10 Ways to Never Run Out of Content Ideas No Matter Your Niche

The quality of the content you publish matters a lot especially nowadays when you’re not only competing with humans but also AI. You don’t want to put sweat and time into terrible ideas that are guaranteed to fail, repel your audience, and make you lose credibility. That’s why you need content ideation techniques that work, whether you want to scale content creation for yourself or for clients.

You can use these 10 systems to generate dozens of potentially popular blog topics within a couple hours. The techniques discussed here can be used to come up with ideas for your own blog, podcast, infographic, YouTube videos, or even online seminars.

What Should I Blog About in 2023?

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, staying ahead of the curve is more crucial than ever. If you’re wondering, “What should I blog about in 2023?”, you’re not alone. Generating fresh and engaging content ideas can be challenging, but worry not! Below you’ll find some strategies to keep your content pipeline flowing, ensuring you never run out of captivating topics to enthrall your audience and dominate your niche throughout the year.

1. Focus on a lesser known sub-niche

When starting out, choosing a common topic can make it difficult to rank online. You’ll also find it difficult to drive targeted traffic. That’s because you will have to deal with a lot of competition. Hence you need a specialist approach rather than being a generalist.

You want to focus on a couple of topics that let you display your strengths. That means as a plumber, you might focus on HVAC topics rather than general plumbing topics. As you consistently write on these, you build expertise as an HVAC expert. This also means your guest post topics on HVAC topics would be readily accepted.

The most efficient way to come up with unique blog ideas here would be noting down “people also ask” questions around these obscure topics. For example, let’s say I was in the building construction industry and one of the themes I feel my audience would be interested in is 3D homes:

The above questions can help me build authority around that theme quickly. Also, noting down the questions and issues customers usually need assistance with, you can generate a wealth of targeted ideas.

2. Create a list of related keywords

There are many tools for keyword research. Use Google autocomplete to quickly see keywords that potential customers are searching for. You can also use the related searches section in Google to see terms your customers are searching for.

You want to build a long list of these terms and phrases. First, make a list of all the categories and terms that pertain to your business. Write down the terms that customers use to describe your products and services. Use Google Suggest to build a list. You can also check Google trends to compare the popularity of specific keywords over time.

Note down each keyword and MSV. Focus on long tail keywords as these are more specific. For example, people who search for “best real estate CRMs” would be much more qualified than those who search for “real estate CRM”. Even though using generic keywords with very high MSVs should mean increased reach, you’ll be dealing with more competition. And the majority of searchers for those terms won’t be relevant to your business.

For guest blogging, if you have a keyword that is both relevant to the target website and you have some expertise with, then extrapolate more keywords. Use Ahrefs’ keyword generator. It shows you the right keywords to target and the MSV for each keyword. Usually, I use this method for my own website. Here, I can see that guest blogging services is a worthwhile keyword to target.

3. Use Quora and FAQ pages

Quora’s curated questions and answers make for intriguing topic ideas. These are questions that your audience is asking directly.

On Quora, you want to follow the spaces that are related to your business to see what questions are being asked. You could also find relevant questions via Quora search. Don’t look at questions alone, glean topic ideas from the answers provided. Pay attention to the most upvoted answers as they reveal some key ideas that your audience resonates with.

You could also search FAQs around your main theme. These FAQs could be from your direct competitors. They reveal what your audience is interested in directly.

You can use the search query:

“(keyword) FAQ frequently asked questions”

For example when I searched for “real estate marketing FAQ frequently asked questions”, I came across a post on IxactContact. I could rephrase that as

“How to automate your real estate marketing”

This makes for a unique blog idea.

4. Use headline formulas and templates

The time we live in is one of information overload. There are a ton of stories at our fingertips, so it is crucial that you stand out to create interest in your readers. But it’s not every time that a clever idea will jump out at you.

There are times when you face writer’s block. You’ll need a boost to get you started during those times. Although some headline formulas sound too clickbait-y and lame, there are still lots of reliable ones you can use. Even clickbait headlines are allowed when your content delivers useful value.

These three headline generators can be invaluable whenever you’re dealing with writer’s block. You can also use them when you want to put a creative twist on successful blog topics.

+ CrazyEgg’s best headlines

+ Copywritingcourse’s blog post idea generator

+ InboundNow’s blog title idea generator

You can use Aminstitute to see how empathetic each headline sounds. Aim for an EMV score of 30%.

