5 Places You’re Not Looking for Content Ideas 
79 Comments
Check out my new guide for starting a blog to learn how to go about properly creating your own blog.
It’s time for my most popular post of the week, my blogging tips series.
It kinda makes me wonder whether I should’ve just created an internet marketing blog. I’d probably run out of topics too quick though. I couldn’t imagine trying to write hundreds of posts about such a limited topic.
Also it would be tough competing against all the marketing blogs out there. It’s much more satisfying to share these tips with the finance blogging community and be called a master lol. Plus I think I can be much more helpful to my blogging friends with this series.
Here are some blogging tips topics covered recently:
This week we have a guest contribution. So you’ll have to wait until next week for some of my personal expertise. On the bright side the guest writer provided an instructional video to mix things up around here.
5 Places You’re Not Looking For Content Ideas
Hey guys, my name is Matt. This is a guest video and video summary for Jeremy here at ModestMoney.com. I thought that since he occasionally gives tips out for how to improve your blog or website, that maybe you’d like some tips on how to find content ideas. So that’s what I have for you in this video and summary.
So what this covers are 5 different places that I’m sure most people aren’t looking for content ideas for their blogs or static websites.
At least until today, that is.
What’s great about 4/5 of these places is that you’re getting content ideas straight from the horse’s mouth. In other words, you’re being told what to write by people who are interested and/or are having problems in your niche.
By finding and answering these questions on your site, you’re providing actual information that people are looking for. You’re solving problems. You’re becoming someone’s hero.
And their new favorite website.
At the end of the day, that means more trust in your website, service and brand, ultimately leading to more leads and sales. That’s something that we all want, right?
Right.
Ok, so are you ready to know what these 5 places are? Here we go:
- Yahoo Answers
- (Your Niche + Large Company Fan Pages) Facebook
- (Your Niche) Forums
- (Your + Competitor’s) Adsense
The only place on this list where you won’t really find people answering questions or looking for help is Pinterest. But with a little bit of creativity you can use Pinterest to come up with helpful content ideas all the same. And in the video I show you how I do that.
As long as you’re not in some obscure niche, or you’ve already covered every topic and question known to man in your niche, I’m confident that by using these 5 places you’ll never have to worry about content ideas again. Especially if you use them in addition to whatever it is you’re doing now.
So, what do you think? Can you see yourself using these places for content ideas? Are you using them already?
Tell me all about it in the comments.
So does anyone use any of Matt’s strategies for finding new topics to cover? I think he had some really good ideas that don’t just revolve around putting a different spin on topics covered on other blogs. Or maybe there’s some other strategies which have been useful for you.
79 Comments
Thanks for all the tips, Jeremy! And thanks for the mention! I hope you have a great day!
Holly@ClubThrifty recently posted..The Necessity of Life Insurance: A Mortician’s View
Thank Matt for the tips. I just posted them for him
It’s funny, I never htought about yahoo answers before. But man, what a great source to go to! THanks for the tip! Here’s something else I do that’s REALLY hit or miss. When I’m out at the hardware store, I listen in when people are asking salespeople questions. For me, those kinds of questions are potentially ones I could blog about. So maybe pf bloggers could go to the bank and listen in on quetsions? Um.. maybe not, you’d get kicked out. But you get the idea.
TB at BlueCollarWorkman recently posted..Can Motorcycle Semi Truck Accidents Be Prevented?
Hey TB,
I think that’s a great idea too. In fact, I don’t think you’d get kicked out if you went there, stood in line and just listened to the questions people were asking. Clearly, you’d want to respect people’s privacy — but lots of people talk so loud that you can’t help but pay attention.
I’ll have to check out your blog too. I used to work in a fab shop and as a motorcycle tech before working for myself at home. It looks like a few of your posts are right up my alley
Yeah the Yahoo Answers tip is particularly good. That can be used for virtually any niche. I’m not sure how much you’d get some listening in at the bank, but just eavesdropping on anyone talking about finances can reveal some gems.
I have used pinterest before to come up with some topics, but mostly I just use struggles/ideas that come up in my everyday life. Great post ya’ll!
Hey Lauren,
Yeah, struggles are great for content ideas. Chances are that if you have them, others are having them too. And if you find a way to overcome them, that makes your content that much more personal.
Thanks for stopping by
For sure, in personal finance finding those personal topics is crucial. The topics that you can’t tie in with your own experiences usually just make for less interesting posts. Sometimes friends will complain about their struggles too which can produce more ideas.
Matt, these are some great tips! Thanks a lot man…I’ve NEVER thought about using Pinterest or Yahoo Answers. Those are pretty brilliant.
Bookmarking this post!
Thanks Jason!
The best part about Yahoo Answers is that there are (probably) hundreds of questions being asked every day, in most niches. So everyday you can have new ideas to write about. It’s just a giant content idea generating machine.
