Blog Post Ideas: 12 Easy Ways to Generate Endless Blog Post Topics
One of the biggest challenges of creating consistently awesome content for your clients (you know, what they’re paying you for!) is coming up with enough blog post ideas to fill up their content calendar. Don’t worry, buddy. It happens to the best of us. If regular old brainstorming isn’t doing the trick, try one of these simple ways to generate blog post ideas!
HOW TO COME UP WITH BLOG POST IDEAS
1. Dig Into Analytics
If you’re looking for blog post ideas, the first thing you should do is identify what has worked for your client in the past. After all, why reinvent the wheel? Ask for access to your client’s Google Analytics account and start digging!
Once you’re in Google Analytics, select “Behavior” in the left hand column. Choose “Site Content” and then “All Pages”. Adjust the date range for the past year, then sort the results by page views from highest to lowest.
Ta-da! You can now see a ranking of the most popular pages on your client’s website.
Here’s what that page looks like for me:
Now that you know which blog topics have been the most successful for your client, you can use that as a jumping off point to think of more blog post ideas.
For example, I discovered that I have a blog post from 2016 about 4th of July outfit ideas that does extremely well. If I were looking at this data and trying to come up with blog post ideas, I would suggest topics like “Labor Day Outfit Ideas” or “Thanksgiving Outfit Ideas” depending on the season.
This is also a great technique to use when you’re getting your bearings with a new client.
2. Expand on Previous Blog Posts
Another way to reuse popular, already-published content is to expand on the points or subheadings in your client’s most popular posts.
For example, my second most popular post in the past year was How to Create a Content Calendar in Google Sheets. In that post, I wrote a point about brainstorming blog post ideas. And now here I am, writing this article about blog post ideas for you. Crazy, right? It’s like Inception, but with blog posts.
3. Get Inspired by Current Events
Depending on your niche, keeping up with current events is another great way to brainstorm blog post ideas.
For example, as a beauty writer, I could write about “maskne” or “how to eliminate eye bags caused by sleepless nights due the current state of the world”. Get creative!
If nothing in the national or world news inspires you, check out news about your industry. I subscribe to several beauty industry newsletters, which always gives me plenty of blog post ideas.
As an added benefit, you’ll actually know what’s going on in your industry and will be better able to position yourself as an expert (which, you know, is the key to attracting high-ticket clients as a freelance writer).
There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and chances are you’ll find plenty to write about by staying on top of current events.
4. Do a Little Competitive Benchmarking
If you’re short on time and need some blog post ideas like now, have a look at websites that cover a similar niche. What kinds of blog topics are they writing about? Then use those topics to draw inspiration for your own blog post ideas.
Of course, the point here is to get the gears turning so you can come up with your own blog post ideas, not to plagiarize. It’s not cheating if you just use their content to inspireyours!
For example, if I saw a blog post on the Dermstore blog about their top picks for the best sunscreen of the summer, I might pitch a blog post idea about what to look for in a sunscreen to my client.
5. Talk to Customer Service
Does your client have a customer service specialist or team? Schedule a chat with them and see if you can identify the most common questions they receive. Not only will this help you generate a ton of blog post ideas but you’ll also make their jobs easier by preemptively answering common customer questions!
6. Scour Social Media
Your client’s social media channel is another good place to look for common pain points from their customers. Talk to your client’s social media person to learn what sorts of DMs they receive or you can look at your client’s comments and mentions yourself. This method is sure to generate a host of blog post ideas!
Hint: you can use this same technique with their competitors’ social media.
Never thought all of your IG stalking skills would actually pay off? You thought wrong!
7. Ask the Community
You’re writing for your client’s customers and readers so why not go straight to the source and ask them what they want to read about?
Coordinate an email campaign or social media post with your client to get their audience’s feedback on potential blog content. A couple questions you can ask them:
What do you need help with?
How do you use this product or service?
How has this product or service helped you?
Not only will this help you generate plenty of valuable blog post ideas for your client’s readers but depending on the response, you might also be able to do a round-up post of your favorite answers. Audience members always love a shout-out!
8. Interview Your Client
Audiences also love learning more about the people behind their favorite brands. Writing about your client’s story can help humanize a faceless company, which is truly invaluable when it comes to building trust with potential customers.
Get on the phone and interview your client (or if it’s a larger company, one of their employees or founders) to get some new blog post ideas.
A few topics you can cover:
What led them to their work?
What do they love about their job?
What is their day-to-day like?
Where do they believe the brand is going in the future?
Then you can write at least one blog post about the interview. As an added bonus, this is an excellent opportunity for networking in your industry!
When in doubt, turn to actual humans to help you, whether they’re part of your client’s audience or their employees!
9. Talk About Personal Experience
Depending on your client, you may be able to use their product or service yourself and talk about your experience with it. Get creative!
For example, I could do an experiment where I use only my client’s skincare products for 30 days and document any differences in my skin.
1o. Share Behind-the-Scenes
Is your client launching a new product? Take their audience behind the scenes to have a look at its development. This will help drive excitement about the new product as well as generate plenty of fun blog post ideas.
11. Make Google Do the Work
If you’re looking for new blog post ideas, the autocomplete function on Google is definitely your friend.
Say, for example, that I need to come up with some topics about hair loss. All I have to do is type “hair loss” in the Google search bar and I have several new blog post ideas to choose from:
12. Look Up Popular Posts in Google Adwords
Most people know how to use Adwords for basic SEO (like how to find popular keywords). But did you know you can also generate new keywords based on URLS?
When you go to the Keyword Planner tool, select the tab for “start with a website” rather than “start with keywords”. Then enter the URL of your most popular blog post.
Make sure you select “use only this page”, then hit “GET RESULTS”.
For example, when I type in the URL for my popular post on cold pitching, Google gives me all of these keywords:
That information definitely gives me a good starting point for brainstorming more blog post topics.
How do you generate blog post ideas? Let me know in the comment section below!
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