As a blogger, it is important to make sure that you have content distributed to your audience on a regular basis. This can be in the form of video, pictures or blog posts, in order to provide value towards your audience. When first starting out you may be in a natural rhythm of writing on impulse, and it seems to work for you up until a point. As time goes on you realise that you cannot sustain this weak method of keeping your audience engaged, as you become exhausted, and your audience will notice a change in your posting. In order to keep on top of it, I am going to provide you with some great ideas to keep fresh content flowing regularly. Remember the aim is to provide value, and the more evergreen content you produce, the more you can do with it later.

Conversations

I started Instagram in September 2016, and I decided to post an original quote every day for one year. I can successfully say I managed to do it! Not only did it teach me the art of discipline, but it made me realise how resourceful I can be with my creative mind. Every time I had a conversation, there would always be a word or phrase the would evoke the creation of potential quote for that day or week, and so I jotted it down onto my phone’s notepad. If you get inspiration from a conversation, make sure to write down any quotes that come from the conversation. You’ll be surprised how much information you get!

Quora

This website is a platform for people to answer questions around popular topics that people ask. I would suggest getting an account and ploughing how it works. It is a modern version of Yahoo Answers. Type in a topic area and look at the questions that people ask, in addition to, spying on how people answer them. I guarantee you will either gain new knowledge or feel like you could answer the question better. Catalogue these topic ideas onto your notes and schedule some time to begin writing or creating these posts.

Forums and Groups

This is very similar to Quora in the sense that is based on questions and a thread of answers. If you are deeply embedded into the culture of a forum or group, you could get a lot of content ideas that you could borrow for your online platforms. It is key to read through the comments and pick out the key themes that people want answering. This will give you clues as to how you can answer them better. Maybe you can do a google search and ask other people in order to get a more consolidated and rounded answer for your content.

Social Media

As much as social media is being criticised for taking people’s time and ability to interact, it is a great place for sourcing content. As humans by nature, we like to form groups and clans, which breeds an expression of the culture we would like to live in. You are definitely following pages that express a common interest, especially one that is aligned to the themes of your blog. Pay a closer eye to these pages, and look through their feed to see if there are any content ideas or topics that inspire you to create. You can also look at how they structure their content on a daily, weekly or seasonal basis so that you can have something to compare too.

Interviews and Surveys

If you realise want to get into the hearts and minds of your audience, I would suggest interviewing experts in your field and ask them questions that your audience are asking. These questions may derive from direct feedback, online forums, or questions you may have yourself. The main aim is to capture answers from the theme of your audience’s problems and issues.

In addition, you can also produce a survey for your audience (or experts) to answer to gauge a better understanding of the sort of stuff that you should write about. You can find these people online or at topical networking events, giving you a better chance to get less biased feedback.

Hashtags

You can use social media search engines or hashtags to find great content you can use. Twitter is great for this as it is fast, close enough to live, and relevant content that is fresh to the audience. The trick here is to be aware of the right hashtags or search items to use when searching for content. Try doing this now to get a better understanding of how to use it.

Google search

Search for topic ideas online is probably the first thing you would do, and unless you know specific websites, it may not be as easy as it seems. One way to overcome this is to look at the suggested items in the Google search box that will up related items to a keyword you have entered in. These suggested items may give you ideas for Key topics you could write about. Nothing stops you from actually click on these keyword suggestions and see what websites come up and present information on these topics.

Slide share Presentations

LinkedIn has partnered up with Slideshare in order to present a lot of useful free information to the general public. In these presentations, you will get well crafted and well-structured information that enables you to find a lot of content ideas. If not for your learning, it is definitely a space to secure great content ideas, and learn from others and how they do it. You can sign into Slideshare using a LinkedIn account.

Websites and Medium

I really like this idea of using websites in my niche to help me think of topic ideas. This is because half of the time they have already done the work. Now do not misconstrue what I am saying! All you need to do is look at their menu structure, read some of their articles and posts, and write down ones that you think link to your niche. If you find it difficult to find websites, go to Alexa and type in one website that is linked to your niche, and you will find example sites listed below that is similar to the website that you originally searched for. This is a fantastic source for not only sourcing content but learning what others do for their website and online content. Also, don’t forget to also check out Medium for fantastic topic ideas!

Google Alerts

If you ever want Google to notify you about what is hot in your industry, or notify you of any news related to a keyword, it can send you automatic reminder text of this information via Google Alerts. Long this is a great strategy for compiling content ideas and staying in the know of what is happening in your industry. The trick is getting the right quality and number of keywords to use to find the golden content ideas.

Book Contents on Amazon

This is such a smart idea because when you think about it it makes perfect sense. Type in a book that is within your niche and click on the book cover image to find the contents page. There you will get a logical sequence of ideas that have been written specifically to answer questions problems that people have. This is geared towards the non-fiction audience, however, I imagine the that the fiction audience could do the same thing to harbour their creativity over a plot of scenario.

Brainstorm ideas

Before resorting to all technology only solutions why not just use your brain and write down a list of topic ideas that you can think of. You’ll be surprised how much you actually know. The best way to do this is not to stall and give yourself 5 mins timed to write down as many ideas as possible without the aid of a computer or mobile device. This is the secret behind how I was able to think of topic ideas for my self-published book Understand Reach Expand!