Now that you have decided on the broad topics to write about, here are some tools and tactics to come up with individual topics. These will help you decide on the right ideas to write about, and produce content that is both informative and interesting.
(If you haven’t decide on those broad topics, you may want to read the first part of this 3-part series: What to Blog About – Part 1.)
Tools and Tactics
These four tactics will help you hone in on the specific angles you want to take for each article, and give you a foundation to start writing content that your audience is hungry for. For each of the tactics I’ll present you a for options for which tools you have at your disposal to accomplish them
Please do not feel like you have to choose just one of these tactics. They each bring their own benefits, but they work even better when you combine them.
Tactic 1- Search Engine Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving the ranking of a website on search engines. The higher the ranking, the more likely people are to find the website.
And let’s face it. What we mean by search engines is Google. We want to get as high as possible on the Google’s fist page when somebody searches for something that we have the answer to. Google is not the only game in town, but what ranks high on there will rank high on the other platforms people search: YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.
There’s a whole big industry just around SEO. You could spend all your money and time getting lost in SEO. Don’t do that please.
It is important for sure. Very important in fact. But not to the exclusion of everything else. No one really knows exactly what Google uses for deciding what ranks where, and it changes often. Your best bet is to write good content for things that people search for.
And there are other more direct, quicker ways of driving traffic to your site without waiting for Google to discover you, and without standing on the street corner spinning a sign around.
But I’m getting a little off track here. The point of SEO in this context is to see what search terms others in your niche are trying to rank for. Those are called keywords – or keyword phrases
It’s all about the keywords
You can spend a LOT of money for apps that will analyze the competition’s keywords and ranking for you, along with a thousand other variables ad millions of data points. If you’re made of money, go for it.
But you can get a good start by just looking at what ranks highest when you search the terms you think your audience will be searching for. What other terms do they use often in their site’s content?
Here are some tools to find keywords and related subject matter
1) Google
Aside from looking at what pops up when you search a term, you can use predictive text in the google search bar. When you start typing, it tries to guess what you will type next based on what others have searched before. Since it is predictinging it, you know that people are searching for it.
For example, if you start typing “meal prep for” it fills in the next words: with results like “meal prep for weight loss”, “meal prep for muscle gain”, “…for college students”, “…for beginners”, “…for kids”. and so on.
That’s 5 topics right there. Now try it with “meal prep how to,…” and see what it comes up with.
Then there is a method I call Alphabet Roulette. Do the kinds of searches you did above but give it a hint for the next word by typing “a”. Then “b”, then “c”.
For example “Meal prep for a…”. It gives you the results of; athletes, a month, abs, air fryer, after baby. “Meal prep for b…” gives you; beginners, bulking, breakfast, back to school, busy moms.
Keep it going with every letter of the alphabet. It will give you a lot of ideas that people have already been searching for.
But it doesn’t stop there. When you submit the search and it spits out results, it also gives you some bonus ideas. There will be a section not too far down titles “people also ask,…” followed by common related questions.
And invariably you will see sponsored posts with the word “Ad” in front of them in bold. People pay to have those ads show up for those keywords, which is a good indication that there’s money to be made. The titles of those ads can give you more hints of what to include as topics for your blog.
And the gifts keep coming. Near the bottom of the page will be a section titled “related searches” which are – um – related searches.
And as if you needed even more ideas, the bottom of the page has some grey bars with even more terms that people have searched for.
All that from just Google’s search bar. And we’re just getting started.
2) YouTube
Pretty much every thing you can do in Google Search you can do something similar in YouTube’s search bar. Don’t worry, you don’t have to make – or even watch – any videos. This is just about seeing what people search for.
You will get a lot of the same stuff as you did in Google Search, but you will also get some new stuff.
The alphabet roulette methods words here too. And there are sponsored videos just like there were ads in the previous section. Also, you can see how old the videos are and how many views they have, which gives you some objective data to use when judging how much interest there is in the topic
Missing are the “people also ask”, ” and related searches”, but that’s okay. You can get more ideas from the videos themselves. Obviously watching them will give you some ideas, but you can also see similar videos they suggest for you.
But that’s not even the best thing. If you click on the profile of the person who posted it, you can see the rest of their videos and sort by most popular, or newest to get ideas.
Also you can see their playlists if they’ve made any. From that you can deduce what they feel is most worth making content about (and it can give you ideas for content pillars as discussed in part one of this series).
3) Pinterest
You can use all the same techniques here too; Autocomplete suggestions, Alphabet roulette and sponsored posts just like with Google Search.
In addition there will be some buttons across the top of the search results for narrowing down your search. In this context though, they are more topic ideas for you since that is how users have chosen to focus their searches in the past.
Also in the top row will be a link for “profiles”. Clicking that will show you users who have content related to your search term. Naturally clicking through to see what else those users are posting can give you yet more ideas.
And somewhere in the search results will be a grid of “shop similar” suggestions. There will also be a similar looking grid entitled “Related Searches”. Again, both usually contain good ideas for subject matter to consider.
4) Keyword Search Tools
There are many. I am going to assume that you want to spend very little at this point. For that reason I am suggesting the browser extension called KeywordsEverywhere.
Once you have it installed on your browser, it automatically digs up data for you for every search you do in Google, Pinterest and YouTube, and several other incluing eBay, Etsy and Amazon to name a few.
