There are a lot of ways you can find new content for your blog, but as a professional blogger (i.e. someone who gets paid to blog for themselves and others), I can tell you that there are better ways than others.
Now, no way is fool-proof. It will definitely depend on how much effort and time you’re willing to put towards getting ideas, but these are my 3 favorite ways to find content ideas for my blogs:
Competitor Research
Where better to look than your competitor’s websites? Seriously, this is one of my favorite ways to find new content ideas for your blog—it’s a source full of content that your audience is already reading and loving.
If you have access to a great SEO database like SEMrush, then searching your competitor’s website is incredibly easy. You simply punch in their website and see what people are reading.
Now, I don’t suggest just stealing topic ideas from your competitors unless you truly have something to add to the conversation—don’t be the person who just rephrases content from other people’s websites and call it a new idea—instead, I recommend searching for content gaps.
Content gaps essentially compare your website with your competitors and tell you what gaps exist between the two sites. Essentially, if there’s a topic similar to the ones that both sites regularly published that are missed, it’s a great opportunity.
Trends
I like searching Google Trends, but I don’t find it as easy as running a competitor search because there’s a little more guesswork involved. While you don’t have to predict trends—Google will do that for you—you do have to know where to start looking and how to read the trending charts.
Checking out trends is a great way to find topics for seasonal content or content within a specific vertical. For example, checking out fashion trends can be a great way to get new ideas for your fashion blog. Likewise, when you’re planning your holiday season, trends can help you choose the topics you write about.
Overally, trends are a great way to come up with big overarching themes like “Christmas decorations” that you can then fine tune using another content idea method. Trends is also a great method for planning content that’s a bit further out.
Keyword Research
Everyone goes to keyword research as their top method for finding topics, but in my opinion, it’s a much better way to confirm a topic idea. Keyword searches really only work if you know what you want to talk about—if you want to get inspiration, it’s less helpful.
Keyword research is a great way to find easier content to rank on if you have an idea of what you want to write about. Often times, especially when you’re building your street cred blog wise, it’s a better bet to optimize for a word that has a lower monthly search number but also has a lower difficulty level.
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Tae started out as a journalist before following the money into the corporate world. But it turns out that the grass isn’t always greener and now you can find her spending most of her time writing about all the things she loves. Namely, money, travel and business with a hefty dose of self-deprecating humor. She is a podcast fanatic, blogging aficionado and loves to find new ways to turn passions into cold hard cash!
