Being a content writer\/blogger, this is the biggest challenge one faces after some time as the content you are posting should be fresh, should be of your niche and should be in trend. Now, to put all three factors at one place and then generating a fresh new blog out of it could be messy, time consuming and confusing at times.
\nSo, now the big question arises, How to find topics for your blog?<\/p>\n
Thanks to technological advancements, now we have certain online tools to determine the weight of the topic and how much attraction is it going to generate.<\/p>\n
Content about trending topics is beneficial\u00a0because you know that what you\u2019re writing about is already popular. There\u2019s likely to be good search volume and it\u2019s something that is top of mind for your target audience.\u00a0Combination of evergreen content and trending content is likely to be liked by people.<\/p>\n
When referring to trending content, this isn\u2019t just referring to what is popular today, but also topics and issues that may have been trending over a longer period.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s sometimes difficult to keep up to date with\u00a0the niche you blog about. Imagine topics such as WordPress, web design and digital marketing; they are tough to keep up with and have many<\/em> new articles and news pieces per day. Keeping up to date with everything being written would probably take up most of your day. This is where Google Alerts<\/a>\u00a0can help to find topics for your blog.<\/p>\n You can set up alerts for articles containing keywords that you specify. You\u2019ll then receive emails from Google containing links to new articles they find that are relevant for the keywords you are monitoring. You can set alerts up with several options. I am content with just getting the best results once per day, but you can set up alerts to email you everything as it happens. If the topic you blog about is very popular, you may find getting alerts for everything<\/em> a little too much.<\/p>\n Question and answer sites like Quora can somtimes proves to be a great source to gather idea for your blog post. You can sign up and follow specific topics. You can then set up email updates about the most relevant questions and answers for your interests.<\/p>\n Often the questions being asked are great topics for blog posts as you can see what information people want to know more about right now. Obviously, you shouldn\u2019t just copy the answer provided. You should answer the question in your own way and make sure that you add value to the answer.<\/p>\n If you want to find out the most popular news for the topics you blog about, Reddit\u00a0should be one of your go-to resources. Everything here is shared by its members and up-voted if it is popular. It is a great way to filter through the less interesting news, plus the comments can be very insightful. Reddit users can comment on each post and often have quite lengthy discussions. This can help you home in on specifically what your potential readers find most interesting about the news piece.<\/p>\n Reddit isn\u2019t just for news, people also use the site to post questions. Similar to Q&A specific sites, these questions and answers can be a great source of blog post ideas\u00a0since you will know what your target readers want to find out more about.<\/p>\n Google Trends<\/a> is a great tool for viewing search interest for keywords and topics over time. If you haven\u2019t used it before and don\u2019t know what it is, Trends provides search demand data direct from Google. You can view this data by keyword, location, topic and country. You can then decide if interest in the topic you want to write about is increasing, decreasing or has remained stable over time.<\/p>\n Not only can you check the trends of keywords you are already aware of, but Trends will provide both the top and rising related topics and queries. You can use these topics and queries as inspiration for blog post ideas that are gaining popularity.<\/p>\n The comments sections of posts are a great source for blog post ideas. Often, questions are asked in the comment section when a post didn\u2019t go into enough detail or perhaps, didn\u2019t touch upon a related topic. These readers want to know more and it is this information you can create a post around.<\/p>\n The comments you research can either be on your own posts, with you expanding upon something you have already written, or you could get your ideas from the comments sections of other people\u2019s posts. Obviously, if you are looking for trending topics, then you will want to be monitoring the most recent posts. To keep up to date with all the latest articles, consider signing up for your favourite sites\u2019 email newsletters, so you don\u2019t have to manually check for new posts.<\/p>\n People often go to forums for advice and many of the questions asked on them are likely to make interesting blog posts. When selecting topics to write about, try and find those that have had quite a lot of engagement as well as being recent. If there are multiple threads about the same issue, it\u2019s likely to be a hot topic and something worth posting about.<\/p>\n Some of the tools used here aren\u2019t always going to be able to alert you to the hot topics; the things that everyone is talking about right now. For example, the traditional keyword research tools like Adwords Keyword Planner won\u2019t provide you with the data you need to identify something is trending right now<\/em>, but rather they will alert you to trends over long time periods. If you\u2019re keen to write pieces about today\u2019s<\/em> hot topics, then monitoring hashtags will be a useful strategy.<\/p>\n If you want to keep it simple, you could go to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or any hashtag using social network of your choice, and just do a search for a relevant hashtag to the topic you want to write about. Browse what people are sharing and see if there is anything that stands out as a topic you want to write about.<\/p>\n You can view the trending hashtags on Twitter, but unfortunately, you can only customise this by location, rather than by topic. If you want to make this process a little more efficient, you\u2019ll need to use some tools.<\/p>\n Ritetag<\/a> can be used for free (there is a premium version) to monitor trending hashtags. You can enter topics and they\u2019ll send you an email to alert if any related hashtags are beginning to trend. You can also use their tool to find out information about specific hashtags, such how many tweets there are per hour, what times of day people tweet the most and which countries are tweeting.<\/p>\n Similar to Ritetag, you can also use Hashtagify to monitor hashtags and set up alerts. It\u2019s simply a process of searching for the hashtags that you want clicking on the \u2018Activate Email Alerts\u2019 button.<\/p>\n When looking for trending blog post ideas, keyword research tools can be a great source of inspiration. You can find out what your potential readers are searching for and tailor your content around that.<\/p>\n The Adwords Keyword Planner<\/a> is still my go-to keyword research tool. It\u2019s free, but you will need to sign up for an Adwords account if you want to use it. Google made some changes to the tool recently; if you aren\u2019t spending enough with Adwords, you won\u2019t get a specific value for search volume. Instead, you will get a search volume range. Whilst this is more ambiguous than a specific value, even the range data is useful for getting an idea of approximate search demand and for comparing terms.<\/p>\n The Keyword Planner also provides trends data. You\u2019ll be able to see how search demand has changed for either a keyword or group of keywords over the past 12 months. You can use this to help you identify if a keyword or topic is gaining popularity.<\/p>\n In addition to the Adwords Keyword Planner, there are many other keyword research tools you can use. Here are just a few:<\/p>\n Analytics won\u2019t provide as many keywords as it did years ago, due to Google withholding keyword data from organic search traffic. However, you may still find some interesting keywords in your analytics tool from other organic search sources, such as Bing. You can use Google Analytics<\/a> for free if you aren\u2019t already using another analytics tool.<\/p>\n Monitor your analytics to identify the keywords being used to find your site. You may start to notice similar queries popping up time and time again, particularly if those topics are beginning to trend. If you don\u2019t have content that is directly relevant to these search terms, then now might be the time to create that.<\/p>\n2. Quora<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. Reddit<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4. Google Trends<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. Comments On Blogs<\/strong><\/h3>\n
6. Various Forums<\/strong><\/h3>\n
7. Hashtags<\/strong><\/h3>\n
8. Keyword Research Tools<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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9. Analytics<\/strong><\/h3>\n
10. Google Search Console<\/strong><\/h3>\n