The other good part about Yahoo answers is that people have usually already helped you answer the questions. Then once you have your post written you can post it as an answer for more traffic.
Yeah, that’s a really good point too. You can have most of the meat of your post already written for you.
I like Matt’s idea of going right to the source. If you aren’t sure what to write about, ask the experts: people asking questions.
AverageJoe recently posted..Life Insurance: It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore
It does make a lot of sense since a lot of google searches are ultimately people asking questions. So if your post can answer a specific question, it results in a satisfied searcher which should help your user metrics.
I like Matt’s idea of finding your niche and being a problem solver. Great sources
Ornella @ Moneylicious recently posted..Why Life Insurance is More Important Than You Think
The better problem solver you can be, ultimately the better resource your blog becomes. It’s a lot better than just writing a generic post about some general topic.
Good ideas! I imagine it wouldn’t just help you find content, but would also be helpful for SEO as people are searching those terms anyways.
femmefrugality recently posted..How to Pick a Major Without Wasting Money
Yeah, definitely. To be honest, I don’t put too much thought into that though, since I write with my audience in mind. When you do that, it’s difficult not to optimize your content for search engines since you’re using terms and phrases that people in that niche use.
Know what I mean?
Something that can definitely help in people finding your posts though is going back to Yahoo Answers and posting an answer and your post to the question that inspired your post. You help that person out, plus your link will be in the source for anyone who reads it needing advice in the future.
That is true to some extent, but if you ignore proper keyword research you really limit yourself to your own personal vocabulary. People search in a wide variety of ways with all kinds of keywords. I would still cross reference it with a keyword research tool. I’d rather optimize for a large enough audience instead of just 1 random person. You can base it off of their specific question though.
No, no — I understand that. My point is that, at least for me, I don’t put much effort into that because I naturally use keywords/phrases as I write.
For example, if I noticed a question on Yahoo that asked, how do you remove black marks from your credit report, and that was the title of my post (because black marks are looked for), I would naturally use black marks, negative marks, credit, credit report, etc in my article.
I do it without thinking about, which very well could be a by product of freelance writing for the last several years.
I do agree that finding/using keywords is important, though.
But without doing keyword research, how do you know if you are focusing on the best keywords out of the available options? With your example, black marks might seem like the natural choice, but I’d still double check which one gets the most searches or which ones are less competitive.
Why not do more than one article?
- 5 Ways to Avoid Black Marks on Your Credit Report
- How to Remove Late Payments From Your Credit Report
- Did You Know You Can Erase Errors on Your Credit Report Online?
I could come up with more than this too. Doing this, you cover a ton of topics, all from different angles, and you still manage to cover variations of main keywords.
I’d also argue that there’s no surefire way to know what keyword is competitive or not, or which one gets the most phrases until you write the article and see your stats.
If the topic is broad enough it would make sense to write multiple articles. So far on my blog though I’ve only been covering most topics with a single post. With that strategy I’d want to be picking an optimal keyword for that first post. Then later if I come back to that topic I’d want to use the next best keyword phrase. Judging competitiveness is tough to do accurately with the amount of time most people dedicate to it, but you can get a pretty good idea. You just can’t rely on automated tools for that part.
Thanks for the great tips! I would have never thought of going to yahoo answers or using adsense.
I admit I had never thought to use adsense either, but it’s a particularly good idea if you happen to monetize your blog with adsense. Then you can get a very relevant ad on your site.
By the way, looks like your blog is getting closer since you have an avatar now
Yep, you’re right! Getting closer.
I actually went live this week, but am still in the process of loading it with some content and doing some backend stuff. Will be starting to promote once I get back from vacation next week.
Good to hear John. Best of luck with the official launch. I’ll be sure to check it out when it is officially live.
Thanks!
Great ideas. I have used Yahoo answers but never thought of adsense.
Yup it’s another strategy to try next time you’re stumped for ideas.
Hey Jeremy, thanks for the mention! I’ve been using yahoo answers for a while. I typically go through one topic ‘niche’ and read over a bunch of questions to see which ones are most common, then try to answer them on my websites. If I don’t know the answer then I do some research to figure it out.
Another “trick” I use is go to Google instant and start typing my niche keywords but don’t press enter. Let auto-complete give you various topic ideas!
Great post today! Oh, I’m curious, how do you track who shared what of yours? Thanks.
Good point about checking which questions are popular throughout the niche. Then you’re not answering a question that too few people are interested in.
I’ve used the Google auto-complete feature for keyword research in the past, but not for finding post ideas. Good idea.
As for tracking who shared my content, I waste time manually keeping track of it in notepad. I really should see if there’s any software that would help out. By using HootSuite it is fairly easy to notice though.