The basic data is free, but you can buy credits for a pay-as-you-go system for get more insights into the data. The credits are quite inexpensive for what you get and they are helpful for decision making. But you can use its basic functions totally for free as often as you like.
It will give you rough estimates of difficulty for ranking for the search term, trends over time for that term or phrase, trending keywords, related keywords, “people also searched for”, and long-tail keywords.
All for free and easily worth ten times that.
So far we have only covered the first of 4 tactics. Let’s move on to number two.
Tactic 2 – Skyscraping
This is an idea and term developed by a guy named Brian Dean. It goes like this:
- Find a piece of content that your audience would want to consume which is high in the rankings
- Create something similar – but better
- Ask people who link to it (those are called backlinks) to link to yours instead.
Now, there are a couple things that feel wrong about that – last one first
Thing two:
Asking people who already link to someone else’s content to link to yours instead is kind of dirt-bag behavior in my humble opinion. And besides just being morally questionable, it doesn’t work.
There was a time that it did, but that is a time that is dead and gone. How would you contact them. With an email? That says what? “I notice you have a link on your site to this other site you like. Since I sent you unsolicited email and you don’t know me, can you link to mine instead?”
That’s dumb. Sorry.
Side note: reciprocal links where you join a group where everyone agrees to post links to the others is also dumb. It’s artificially getting links from (probably) unrelated sites to yours. Google and other search engines are wise to that and it will count as a mark against you, not for you.
Yeah, so ditch trying to steal backlinks. There are so many other ways of getting links to your content. But that’s for another time.
Thing one:
The other thing that feels wrong is stealing someone else’s content as your own. And THAT would be. I mean, it’s illegal actually.
But that’s not what we’re talking about in this case. We’re talking about improving on their content in some way. At the VERY least reword it.
Honestly though, improve it. You can do that for just about any content out there. Bring your life experience into it and share a different perspective or interpretation of the information.
Maybe the content itself is great, but they don’t do a great job of making it easily understandable. If you ca do that, do it.
Or you may tailor it to your audience. Setting up a portion of a website to sell products is pretty much the same for everyone – except not exactly. Someone selling hard-to-find car parts will have some different needs or ways of setting up an online shop than an artist selling original paintings. It’s the same basic information, but if you can tailor how it is presented to each audience, you’re not stealing.
But the best way to make it your own is by presenting it in your own way with your own personality. I – for example – am apparently long-winded with a dry and sometimes sarcastic sense of humor. Obviously that doesn’t come across on the page. but I’m working on it.
Tactic 3 – Go amongst the people
Hang out where your audience hangs out. No in real life. But Maybe.
Yeah, actually. If it’s convenient to do so, go ahead and hang out in person and get an idea what they talk about and what problems they need solutions for.
But I meant online. Get involved in Facebook groups if that’s appropriate for your niche.
Another place is Quora. People go there to ask questions. If you search answered questions in your niche, you’ll see what people are searching for. If you know the answer, feel free to respond. If not, find the answer yourself and writ some content around it.
If people are searching on Quora, they’re also searching on Google, I guarantee it. This assumes you are looking at questions that have been asked multiple times or ones that have a lost of community involvement with them.
Reddit is another such place. It is not solely questions, but you can see what people are discussing within your niche and can identify what might be missing and/or what would be a popular topic.
In Reddit especially be careful. Just because someone says something on there, doesn’t make it true. And there are times when posts with a lot of discussion are because there is a big dust-up around the topic (to put it politely). Use your judgement.
Similarly you can follow people and topics on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok for yet more ideas.
Tactic 4 – The Path
The final tactic – if you want to call it that – is to think about the path that someone will be on and what content will move them forward on that path.
You know your niche and your audience better than I do. By which I mean you know what it is that they want. You know what they want to accomplish, or what they want to become or change about themselves.
All those things indicate a transformation that will have steps along the way. You can think about where someone might be on that path.
Take sewing for example. DO they know what the basic equipment is? Do they know how to thread a needle? Do they know how to sew on a button? Pick the right thread? buy a sewing machine? Mark and cut a pattern? Sew a hem?
Maybe they’re further along. Are they at the stage that they need to know how to tailor an outfit? take body measurements? Create a double=pleated clamshell valence with blackout lining.
I really have no idea what the path from threading a needle to sewing a wedding gown would be, but if you are in that niche you probably do. You can surely find tons of content when you think about what it would take for a person to go from knowing nothing to becoming Vera Wang.
Of course your niche my be more focused. Point being that the path from A to Z has steps in-between that you can build content around.
Summing it all up
As I said at the start of this article, you don’t have to choose one or the other tactic. Use several or use them all. They all play well together.
There is of course the danger of falling down the rabbit hole. Been there. Done that.
Don’t let it overwhelm you. If you try the methods above, some things will naturally jump out at you. Try those first. They’ll either work or they won’t. This isn’t life-or-death stuff here.
I would suggest some sort of system for keeping your ideas in some sort or organized fashion. I’m a spreadsheet kind of guy, but if you are fine with pencil and paper go for it.
Okay. That went on longer than I expected. Thanks for sticking with me.
The third (and final) part of this series is topic evaluation. That’s next, and I promise it will be less reading than this part was.