Sales Driven Marketing Hub

It’s one of the toughest parts of being a blogger or content marketer—coming up with blog post ideas. With the amount of content being produced only increasing, and with 70 percent of B2B marketers saying they’re creating more content than they did a year ago, there’s a skyrocketing demand for content ideas.

via the Content Marketing Institute

So how do you come up with great blog post ideas that will capture readers’ attention and increase your site authority? Here are six ways to generate awesome ideas and reap the rewards.

1. Blog Comments

A main goal of your content should be to answer questions your prospective customers have. One great way of doing this is to answer queries that readers pose in your blog comments.

Sift through past comments and see if there are any useful questions you can turn into blog content. Don’t forget to let the inquirer know you took the time to answer his or her question in-depth after your blog post is published!

2. New Research

There are a lot of companies doing awesome research out there. Find out what some of those businesses are in your field and stay up to date by subscribing to their newsletters and/or blog.

When the company publishes new findings, craft a post that puts the research in simple terms and outlines the benefits of this new data for the reader.

3. Current Events

What better way to get your content a bunch of views than to tie it in with current events? Check out what’s trending on Twitter, Facebook, and the like. If it relates to your business or ties into your industry in any way, craft a post around that topic and share away!

4. Keyword Tools

You can use tools like the Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, SEO Chat’s keyword tool, Moz’s Keyword Difficulty tool and Hubspot’s keyword tool to find blog post ideas.

By knowing what your prospects are searching for, you’ll be able to create content that gets you found on search engine results pages (SERPs).

5. Autosuggest

Another way to find out what your prospective clients or customers are searching for online is to use Google’s Autosuggest feature. Simply head over to Google and start typing in a keyword or phrase. Google Autosuggest will then automatically fill in the rest of the search bar with the most popular queries. 

You can also scroll down to the bottom of the results page to view more related searches (and get more ideas!).

6. Forums & Communities

Checking out online forums and communities is another great way to get content ideas. For commonly asked questions, check out Quora. You can find questions that are being asked that relate to your industry, and answer them with blog posts. 

Other online communities in your field will also yield some great ideas. For example, I recently wrote a post about the best opening lines for sales emails from a discussion that took place over at GrowthHackers.com. 

Conclusion

Generating blog post ideas doesn’t have to be an exhausting task. In addition to the aforementioned strategies, use your expertise as a jumping off point. Are you really good at LinkedIn marketing? Write about it. Did you just learn a new hack for content marketing? Write about it.

Remember, the more value you provide, the more your content will help your readers and the better it will perform.