Oh, I see, I thought you had some automated way to track who shared what. I guess sometimes pen and paper is the easiest solution
No not literally pen & paper…notepad.exe
Then I can easily move old entries up and down the list depending on who has tweeted/shared that week. I should get it automated though.
lol, there’s a nude picture in your follow thumbnails.
Yeah it’s been an ongoing problem lately lol. I guess those kinds of sites target people who have that plugin on their blog. That plugin gives me errors if I turn off the faces though. So I really need to find a new plugin to show my twitter count.
It was even worse when one of those pics got chosen as my feature image when my post was automatically posted on facebook lol.
Google Instant is a good idea too. I haven’t used it much myself for content ideas, but just playing with it now with this post in mind, you could come up with one phrase, and then use that phrase to literally come up with 5, 10, 15 or more content ideas by drilling down.
For example:
How to Save Money
How to Save Money Fast
How to Save Money Fast If You’re a Student
How to Save Money Fast for a Wedding
How to Save Money Fast for a Vacation
How to Save Money Fast Without a Job
The ideas are endless. And that’s just using them as is. Could you imagine the amount of content ideas you can generate by taking angles on each phrase?
Good example search Matt. That does open up all kinds of ideas when the start of your phrase is rather broad.
Exactly Matt. You can start with a really broad term and narrow it down to something that you won’t have much competition for. To verify that that phrase gets traffic just plug it into google’s keyword tool and you’ll see some numbers. I tend to skip the last step and trust instant as a means of telling me that someone else is searching for the topic.
Well, that, plus the phrase itself might not get a ton of traffic, but the goal (at least my goal) is to rank my pages for multiple phrases.
Using my example above again, there might not be more than 30 searches monthly for, How to Get Money Fast for Your Wedding. But by the time you write the article, you might have longtails about how to get a cake on the cheap, doing your own invitations and having a potluck reception. Say you get 10 longtail phrases in that article (and I bet you can get a lot more), and each one gets 30 searches per month, that could mean 3-6 visitors a day to your website (I’m obviously ignoring the fact that you don’t get all the visitors Google says there is for a term — just an example).
Write 100 of these types of articles and that could bring you 300-600 people per day. And that’s something that can be done in a month, and fairly easily in 2-3 months.
Oops — my math was off. 10 longtail phrases getting 30 searches per month would be 10 visitors per day, or 1,000 per day with a 100 article site.
You can make good money with 1,000 visitors per day.
Yup long tail keywords can be very powerful like that. Meanwhile you’re also building up your blog’s relevance for the main root keyword ‘how to save money’. If you use that as a tag for all those articles you might eventually rank well for that shorter keyword. Of course those long tails will be a lot easier to rank well for though.
I sometimes have a hard time coming up with topics to write about and have never thought about looking at these places for ideas. Thanks for the tip!
DebtsnTaxes recently posted..Why I Blog
The longer you write the more you’ll need this kind of stuff. Eventually you’ve just covered most of the obvious topics already.
Great tips! I never thought about Yahoo answers. I’ve listened in on conversations at a grocery store or at work–that’s given me some inspiration in the past.
bogofdebt recently posted..Seriously I hate my student loans
Grocery store conversations would be good. They’re often talking about the prices of this or that.
I really like the yahoo answers idea. You can find some pretty fun stuff to make fun of over there, which of course I enjoy… making fun of others makes me feel better about myself, naturally
Nick recently posted..I hope you really like Angry Birds….
lol yes that sounds like the approach you would take Nick. There must really be a ton of good material to bash on there. Not only are some questions pretty brutal, but also some of the people answering on there have no clue.
Yahoo answers seems like an obvious but great spot. I don’t know why I never thought of it!
Lance@MoneyLife&More recently posted..Life Insurance Movement – Why I Don’t Need Life Insurance Right Now
Now you’ll just have to remember to use it next time. It does seem pretty obvious though.
This is great! I can never get too many sources of inspiration for my writing. Lately I’ve been spending more time interacting and finding ideas from Facebook Groups and the Q&A section of LinkedIn. Those are some great places to find topics and interact with others in the same nice. Thanks for sharing your ideas Matt!
Carrie Smith recently posted..The Number One Reason Why You Need Life Insurance
Thanks for sharing those other content source ideas Carrie. I noticed you mentioned linkedin Q&A on twitter recently. I’ll have to check that out sometime. I know I could learn a lot from you when it comes to social networking. In fact it would be pretty awesome if you could contribute a blogging tips post sometime.
Yahoo answers is great. I always end up there when I’m asking a question to google, and am always unsatisfied with the answers. Finding financial questions and answering them in a blog post is a great idea. Thanks for the tip.
I also have asked the question through my facebook page and gotten some great ideas. Directly polling the readers is great to see what they like, dislike, and what they want more of.
