With everything that’s been happening over the last eleven months, you’ve probably found yourself having to spend more time promoting your business online.
But even if you consider yourself a decent writer, sourcing ideas for quality content can be challenging.
Here are five free tools that you can use to ensure you have a consistent content plan in 2021.
AnswerThePublic.com
A mistake that new bloggers often make is only covering subjects that they want to write about.
It’s a nice idea, but most visitors to your website will probably have very specific needs or problems that need solving. You want to cover things that give them a reason to stay on your site for as long as possible.
This is where tools like Answer the Public can help.
It’s one of the easiest and simplest SEO tools out there and is powered by the suggested searches or predictions from Google search.
What does that mean? Here’s an example.
When you type “copywriting” into Google, it’s trying to predict what you want to know about this subject based on what others have searched for.
It only brings up a limited amount of suggestions, but this is where Answer the Public can help.
Don’t be intimidated. It’s not as scary as it looks, I promise.
This is a long-tail keyword tool that lists all of the available search information, giving you plenty of ideas for useful topics you can write about that relate to your business.
Google Trends
Open up Google Trends and click on the ‘hamburger’ menu on the left-hand side. Click on ‘explore’ and then search for your chosen subject.
Scroll down to the ‘related queries’ section and look through the topics that are on ‘top’ and ‘rising’. It’s not as detailed as Answer the Public, but it’s a good starting point for generating ideas.
Hashtags
Does everyone have a love-hate relationship with hashtags, or is it just me?
When used correctly, they’re an essential part of any businesses’ social media strategy, but some make me wince (#blessed, for example).
Embarrassing hashtags aside, you can search for them on Twitter or Instagram to help you find popular ideas for content (and spy on the competition, of course).
If you’re not an active user of Reddit, you’ve probably stumbled across it at some point while browsing the web.
All you need to do is search for the relevant topic or subreddit, and you’ll have a collection of user-generated content to pick out ideas from. You can also filter posts specifically by question to see what kind of issues people are having that you can address.
You can choose the posts that have the most ‘upvotes’ and use these discussions for a blog post. The fact that it’s popular on Reddit will probably make it popular on your website too.
Ask your readers
You can do this on social media or directly on your website, but don’t forget to ask your current followers and visitors what they want to read about. Collate the answers and create your content accordingly.
Final thoughts
Finding and generating content for your blog doesn’t have to be hard, and planning it in advance will save you lots of time in the long run.
When you have a couple of hours to spare, use these tools to put together a list of topics that you can write about over the next few months.
And if the idea of writing your own blogs brings tears to your eyes (you’re not alone), why not ask me about my content packages?
Laura Bracher 