Experienced content marketers know, pretty much anything can be turned into a blog post or an article, or even a book. It’s really that simple once you master the craft, it all comes down to the ability to deliver that content in style.
I’m always exploring and taking advantage of new websites like Swayy for example, Swayy allows me to find new content across the web – based on my own keywords and what I like to read. I’ll get a daily digest every day, of the top 3-5 stories from the previous day. It sometimes serves more than just an app to find new content, there is often inspiration involved which allows me to come up with new ideas.
It goes without saying that most of my ideas come from different sources, like my own creativity for example. If you’re anything like me, you’ll often assign yourself content to create, but only to realize at the given moment that you’re “not feeling it” and you’d rather publish something else. This is why I need to use all kinds of sources and materials in order to come up with at least 3-5 content ideas for future posting, so that I always have the choice of doing something different.
I hope these tools and ways of exploring new content ideas will be new to you, and even if not – at least you’ll know that someone else is using them. It all comes down to how deep we want to go, and what is it that we’re looking for, a full-scale post or just a snippet to quote?
Google+
Google Plus is hands down the most advanced social media platform for technology enthusiasts and tech savvy people. I remember how much I disliked the platform when it first launched, but I’ve grown to love it ever since. The design, and the usability is so simple – yet so powerful. Google+ offers all of the same functionality that any other social media platform would offer, and excels in some areas more than others.
#hashtags
My first method of finding new content on Google+ is through the use of #hashtags, especially the ones that are trending. I’m able to see real-time what people are sharing, and what is happening on the web. The way I utilize this to my advantage is that I will either crate a news posts relevant to my niche (technology) and then try and gain momentum for it, or I will be exploring the trending topics and think of some ideas that could be turned into posts and integrated with the trending topic. It works both ways.
Communities
I’m all about blogging, and few weeks ago I published a post for the best Google+ communities for bloggers, check it out.
I use communities on daily basis, and the way I explore new content ideas is simple – I keep an eye on what is trending, or getting quite a bit of attention (mind you: this is spread across dozens of communities, about dozens of topics) and then I’ll see if I can create my own post with my own angle from that same idea. It might take time to adapt to, but it’s a very effective method.
You should try and make the content as unique as possible, so that it can stand out when you’re publishing it to the same community.
Feedly
We could call it ‘RSS fetching’ or ‘RSS scraping’ – it’s pretty much the same. I don’t use Feedly very often to be honest, but when I do I’ll be looking for broad topics that have got a bit of social media attention, and also resembles my own niche. It’s not difficult to just take a topic idea straight away by looking at the popular title, I prefer going deeper and really exploring the article, and perhaps create an idea of a sub-point, instead of the whole headline.
You can easily search for niche related feeds through the default Feedly search feature, and you can also add your own favorite sites to the list. I’ll often look for Top 100 lists of websites related to my niche and then try and find the ones that share the best content (or at least, the ones that get the most social love) and add them to my RSS website list.
I’ve gathered tons of ideas this way, and I know many other content creators have too.
Notes
I’m actually going to link to my own post here, but I’ve written about taking notes and how beneficial it can be for generating content ideas. I think that many new bloggers underestimate the power of reading a new blog post, and simply writing down each of the points in their own language.
You can do this for a week and then do a tiny roundup of what you’ve learned and or gained insights about, and you’ll surely find yourself with more than enough content ideas for the next week.
Übersuggest
You might have known this tool before, and then you forgot about it. I’m here to remind you of it once again, as it does server some purpose to those who love to create content. It’s like Google’s keyword planner, only amplified with features that will directly output keywords based on what you could be writing about.
Enter a keyword and press find, you’ll get a list of keywords and then under those lists more lists, you can generate a ton of ideas from seeing the perspective of what people are looking for, plus you can select the keywords by type – video, images or simple web content. Give this one a try, you’ll like it.
Mind Mapping
The above snapshot is only a tiny example of mind mapping, I threw it together in less than 30 seconds, but the point is that I was able to come up with four content ideas within 30 seconds. I could further increase the mind mapping for each of the sub tabs I had created, to go even deeper and more niche specific about each of the ideas.
This is best done on a single sheet of paper, at least I prefer to do it that way. You can use a tool like bubbl.us – like I’ve in the example above, if you prefer doing it digitally.
I honestly think that mind mapping is also one of the most fun ways for creating and exploring new content ideas, it gives you a much broader perspective as you’re able to put together pieces of information from all over the place…just don’t get carried away!
Ways to Explore New Content Ideas
I really hope you were able to take away at least a couple of insights and/or ways of finding content ideas. You might even find your next idea by using one of the methods above? I’d love to hear what you’ve come up with. I’d also like to encourage you to share your own methods and techniques, as I’m very interested in seeing what other people use to come up with great content ideas.
I every time spent my half an hour to read this web site’s articles
every day along with a ccup of coffee.