5. Interview subject matter experts

There are times when you need to reach out to specialists in your niche. Instead of trying hard with content that falls off the mark, you give the readers more value by approaching thought leaders in the industry. Editors do this all the time on platforms like HARO (Help a reporter out). These kinds of outreaches in your niche do not just help you amass thought leadership content, they also facilitate valuable connections with industry influencers. The influencers get free promotion and backlinks to their website. It’s a win-win

Keep these two things in mind when interviewing subject matter experts:

1. You want to ask popular questions that haven’t been covered a lot in your niche. These types of questions are usually so interesting that an influencer would want to answer them. For example, this article on JoeFairless asks the question should you invest for appreciation or cash flow? It’s a common question but the answers that already existed weren’t as satisfying as I’d like.

2. Define criteria for the people you would interview. For example, for the above I only interviewed real estate investors that were creating real estate investing content or that had an active real estate investing firm – commercial or residential.

How do you find the right influencers for your round up?

• Use LinkedIn. This is the best place to find professionals in your niche.
• If they’re active on Twitter, Twitter is also a great place for connecting with experts
• Leverage existing connections or reach out to customers. Sometimes your customers may be experts on a particular subject. And they may be able to connect you with other experts.
• Find them through Google. Check out people creating content about a particular topic; view top 20 or top 50 lists, etc.

6. Identify unicorn content, update or add a new twist to it

Take the time to review the content on your blog and website, as well as any other assets you own. There would definitely be two types of content: donkey content and unicorn content as Larry Kim calls them.

Not every post you write is going to be a unicorn but when you have unicorn content, you need to squeeze traffic out of them periodically. These have been proven to drive traffic to your website. Odds are that when updated with more examples and data or just redone with a new twist, they’ll drive more traffic. But how do you find unicorn content?

Use Ahrefs’ “top pages” report to find your best performing content. This is a far easier way to track unicorn content than by assessing by social count. You can also use Google analytics’ “behavior flow” report to see pages that drove the most traffic within a particular period. Usually, you should go back at least 3 years to get a list of relevant ideas to work on. You can also use the rank tracker feature in Ahrefs or any other rank tracker tool to see which of your pages rank highest on Google, then update these with new information.

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7. Use Google trends

To get context behind your keywords, you want to search them in Google trends. For example, when trying to update content, you could analyze seasonality to determine the right time to update your post. So if I wanted to update a post on branding, I would probably not do that between December 19 – January 1.

You can also use Google trends to find related breakout terms in your niche. You want to make sure your seed terms are as broad as possible. Then take a look at the related queries. Filter by either “top” or “rising” to see some of the hottest keywords and popular blog topics within a particular time period.

I also like to use the comparison tool to see what keyword would drive more traffic to my post. For example, “content ideas” seems to be a better keyword than “blog topics”.

8. Check out competitors’ Youtube content

YouTube isn’t just for watching fail videos. You can find some cool blog post ideas on YouTube without doing much research.

If a competitor gets lots of views on Youtube. At least 1000 views per video. This shows that their content ideation game is on point. You should probably steal a couple of their content ideas and repurpose these into blog posts. Since these already did well on Youtube, with the right content marketing strategy, they’ll drive traffic to your website.

First, make a list of your competitors and their Youtube channels. Which of your competitors consistently gets 1000+ views?

Use the “sort by” option to view their most popular or their latest videos. Then reformat one or two of these to create popular or sometimes, funny blog topics.

9. Check out recent Twitter content with the most engagement

Checking out engagement and impression rates on Twitter tweets are a smart way to find interesting content angles.

I like to look for tweets with up to 20 likes and at least 10 comments within the past year. I conduct my searches via Twitter advanced search.

You want to make the search as broad as possible. So guest blogging or guest posting is broad enough. Real estate marketing isn’t a suitable search term for Twitter. “Property marketing” is a better search term.

While some tweets may not offer much value but still see a lot of engagement, pay more attention to tweets from small accounts that performed well. You should also periodically check your own analytics to see which tweets perform best. If you have an audience predominantly made up of your target customers, your analytics will show you what to blog about.

10. Assess competitor’s new keywords

You can do a content gap or keyword gap analysis. Check out your competitor’s new keywords. You can do this easily using Spyfu’s combat tool, Ahrefs’ content gap tool or SEmrush’s keyword gap tool. You’ll get a big list of keywords your competitors target which you aren’t. Most times, though, these keywords are too broad.

My preferred way to do this is to pick out two closest competitors. I will check out their recent blog topics list, scrape the links using the link gopher chrome extension.

Then I’ll go to Google’s keyword planner tool to see what terms they’re targeting with each page. Note the top 5 most relevant keywords per page. You can also glean their main keyword from the headline sometimes. To see if you already have content on these keyword, use “site:abc.com (keyword)”.

No more humdrum blog topic ideas

Now you’ve seen 10 ways to create high quality content ideas. Ability to generate successful blog topics quickly will make your blog a favorite in your niche. It’s time to start using any of these to create blog posts and guest posts that are guaranteed to be successful. Learn the right way to do guest blogging.