We all know the importance of regularly publishing new and interesting content on our blogs. And if you’ve had a blog for any length of time, you probably also understand the challenge of having to come up consistently with new topics and ideas.
You may find yourself asking:
“What can I write that hasn’t already been written a thousand times before?”
“What topics are of interest to my target market?”
“How can I create content that gets my readers so excited they can’t stop sharing, liking, and commenting on it?”
This post will walk you through the process of generating new content ideas on a regular basis. By drawing on the strategies below, you should be able to feel confident in your ability to devise interesting and meaningful topics on a consistent basis that your readers will love.
1. Make use of Facebook interest lists
You may already be using Facebook interest lists to aggregate the reams of content you receive each day in your newsfeed. If you’re not familiar with interest lists, here’s a brief overview: By setting up lists, you can click on your customized links (found in the left sidebar) to view posts only from the people or pages that are part of that list.
For instance, if you’re in the social media industry, you may have separate lists for “Facebook Marketers,” “Social Media News,” and “Top Twitter Accounts.” When you’d like to view posts and updates only from people on those lists, simply click on the link in your sidebar, and voila! … customized content at a glance.
Once you have your lists set up, it’s simple to use them to generate content ideas. You can:
- Identify a trending topic and write a blog post about it to
- Share breaking news or viral posts with your community.
- Keep an eye on what your competitors are posting and write a post that adds your perspective to the conversation
2. Visit Reddit to identify trending topics
A quick visit to Reddit may be just what you need to inspire your next blog post. As content is voted “up” or “down” by Reddit users, the most interesting and popular topics wend their way to the top of the list.By scanning through the Reddit homepage, you can quickly see themes and topics that are hitting a nerve with readers. To find popular topics that are specifically relevant to your blog, you may want to search by “subreddits.“For instance, if your blog is about German Shepherds, you could search for popular content about this specific breed of dog. The point is not to copy content that has already been written; it’s to see which topics and themes are already getting traction in your niche, and use them as a jumping-off point for your own unique content.
3. Use the 2-hour blog post formula
One of our favorite methods for finding new content ideas is inspired by serial Internet entrepreneur Neil Patel’s blog post, A Simple Plan for Writing a Powerful Blog Post in Less Than 2 Hours.
Briefly, his formula for finding new content ideas is:
- Create a list of the most popular and influential blogs in your niche.
- From this list, find the most engaging blog posts in terms of likes, shares, and comments.
- Take one of the blog posts, and “spin” the title. For instance, if the title is “5 Ways to Make Spaghetti,” you could tweak the title and change it to “7 Tips for Creating Your Own Signature Spaghetti Sauce.”
- Write the post!(For a full description of the 2-hour blog post formula, please visit the page linked above).
Again, the point is not to copy existing content, but rather to build off ideas and themes that have already proved to be popular in your niche. This post should give you the inspiration you need to find new topics, consistently, that will get your audience reading, sharing, and commenting.If you still would prefer to get a little help with your content generation, we can help! Check out our full list of web content writing services.
How do you come up with new content ideas for your blog? Do you have any great strategies to add to the list above?
