Annaliese Henwood — December 19, 2016 Follow @MktgInnovator
When you’re trying to maintain consistent website traffic, one of the most important tasks you have is choosing a blog topic that your target audience cares about. Choosing a blog topic can be quite the task when you have other responsibilities or writer’s block. That’s where these 5 tips can come in handy.
Use these 5 tips to find blog topics that people will want to read about. Not just people in general but the people you want to attract for your business.
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1) Keyword research
Your blog has a purpose, and that purpose should help guide your blog topic generation. One way you can expand upon your blog topics is by doing a good amount of keyword research.
You might think you already know what keywords you want to use, but are those keywords popular or targeted enough? Are they topics your target audience is searching for? Keyword research is essential for creating the right content for the right audience.
You’ll find that there are many ways to research your target keywords. You can invest in an extensive, paid tool or simply use Google’s free keyword tool. One of the most popular keyword research tools blog owners use is SEMrush. It has a lot to offer bloggers who want to know everything they can about their keywords. One other free tool to recommend is the SERPS keyword research database, which is definitely worth trying out for a basic keyword review.
Key Takeaway:
You’re not the best judge of what keywords to use for generating topic ideas. The only way you’ll know what keywords will produce the best topics is to do the necessary research.
2) Audience research
When you’re choosing a blog topic, are you keeping your audience in mind? Your topics should appeal to the right people in order to reach your chosen blog goals. How do you find these appealing topics? Research your target audience.
When creating reader personas, you’re better able to understand what their needs are and have the information you need to choose the right future topics. This is a thorough development process you can follow for developing reader personas (via Blogger Sidekick). It gives you what you need for this element of audience research.
Beyond your reader personas, there’s more you can do to research your audience. You can find out what topics work by doing an audit of your existing content. Or, you can conduct a survey with your existing subscribers. It all depends on whether you have existing content and contacts or if you’re new to blogging.
Key Takeaway:
Your audience knows what they want to see on your blog, so they are a highly valuable source of topic ideas. When you research them and their pain points, you’ll find more blog topics to choose from.
3) Competitor content analysis
Your competitors may or may not have an advantage over you with their blog content. Either way, you can learn from their successes and failures. A competitor content analysis is a great way to see which topics are working and which are falling flat.
Buzzsumo offers a thorough tool for competitor analysis to help users see what they are doing right or wrong with their activity. With this tool, you’ll have the information you need to collect topic ideas for your blog.
Another couple ways of analyzing your competition for better topic ideas is to:
- Examine their backlinks. Moz offers a tool for this that is worth a try.
- You can also use your competitor’s social influence via content shares to gauge topic interest level.
Key Takeaway:
Your competitors could be doing much of the topic generation for you. You just need to monitor what is working for them and what’s not. Where they fail, you can succeed, giving you a competitive advantage.
4) Have a topic inventory
When you’re creating blog content, you don’t have time to be finding your topic with every article. That’s why having a regularly-updated topic inventory is truly invaluable to bloggers.
Sometimes, you may want to have a calendar that schedules your blog topics by week, etc. One of the best ways to take this approach is to create your own content calendar. Alternatively, you can use a paid tool that does much of the manual work for you, such as CoSchedule.
Instead of a calendar form, you can also create your own list of topics simply without all the bells and whistles. It doesn’t have to take much to have your own topic inventory.
Key Takeaway:
Save time by maintaining a healthy supply of workable topic ideas. Always be flexible with this collection because topics may expire and other ideas might take their place.
5) Content topic generators
One of the absolute best ways for choosing a blog topic is to use headline generators. There are several free tools for this that you may find useful. If you’re struggling with writer’s block, you can find a healthy flow of great topics as well as the direction to take with them using one of the available tools.
Content topic generators are amazing because they give you two important essentials:
- A workable headline
- A topic idea
These services can snap you out of writer’s block quickly while giving you what you need to get your thoughts onto paper.
Key Takeaway:
If you want to generate topics in headline form without paying a dime, try out one of the free tools available. You can best use these tools when you’re struggling more with writer’s block than anything else.
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Are you ready to start creating content people want to read? Choosing a blog topic that your target audience wants to read about isn’t easy, but these 5 techniques can streamline the process for you. Give them a go to see if they work for you, and do everyone this favor:
Leave a comment with what technique(s) helped you and whether you have any other ideas to share. I’m always available for you if you want to contact me directly with any questions or input.
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