Creating content is a never-ending task, so it can be pretty difficult to continue coming up with fresh ideas - especially if you're writing your gazillionth content strategy.
Finding new topics and titles can sometimes seem impossible, so you can be forgiven if you've ever used a crummy topic-generator tool or if you've created titles solely aimed at Google's keyword bots instead of your real-life readers. But, for longevity, you and I both know, these techniques won't work. You'll lose your search engine ranking, readers, and eventually profits will start to decline.
That's why, in this article, we're going to show you 5 easy ways to find awesome topics and titles for your content strategy.
1. Use a Keyword Tool
Although it's important not to focus too much on the emphasis of keywords, you still need to include them within your content and your content titles. By using a keyword tool, you can not only ensure that you're using relevant keywords that'll increase your SEO, but you can also get some great title ideas.
For the purposes of this article, let's say we own an online bakery website. We do home deliveries of pastries, make bespoke cakes for weddings and birthdays - all that sweet stuff.
Get it?
Sweet?!
Bakery?!
Nevermind...
A great and very easy-to-use keyword tool is SEMrush. You simply type in your chosen keyword - for example, 'cupcakes' - and you get a wealth of data, like this:
All of the results are live and allow you to see the most popular keywords for your country. This, in turn, can give you title ideas.
For example, above we can see that "cupcake recipes" is a popular keyword, so you could write content with the following titles:
- 10 Easy Cupcake Recipes to try at Home
- 3 Cupcake Recipes anyone can Follow
- Our Favourite Cupcake Recipes
2. Find out What's Hot and What's Not
Just as SEMrush can show you how popular certain keywords are, Buzzsumo helps you find the most shared content to give you inspiration for successful content topics.
Typing "cupcakes" into Buzzsumo delivers the following results:
The top result, with a total of 8.4K shares this week alone, is: "Make These Adorable Pug Cupcakes For Someone You Love". The next result, with a total of 3.5K shares, is: "Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate-Peanut Butter Ganache".
These show that the popular topics this week are, 'pugs' - or more generally, dogs - and 'vegan'. Such insights can help you when it comes to creating your next content strategy.
Brian Dean's 'Skyscraper Technique' famously advocates using the leading content in your niche as a starting point for your own great content.
The idea is simple; use software like BuzzSumo to identify high-performing content, then critically analyze that content and see if there's anything you could do to improve upon the content provided. Could it be brought up to date? Improved aesthetically? Made even more comprehensive?
Once you're done, you already have an action plan for the piece - you can theoretically approach every single website or blogger who shared the original content and say, 'Hey, I noticed you shared this great content and it was well received by your audience...well, I made something even better, why not share mine?' This takes a lot of the guesswork and 'hit and hope' strategy away from your content marketing efforts.
3. Check out the Competition
Another easy way to get inspiration for topics and titles for your content strategy is by checking out what's working for the competition (and avoiding what doesn't).
Take a look at your direct/indirect competitor's content and even expand your search further. For our online bakery example, we took to Google to find some example competitors:
Looking at their content gives an interesting insight to what kind of titles and topics grab attention:
4. Brainstorm with your Team
If you're stuck for topic and title ideas for your content strategy, then brainstorming with other members in your team might help. Brainstorming is an easy (and often fun) way to generate multiple ideas in a short space of time.
For further inspiration, here are three great ways to brainstorm new ideas with your team:
1. Create a Word Storm
Start by writing down one word - perhaps a popular keyword that you have overused. Next, write down whatever words come to mind when you think of that original word. In a few minutes, you should have several new topic and title ideas.
2. Get Visual
Using visual prompts is a great way to get more from your brainstorming. Before a brainstorming session, ask your team members to bring 5 industry related images with them. Examine the images together and see if they spark any ideas.
3. Get Out of the Office
Neurobiologists believe that enriched environments can actually speed up the rate at which the human brain creates new neurons and neural connections. So, if you can, getting out of the office will boost your brainstorming potential.
5. Search Forums
Forums are a great way to find out what content your potential customers are in need of right now. If the information isn't out there, or it's hard to find, then people will generally head to a forum to ask their question. These questions can make it easy for you to find new topics and titles for your content strategy.
Take a look at the example below:
By searching Quora for our main keyword, "Cupcake", we get a long list of cupcake related questions that can be directly transformed into great content titles.
If you're looking for more in-depth or specific questions, then you can head to forums that are aimed directly at your target audience.
To do this, simply search for forums in your industry (e.g. 'Baking Forums'), then, follow the steps above for Quora, but for these industry specific forums:
Final Thoughts
Finding new topics and titles for your content strategy can be tough, which is why it's important to keep on thinking outside of the box. Hopefully, the 5 easy ways to find new topics and titles in this article will keep you busy for a while.