If you’re a business owner who’s new to blogging or even if you’ve been at it for a while, coming up with ideas that your audience wants to read and that are good for your SEO doesn’t always come naturally. And if you’re an expert in your field, you may have so many ideas that you’re quickly overwhelmed.
Fortunately, the internet is here to help and so are we, with 3 free ways to find content inspiration for your website.
Topsy
Topsy is a social search engine that is based primarily around Twitter. You can search tweets, links, videos, photos and influencers – all in real time. You can also search through social analytics and trends to see which topics are trending or even check their relevancy over time.
Using Topsy to uncover content ideas for your blog is incredibly simple and in most cases will literally yield hundreds, if not thousands, of results. You can narrow down your results by selecting the timeframe of the content, language, and the type of content such as video or links. Select “links” and scan through the headlines until something sparks an idea. The key is to use this resource as inspiration, not a means to reproduce an article that someone has already written.
Protip: Once you find a topic for your next post, don’t just think of content in terms of blog posts. Instead, consider creating an ebook, infographic or video – you’ll have a lot more room to be original and authentic.
Slideshare
Slideshare is a little known site that’s great for helping businesses capture leads and gain exposure with well thought out and visual content. It truly is a good place to display some of your best content, and not just for the purpose of pointing yet another link at your site. But, one thing that many people may not be aware of is that Slideshare is also a good place to find ideas for your next blog post. Or, better yet, series of blog posts.
You see, with Slideshare, people are actually uploading slidedecks that can range from 10 to over 100 slides. You may find a topic you like and once you’ve scanned through a slidedeck or two, have an idea for a not just one, but a number of related posts, videos, infographics or ebooks.
Protip: Slideshare allows you to search by file type. This allows you to search documents, videos or infographics to make it easier to find what you need.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google webmaster tools is one of my favorite places to find ideas for content because it allows you to see the performance of existing content. By doing so, you can either piggyback off of already well performing content or fill in the gap in areas that need more information.
To use Google Webmaster Tools for this purpose, you will have had to have it installed on your site and verified within Google Analytics for at least a few months so that you have some data to work with.
There are two places you’ll want to look at in your GA account to help you get ideas: a section under Search Engine Optimization called “Queries” and a section under Behavior called “Site Content”.
The first location will show you keywords that people have searched for that you’ve shown up for and also, you’re average position for the word in Google. You may find keywords here that you’re showing up for that have a good search volume but you aren’t near page one. Some of these keywords may be worth creating content for.
In the second case, you might notice that certain blog posts are getting a lot of organic traffic. In this case, you could write another post that is related or more detailed on the topic.
Protip: Optimize these posts by creating content such as ebooks, infographics and whitepapers that can drive more traffic to the page and act as a lead magnet.
When it comes to creating online content for your business, you don’t have to go it alone. The internet boasts a wealth of resources that can help get your creative juices flowing.
Hey! If you found these tips helpful, download our ebook for B2B business owners and marketers “The Ultimate Guide to B2B Blogging”. It’s full of more tips like these that can help you take your business blog from good to great!
