Starting a blog is easy; maintaining it is the challenging part. Week after week, you need to feed it with fresh ideas. If you’ve been in the business long enough, you start to feel like you’ve written the same topics two and three times over.
What do you do when your ideas run dry? Use the tips below.
9 tips to generate content marketing blog topics
Subscribe to industry newsletters
Consider setting up an email address for the sole purpose of subscribing to industry newsletters. Look for news-based sites where you can stay up-to-date on industry headlines and tips-based newsletters that provide advice in your niche.
When you’re ready to brainstorm ideas, look through your inbox and skim the newsletters for topics your team can write about with your own unique perspective.
Browse competitors’ sites
What are your competitors writing about? Of course, you don’t want to copy your competitors, but their topics could spark ideas or expand on the topic. Explore their e-books, for example, and see if you can pull some topic ideas from them. Look for topics you haven’t covered or borrow ideas, but change the format. For example, a statistics post could inspire you to create an infographic from your data.
Check-in your audience
As a marketer, you know your audience. You’ve likely researched what content they like and respond to, but it never hurts to ask. Use your brand’s social channels and ask customers what they want to see and read.
Explore commonly asked questions
Questions posed by customers make great blog topics. Check on social media to see if customers have asked questions there, and check in with your customer service team, too. What’s the most common question they get from customers? Use the customer’s needs to fuel your content ideas. You can use websites like answerthepublic.com to find commonly searched questions.
Review your best posts
Take a look at your metrics. Which posts have the best engagement? Refreshing these articles can help your SEO, but you can also use these posts to generate similar topics. Let’s say three of your top 10 articles focus on winter herb gardening; use that as a starting point and think of other subtopics that could fit under this umbrella, like gardening tools to harvest herbs in winter.
Consider blog topic generators
There are a handful of idea generators that you can use to aid in the brainstorming process. How do they work? Some provide a list of blog titles based on the keywords you provide. Others ask for more information, like your industry and target audience. Here’s a quick look at a few common blog topic generators:
- Hubspot Blog Topic Generator
- BuzzSumo
- ContentIdeator
Monitor trends
Blog topics can stem from trendy topics. Rather than scouring the internet for updates each day, use a trend monitoring tool. Google Trends is a common option, but others include:
- Trends.co
- Treendly
- Trendwatchers
Interview industry experts
Have you seen posts like 30 Marketing Tips from Marketers Under 30? With these articles, you interview several industry experts and add a quote from each. You can use tools like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to send an inquiry and create a post full of industry-leading advice.
Your audience gets a valuable piece of content, and industry leaders will likely share it, too, so exposure and reach are maximized.
Repurpose other content into blogs
Most marketing teams create multiple forms of content. From podcasts and webinars to e-books and infographics, think of ways to flip these pieces into a blog. Use the podcast interview to create a newspaper-like article or turn the webinar into a guide.
Additional tips for brainstorming success
Keep a running list of ideas
As you brainstorm ideas, write them down in one centralized location. Consider using a shared Google Doc to list your ideas and share it with your team so everyone can add topics when they want.
Consider getting an app on your phone to add ideas. (You never know when inspiration will hit).
Don’t wait to brainstorm ideas
It’s best to stay on top of brainstorming. Don’t wait until your content calendar is empty. Instead, set up a regular brainstorming session every two weeks or each month to continue to fill the pipeline.
Bring in other people
Consider asking other colleagues to suggest blog titles. Chat with the sales team, ask interns to join your brainstorming sessions, or invite freelance writers to share ideas. As writers conduct research, they encounter additional topics that could add to their ongoing list.
Use AI
Ask AI tools for content ideas. You can also ask AI for keywords that are similar to your existing keywords and create content about those topics.
Generating content marketing blog topics can be tricky, but with the right motivation and tools, you can keep a solid list of ideas on hand.
