treasure trove for business bloggers. Find the relevant subreddit for your industry — trust me, there will be one — then sort by new and hot posts to see which posts Redditors are most interested in. You can then use popular topics and regularly-asked questions to inform your next blog title.

This is a great way for businesses to find blog post ideas, particularly in modern innovative sectors such as cryptocurrency and renewable energy.

4. Your existing content

Sift through your existing content to see if it sparks inspiration for a new post. Many blog posts only address some of the key questions on a particular topic, so if you feel there’s more you can offer on a subject, elaborate on it in your next post.

Repurposing content is a valuable skill, but self-plagiarism definitely isn’t. When searching through your previous content, resist the urge to copy and paste chunks of text. It’s not valuable to your readers (or search engines) to see the same content repeated throughout your website, so use your existing content for inspiration only.

5. Answer The Public

Answer The Public is a useful tool for finding popular search terms around a particular topic. It’s much more intuitive than Google Keyword Planner, although not as detailed. You only get 3 free searches each day, but used wisely these can give you plenty of great blog post ideas.

6. HubSpot Blog Title Generator

If you’ve already got some potential topics to write about, but just need to find the right title, use Hubspot’s blog title generator tool. Enter up to 5 subjects and receive 5 blog title ideas for these terms.

These are just ideas, so you shouldn’t use them blindly. Make sure they align with your audience and your objective before you settle on a title.

7. Social media

If you’re part of an active social media community, ask your followers and connections what they’d most like to read about from you. This is a great way to engage with your readers online, and show that you value their input and suggestions.

Trial Twitter and Instagram polls as well as open questions to find out the best way to communicate with your followers and get ideas for your next blog post.

8. Current events and trends

Everything from national holidays to industry news can be a source of inspiration for business bloggers. Take a look at the calendar and see what days of interest are coming up. As well as the big ones like Christmas and Eid, think World Book Day and National Apprenticeship Week.

You can then plan, write and distribute your blog posts in plenty of time for the big day.

 

A foolproof 3-step plan to writing a blog post

Coming up with blog post ideas is just the first step. You then need to write the thing.

Take a look at this 3-step blog writing formula that breaks the process down into simple, manageable chunks.

 

You may also like: