In this post, I will be sharing how to come up with unique blog post ideas that will guarantee audience engagement. Before I get to that, though, allow me to say something about the blogging industry in general.
Statistics and Failure Rate of Blogs
According to statistics, there were more than 500 million blogs in existence as of 2019. Every niche had hundreds of thousands of blogs within it, implying stiff competition in the blogging industry.
To be successful in blogging, there’s a need for well thought out and effective strategies commonly ignored by many bloggers. That explains the sad reality where over 80% of new bloggers will fail within 18 months into blogging. In order to increase your chances for success, it’s important to educate yourself and make sure that you fully understand what blogging is and how it works.
Blog Topics
The number one way to have a successful blog is to develop unique yet engaging and valuable topics for your posts. For example, suppose you are in the travel niche. In that case, you should come up with topics that your readers will find entertaining and at the same time helpful in one way or another.
Unfortunately, many bloggers come up with blog topics that are less meaningful or helpful. It’s not surprising that they would come up with poorly thought out topics such as “My Trip In Paris,” “Why I Like New York,” etc. While personal anecdotes can be one of the best ways to make a blog post as engaging as possible, a good blog post isn’t entirely about the author! Avoid coming up with such topics.
Instead, you may come up with various blog topics like “Paris As a Top Tourist Destination,” “Things To Love About New York As a Tourist,” etc. With that said, here’s how to come up with awesome blog content ideas that will see your posts read and shared more:
1. Use A Great Blog Topic Generator
With so many excellent tools available now, generating great blog topics that will capture more audience has never been so easy. These tools are quite easy to create blog topics with. Generally, all you have to do with one is enter a simple keyword that reflects your blog. When you click “enter” or any other similar button depending on the software, it will come up with a few topics you can choose from.
Google Trends is a great place to start to get some really good ideas. Other alternative tools for generating engaging blog topics include Ahrefs, Uber Suggest, SEMrush, and Hubspot’s blog topic generator. Why I like Google Trends is that it generates topics by analyzing the popularity of search queries in Google Search across various regions as well as languages. Sometimes I spend a little too much time on this tool. The fact that it is free while similar tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs aren’t entirely free can be important for some new bloggers. For those who are more budget-conscious or don’t have the funds for expensive tools starting out these are a good starting point.
However, one of the things I would recommend is using a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to do some deep diving into your niche. This will without a doubt give you some really solid blog topic ideas. In addition to that, you’ll have some pretty powerful metrics to refer to when it comes to your topic ideas and search traffic.
2. Brainstorm Blog Post Ideas
Brainstorming is the oldest method of coming up with an excellent blog post topic. It’s still relevant today, and many bloggers, including me use it quite often to create engaging posts. The best way to do it is to put yourself in the shoes of your readers and try to imagine what topics you’d find interesting to read about. Because chances are that if you love the topic, your readers too will.
Everyone has their sweet spot when it comes to the best time of the day for brainstorming. For me, it’s in the evening once the sun has gone down. For some reason, I feel like I can tuck myself away in my home office, play some music and really brainstorm. Maybe you’re different, and the morning time is where you feel the sharpest. No, matter what time during the day, brainstorming with a pen and notepad in front of you, or with Google Docs open on your laptop you’ll be ready to generate some sweet blog post ideas.
3. Get Blog Post Ideas Your Old Content
If your blog contains several posts, you could go back to some previous posts to draw inspiration for your next blog topics. Look for the topics you’ve covered in the past that performed better than the rest. Then create new blog post ideas from those.
For example, let’s take the topics “Visiting Paris” and “Things To Love About New York.” Your next topics based on these could be “10 Facts About Paris As a Top Tourist Destination” and “Why New York Is a Popular Tourist Destination.” It’s all about being creative enough to know how to add a little spin to your existing blog topics.
4. Get Inspiration from Other Blogs
Other blogs can serve as great sources of inspiration for your blog post ideas. Check out a few top blogs in your niche and borrow their topics while making sure to not commit plagiarism. For example, suppose one of the engaging topics you want to copy from a blog is “Top 5 Things To Do In Paris”. In that case, you could recreate the topic to “Top 5 Fun Activities To Do In Paris”, or so.
Whatever blogs you go to for topic ideas, make sure that you choose engaging topics. One way to tell if a topic is interesting is by simply looking at the number of user comments it has attracted. Engaging blog topics will attract more user comments than uninteresting topics.
5. Get Blog Post Ideas from Your Readers
Finally, you could ask your readers to share ideas regarding the topics for your next blog post at the end of every post you create. This will help you develop creative, engaging blog topics for your subsequent posts without as much effort. It also makes your readers feel like they are part of the blog and that their suggestions matter. Imagine leaving a topic suggestion on a blog only to see a post written about it a few days later! That would make you feel so great because you know that your input matters, wouldn’t it?
Final Thoughts
The blog topics you choose to write about will play a key role in your blog’s performance and success. If you select topics that are boring and not engaging, you will not capture enough readers. That means low traffic and poor results. On the other hand, if you select fascinating and valuable topics, you will draw more readers and gain high traffic.
With that said, how do you come up with excellent blog topics? Do you use topic generators, brainstorming sessions, or find inspiration from older content? Or do you prefer to borrow ideas from other blogs or get ideas from your readers?
