Where to look for Content Ideas?

[Guest]

This post is deleted!

[Mrupp44]

I just found this the other day, it has a lot of directions you can go in to find content ideas - http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/05/blog-ideas-for-posts-tools.html

Good luck!

[Modi]

Look out for similar sites in the targeted domain

• whats the target audience you serving.

• which are the keywords in similar segment

• what are the google trends of emerging keywords or hot search topics

may write in accordingly.. All the best

[Chris.Menke]

Take a main content idea, think of something that seems like its totally unrelated to that main idea, then come up with and write a story that serves as a common thread between the two.  Works every time.

[Instabill]

Guest blogging!

By this, I mean accept guest blog posts to your website in exchange for submitting guest posts to other sites. This will help you obtain new articles for your website while generating backlinks for your own site, which raises your website's PageRank. From experience, I think you will even find inspiration for new blog posts on your own site in topics your guest bloggers submit to you.

My favorite site to visit is MyBlogGuest.com. You can search for guest bloggers and let the community know that you are accepting guest posts.

Additionally, I think you should research websites that offer the same content as you. Search back several months and even years into their archives for inspiration. Maybe you can even relate something that happened one year ago to a recent SEO innovation. The possibilities are endless!

I hope this has helped!

Regards,
Meghan

[Instabill]

I love that site! PracticalECommerce.com is another good site for businesses too.

[PhilNottingham]

Hi Charles,

Rather than diving straight in and trying to find inspiration for content, I'd actually suggest you take a step back and develop a process for determining your blog's editorial calendar in the long term.

You need to start by identifying who your audience for this content is - then look at what they care about, where the content gaps are in your niche, what USP you could potentially offer and thereby develop a real identity for your blog.

If you manage to get these ideas nailed down, the idea generation process should be easy for you. You can do keyword research to find potential topics, respond to industry news, contact a group of your audience to ask what they're specifically interested in knowing about etc etc..

I think process can often be a scary word, but the point of processes is to make you more efficient and for something like working out editorial ideas for a blog - it's absolutely the best way to ensure you're continually creating things your audience will care about.

SEO is obviously a very crowded market place in terms of blogs - this gives you both advantages and disadvantages. Advantages in that you have loads of examples of what's been successful and unsuccessful before and can therefore quickly find some potential content gaps - i.e. I think there's space for some good blogs about the intersection between UX and SEO. Your disadvantage is that it'll be tough to get your voice heard among the rest of the good blogs out there, so you really need to nail down, at least in your own mind, why anyone should read your blog - so you can create content that fits in with this mantra and therefore creates an identity for you.

Regarding YouTube content - I'd recommend using the YouTube keyword tool to work out what people are searching for and therefore see if any topics you could talk about/create a video on have search volume. If there are opportunities there, YouTube can be a great way to increase awareness around your blog.

Hope that's useful,

Phil.