How To Generate Content Ideas.

Understanding how to generate content ideas is an essential skill for any content marketer, blogger or copywriter. As marketers, we need to be constantly thinking of fresh content ideas to publish on our blogs.

When it comes to marketing for your business, you will want to be publishing new and relevant content at least once a week if not more often. This means in order to keep up with your demand for content, you’re going to have a lot of it coming from different areas.

Right now you’re probably in need of content ideas for your blog. Content ideas are a must for bloggers who want to consistently create new content on their blog. Without content ideas, you may never figure out what to write about next.

That’s why I’ve put together this list of content generation strategies.

“Our job is not to create content. Our job is to change the world of the people who consume it. “– Andrea Fryrear

View your Analytics Data.

To begin generating new ideas, start by viewing your Analytics data.

Analyzing data is a great way to discover what your audience wants to read, which makes it the perfect place to start when you’re searching for new content ideas.

Look over your analytics data (including any free tools or websites that offer insight into the way users interact with your website), and keep an eye out for any patterns in how users engage with your site and what posts get the most attention.

If you’re using WordPress, you can download the MonsterInsights plugin for detailed information about user behaviour on your website.

Search for Ideas on Social Media.

Social media is a great place to look for content ideas. That’s because social media users are all about sharing their experiences, and opinions and engaging in debates.

Here’s how you can use social media to generate content ideas:

Follow industry experts on Twitter. You never know when they might say or share something interesting that can spark an idea for a relevant post.

Check what’s trending on Google and Twitter at the moment. If there is something related to your industry, you might be able to write something about it from your own perspective.

Go through hashtags that are relevant to your target audience or industry, and see if you can find some interesting discussions going on there.

Create different Twitter lists so you can easily follow people who share a lot of information in your niche.

Check out Facebook groups where people are talking about topics related to your niche—that way, you can learn what questions people have that aren’t being answered right now, and what pain points they experience as well.

Pinterest boards and pins are also full of content inspiration—just follow the right people and check their pins regularly for new stuff that you could repurpose into great blog posts!

Search relevant keywords on Instagram and TikTok. It will help you discover photos and reels with the same keywords which will give you some inspiration!

Look for Extraordinary News in the Industry.

It’s true that the internet is full of millions upon millions of ideas.

But don’t just scroll through your social media accounts to find inspiration. Do what real writers do: be a reader. Look at sources that are more relevant to your industry and your target audience (including forums, niche-specific sites, and trade publications), so you can start to naturally generate content ideas that are both useful and have a chance of ranking on Google.

Pick out topics you’re interested in reading more about, or that seem like they could be fleshed out into a rich article with many opinions, ideas, and pieces of advice. This can help you produce quality content that people will actually want to read!

Do Keyword Research and Analyze Your Competitors.

Do keyword research. Google’s Keyword Planner is a great place to start keyword research as it not only suggests keywords and provides estimated search volume, but also predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms.

In order to determine the demand for your products, look at what your competitors are promoting.  Think about what your audience wants to know: What questions do they have? Are there any gaps in their knowledge? Maybe they want to know how to make their life better or how to solve a problem that they’re facing.

There are some handy online tools that can help with this process listed here, but ultimately, you want your content to be valuable and informative if you want people to link back to it and share it on social media.

Take a Look at Your Site Search Data.

Your website’s search data is showing you what your visitors are looking for – and as a result, you can use this information to discover new content ideas.

When it comes to finding content ideas, many people rely on Google Keyword Planner, which identifies searches specifically related to the products or services your business offers. But if someone is already on your site (or has been there before), you can make more informed decisions about the topics they might be interested in reading about.

For instance, let’s say your business manufactures garden sheds. And while that may be something some of your customers are searching for on Google, it would also make sense that people who have visited your website before might be looking for how-to guides or other useful articles related to garden sheds such as “How to insulate your shed” or “How to build a shed from scratch”

Use Question-and-Answer Sites.

Quora: You can get some great questions answered here. The types of questions here may be useful for generating titles for blog posts or content material.

Yahoo! Answers: This site is filled with questions on almost any topic imaginable.

Fluther: This site is free to use and is moderated slightly more for quality than Quora or Yahoo Answers. 

StackExchange: Although originally a forum to ask and answer questions about programming, StackExchange has now evolved and has developed its own general question-and-answer network. 

Use the Latest Trends to Come Up With New Ideas.

The easiest way to come up with new ideas is to look at what other people are interested in.

One of the best places to see what’s trending on social media sites. You can go to for example Facebook’s Trending list or Twitter’s Trends and see what topics are popular right now. Google Trends will also enable you to see what people are searching for in real-time.

Google Autocomplete will show you the top searches related to a particular keyword. This is useful because it shows you exactly what people are looking for, and it also gives you some great titles that you can use for your own content (more on this later).

Generate Ideas Using Online Tools.

Answerthepublic.com is a good tool to use to identify questions people are asking. If you want content that ranks well in search, this is a good place to start because there’s likely lots of competition for these terms, which means that if you create content that answers these questions, you’re likely to rank well in search engines since there are a lot of searches out there for these terms. Also, if you really have no idea where to start and don’t even know what your audience wants or needs, this is a good place to go.

You can just put in some basic keywords from your industry and get all kinds of ideas on stuff people are looking for related to those topics. This should help spark some new original content ideas for your blog or site based on the needs of your audience.

Buzzsumo can be used as an online tool for generating content ideas by showing the most popular content on certain topics. It will show the number of shares each article got on social media and also has an option where it will show what were the most shared articles within a certain domain.

This can give insight into what types of content perform best on different platforms so that you can plan accordingly when creating future pieces of work such as videos or podcasts instead of just writing articles all day.

“When taking a content-first approach, our job as marketers is not to create more content … it’s to create the minimum amount of content with the maximum amount of results.” — Robert Rose

It Is All About Planning

How to generate content ideas is the million-dollar question. What is important to note though is that these strategies are all designed with a different purpose in mind. The strategies mentioned above should be used depending on what you’re trying to achieve, and how much time you have available.

In the end, it’s all about planning ahead. And if you’re planning for next week or next month, it might be worth adopting a few of the above tactics.

I hope that this article will help you find content inspiration for your next project or article.

Got value from this post? Then please comment and share.

Regards

Morgan Lewis

P.S If you want to know the common mistakes to avoid when starting an online business, then download my PDF here.