Sourcing Article Ideas

In general, the content you write should solve a problem that someone is searching for. We’ll have you do keyword research as part of the project to find the biggest problems, using data.

But sometimes, you’ll want to write something without thinking about search results, just to keep your existing audience aware of you and delight them with special knowledge you uniquely have.

If you’re looking for go-to content ideas—beyond doing search keyword analysis—here’s where to start.

Google keyword trends

Do this after you initially come up with keywords to target (we have you do this in our project).

Go to Google Trends. Look at the search volume trends for the keywords that show up related to your topic/industry. Is anything gaining popularity, or is anything spiking?

Trending on Twitter

Follow people in your industry and see what types of content they’re sharing, and check the trending section to see what people are talking about now.

Ask your target audience (your customers)

Include a topic suggestion form on your site.

At the end of the articles you write, ask people to share article ideas either in comments, emails, or through the form.

Repackage content

Find the news aggregators (e.g. Reddit, Product Hunt) that are influential in your market. Monitor them for content that flies under the radar—due perhaps to an unenticing title, boring intro paragraph, or poor writing. Then rewrite that content into something more engaging. (And credit your sources.)

Roundups

Sign up to receive notifications from every blog, newsletter, and Quora topic in your market. (If you sign up for these alerts using Throttle, it'll aggregate all this spam into periodic email summaries.)

Whenever a topic trends throughout these digests, consider writing a roundup review. Summarize what's happening in a concise, easy-to-reference post.

Competitor piggybacking

Make a list of the companies in your market. Then, install the Buzzsumo Chrome extension.

When you visit each website on your list, the extension will automatically detect their total engagement. Click on the extension's icon. It'll show which of your competitors' posts received the most Tweets, Facebook Likes, and more. This is an effective proxy for determining which type of content most successfully appeals to their audience, which can otherwise be difficult to assess.

Then write about these same topics but add something unique to warrant your entry into the blogosphere.

AnswerThePublic.com

Enter your product's keywords into this tool, and it'll show you which questions people commonly ask about it. Then write blog posts answering these questions.