5 Places to Get Blog Ideas and Content – No More Excuses

Do you sometimes feel dried up when it comes to finding new things to blog about? I have found that when it comes to writing, sometimes the juices just don't want to flow. Outside of reading a great book called “Finding Your Flow” back in January I have often found that the following strategies are a good way to drum up some ideas and content.

1. SEMRush, Ahrefs, or Moz. Each of these tools are designed to help you do organic keyword research. Each has a free trial and can be extremely helpful is see what your competitors are ranking for and seeing other potential “low hanging fruit” for SEO.
2. Suggestion Box: Everyone is anxious to get the word out about their latest product or idea. Often times you can glean some excellent content ideas by allowing your blog visitors to submit their suggestions. I generally do this by setting up a content suggestion page or widget (depending on how much you want to encourage input).
3. Topic Discussion Forums: Whatever your topic and niche is I'm confident that there is a forum/online discussion board somewhere online where people with that interest have conversations. Visit that forum and setup an account. Browse the most recent topics and look for the common questions or unanswered questions that you could answer with a blog post. This has the added benefit of driving traffic to your blog by posting your blog post as an answer to people's questions.
4. Facebook & LinkedIn Groups: Same concept as above. Facebook & LinkedIn groups are very popular and you can almost always find a group specific to your topic. Join and turn on notifications. This will show you what topics are most trending and most difficult for people to answer/address.
5. Use “Answer The Public.” This website is a simple tool to show you questions people are asking online about any given topic or work. Go to the link and type in the primary keyword in your niche and click go.
6. Use Twitter and Facebook to Ask: Since social media is all about conversations, why not start one by asking people what questions or concerns they have about your topic? You will be surprised how much response you get. This is also a great way to ensure that after writing your blog post you have a few people who are very likely to go visit your blog.
7. Quora.com is a treasure of amazing ideas. Quora is a question-answer site where people can set up a free user account and they ask any questions they want. Then as an expert in the field, you can browse questions and select the ones you want to answer. If you do a good job your answer will get “upvoted” by other users. You can insert your videos, images, and links back to your site.

What other ideas do you have to keep the blog post ideas flowing?