Finding the balance between evergreen and timely content can drive traffic and keep your blog relevant. Check out our guide to balancing these content types!
Struggling to come up with enough topics for your next blog content calendar? Check out 10 tips that can help unstick your mind and get the ideas flowing.
High-performing blogs don’t just appear out of thin air. They start as thoughtful, data-backed ideas you put down on a content calendar. Then, you nurture and water your idea seedling into a full-fledged, well-written blog published on your website.
Blog inspiration doesn’t always come easy, though. Some quarters, your brain is bursting with creative ideas, and all you have to do is reach out your hands and grab them. In other quarters, it feels like you’re a paleontologist slowly chipping away at sedimentary rock in hopes of uncovering a single fossil of an idea.
If you fall into the second camp, don’t worry – we’ve all been there. In this guide, we’ll walk you through some of our favorite methods for brainstorming content ideas that turn into traffic wins.
Before learning how to generate blog ideas, you need to know what makes a topic viable. A blog topic should:
Your marketing and promotions calendar is a great place to start when brainstorming blog ideas. You can plan topics around the products or services you’re focused on for the upcoming month or quarter. For example, if you work for an auto parts company about to release a new type of brake rotor, you can consider topics like when to replace your rotors or a guide to the different parts in a car braking system.
Weather and holidays are another easy jumping-off point for your content calendar. What specific problems or questions might your customers have in the upcoming season? For an auto service center, this might mean focusing on car A/C problems in the summer. For a home goods company, it could mean topics about hosting family and friends during the holidays.
Your competitors can be a great source of inspiration. See what topics and ideas they’ve been discussing lately and if they make sense for your blog.
Remember, you’re looking for inspo, not trying to copy blogs directly — nobody likes to have a competitor steal their content. If you notice a competitor covering a lot of broken TV topics, and it seems to be working for them, then you can also create blogs about TV issues. Just make sure yours are better.
Check Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see which topics are working for your brand — and which ones aren’t. If you’re a moving truck rental company and you see city moving guides get a lot of traffic, this can be a fantastic area to focus on. Research which cities and towns are seeing the biggest increases in new residents and create guides for them. If you discover topics like packing advice not performing as well, you may want to shift away from them despite their relevance.
Online forums like Reddit, Quora, and even some Facebook groups can offer invaluable insights to your customer base. If you sell guitars and accessories, a subreddit dedicated to guitarists can show you the topics and questions potential customers are discussing most.
We don’t recommend starting with an AI chatbot, but if it feels like you’re grasping at straws, it can help. Prompt the bot to provide you with topic ideas based on your brand and any upcoming initiatives. You’ll likely get some pretty broad, generic topics in response, but you can use these to find more specific topics through tools like the People Also Ask results on Google.
If you have quicker turnaround times on blogs, you can check the news and industry updates for blog post ideas. If you’re an in-house marketer for an SEO agency, staying on top of the latest updates from sources like Search Engine Journal can give you the edge you need. For example, when a new Google update is announced, you can write a quick blog about your predictions. Or, you can wait a few weeks and gather data to write a blog detailing the impact you’ve seen across your clients’ sites.
You want to create content your customers will care about — so what better place to look for topic inspiration than your customers themselves? Read reviews to find common themes, or ask your customer service team what questions pop up most during customer conversations. Use this to craft blog posts that can serve two purposes: be found by users via search and act as a resource your CSRs can share directly with customers.
Depending on your industry, trending topics can inform your blog strategy. Look through X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms to see what people are talking about. And it doesn’t always have to be directly related to your products or services to be useful. For example, suppose you work for a second-hand furniture store and see everyone taking a big stand against fast fashion in favor of sustainability. In that case, you can twist that to fit your needs by talking about the positive ecological impact of used furniture.
If you have broad topic ideas, like home organization, and need help narrowing them down, there are tons of online tools you can use. Turn to websites like AnswerThePublic to find related questions. You can also try tools like HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator or Semrush’s Topic Research.
Never run out of blog ideas again! GPO’s experts use competitive analysis, audience insights, and creative exploration to keep your content fresh and engaging. Discover how our strategies can fill your website with impactful posts. Let’s chat!
Finding the balance between evergreen and timely content can drive traffic and keep your blog relevant. Check out our guide to balancing these content types!
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