In order to attract readers and keep them coming back, you need great content. In order to make this happen, you need ideas that spark topics for creating content for your blog and other areas of your content marketing strategy.
Finding topics or coming up with ideas for content is one of the most talked about subjects for anyone starting out or even for those that have been at it for years. For example, I got an email the other day from someone asking me this question:
"I find it hard to come up with topics to write about on my blog and subjects for my content marketing - how do you go about coming up with ideas for creating your content?"
Following that email, I thought putting together a list of some of the top resources I use for writing ideas would be a good idea. So, if you need help finding ideas for your writing, check out these places I frequent:
- Alltop - There is a plethora of topics to choose from on Alltop. Everything from content marketing to freelance - think of it as your own digital newsstand for content ideas.
- Keyword Tools - Searching for what others search for works well for generating content ideas. When I do SEO copywriting, I like having a few of these tools open for reference: Google Keyword Tool, WordStream Tools and WebSEO Tools. There are others, but these are good starters to work with.
- Wikipedia - Check out the articles and then work your way into other areas. Lots of useful information on and off-site.
- LinkedIn Groups and Answers - Are you using LinkedIn? No? You really should. Check out some of the groups and answers areas for great discussions and ideas for generation great content. If you want to connect with me there, here is my LinkedIn profile.
- StumbleUpon - Now I know not everything that comes out of this is worthy of a blog post, but I have found some great ideas from stumbling.
- Technorati - One of the best tools out there, Technorati gives you all kinds of useful ways to find things through their tagging system. Check it out and see what you find.
- Twitter - Yep. Twitter. I am always checking my Twitter feed for interesting discussions and links. I have my different columns setup for keyword searches, topics and people I follow. If you want to connect on Twitter, follow me and send me a reply.
- Facebook - Not as good as Twitter IMO, but I have found many great ideas from different Facebook pages and groups that I follow. Check it out and see what you come up with. While you're on Facebook, come see my Facebook business page.
- Del.icio.us - I like to visit their popular page and other's pages about once every couple of days for things that jump out at me.
- Other blogs - Yes, it's always good to checkout what others are doing. I like to subscribe to RSS feeds and get in more reading in less time. Since I work with SEO copywriting, content marketing and blogging, I would check out blogs like: SEO Copywriting, Copyblogger, ProBlogger, Junta42, Search Engine Land and TopRank blog.
- Yahoo answers - Browsing around the discussions on this site gives you not just content ideas, but you may learn something you didn't know.
- Amazon - Oh yes, Amazon is a good place to find ideas. You could do this with just about any online bookseller really. For instance, if I go to the business and investing section, it gives me some of the popular books available. I also look at reviews and how many stars books get for what might be popular in my area of interest.
What resources did I miss? What would you add?