Jacob @ iheartbudgets recently posted..Death: The Only Reason For Life Insurance
That’s something I need to do more of…interacting with people on facebook. I always figured I spam them with too much post sharing for them to notice any questions. I guess it’s worth a try though. You’re so right that the yahoo answers results are rather disappointing. Too many people on there are just trying to pad their stats by answering every question they think they know a bit about.
Or posting fake questions and answers to game the system for affiliate offers.
These are awesome tips, Matt! I wonder if Amazon can also provide some topic list for products. I always wonder when I see too many comments on many products they sell.
Yes that could work well, especially if you are an amazon affiliate. If there are common questions you can answer, your post can become a resource for that topic. It’s kinda tough in the finance niche though.
This is really ironic. One of the reasons I started a blog is because I used to read those forums and thought I could answer questions as well as some of the ones on there. Thanks for the video Matt. Jeremy, thanks for the mention!
Kim@Eyesonthedollar recently posted..How to Afford Expensive Hobbies
Yeah that is ironic. The key to blogging is being able to help people. So if you can help answer people’s questions like that, I think that’s a good reason to get into blogging.
Great tips. I’ll be checking all this out and using some of these ideas in the future.
Crystal recently posted..If I had only known then what I know now.
Now that you’re back in school you’ll have to find ways to make your blogging more efficient. So if you ever take a while to think up a topic, definitely try some of these strategies.
I agree as I read yahoo posts everyday but the best part are the comments. That is where you will learn what the readers really want to know as they tell it like it is. I 100% always turn to my fans to see what they want to know or learn about. Another popular way is to see what people are searching for that brings them to your blog. If I see a topic that pops up often and I know I haven’t really talked much about it that’s a sure sign it’s time to. Some great points… but I think you are right trying to talk about one subject may get tough but you never know how far you could branch this out Jeremy.. worth a shot! Cheers mate Mr.CBB
Canadianbudgetbinder recently posted..Reader Question: How Much Debt is Too Much Before You Need To Budget?
I agree that examining your own analytics can be a gold mine for topics too. The great part about that strategy is that the people who are using those search terms probably aren’t satisfied with not finding the answer to their query when they end up on your site. So by directly answering that question in a new post you should be able to improve user metrics for anyone who uses that search term later. That should ultimately improve your overall SEO.
Thank you for your Pinterest tip. I honestly think this is still an underrated tool. I do see webmasters using it a lot for SEO but I don’t think they realize yet that it can be a great place to mine for content ideas.
Gwen recently posted..Why Web Videos for Business Rock!
I admit that I never really go on there. I have a tendency to avoid sites where I know I could potentially waste hours of time. Still I’m sure it could be used quite effectively to find out what people are interested in learning more about.
I love Yahoo Answers. Most of the time when I’m searching for something, somebody has already asked the same question and it’s been answered for me.
Another site like Yahoo Answers is Cha-Cha.
I haven’t used cha-cha, but I know there are several different sites with the same concept as Yahoo Answers. Some of those other sites might have better quality answers too. I’m sure Yahoo has the most questions overall though since they’re well established.
I’m finishing up week 8 of blogging, and brainstorming content can be a struggle. I don’t currently look at those 5 sources, so I will add it to my “brainstorming routine.” Thanks for all the tweets this week, I really appreciate it.
DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted..Free Up Time: 5 Things To Hire Out
You could just do occasional brainstorming sessions where you come up with a ton of topics to cover in the coming weeks. I used to struggle a bit with coming up with a new topic to write about. The thing that really helped me was to accept guest posts. Then I could focus on coming up with 1 or 2 good topics each week. That way it’s also more likely that those topics are relevant to my personal life.
Some more great tips! Nice one dude….
I think Pinterest is a great way to get inspiration and ideas! Something that I hadn’t thought about at all! Yahoo answers can be dubious IMO – some of the questions are ridiculous!
Savvy Scot recently posted..Who Needs Business Insurance?
lol yes you do have to weed through a lot of crap on Yahoo Answers. That’s why it’s helpful to look at a bunch of those questions for a specific topic and not necessarily just one individual question.
Neat tips. I have to admit though I don’t have much issue with coming up with topics. I just write with what I am passionate about.
Miss T @ Prairie Eco-Thrifter recently posted..Organizing Your Computer
You’re one of the lucky bloggers then Miss T. It seems that most at least occasionally have a bit of writer’s block about what to cover next. I think some of that might come from a reluctance to cover similar topics that their blogging friends have recently covered. You do a pretty awesome job of consistently covering great topics though.
Every once in awhile I do a search for topics in my niche and then read all of the yahoo answers for ideas.
Good call though, that’s a pretty solidly long list to provide ideas!
Didn’t watch the movie, but pinterest is also a good way to discover other people writing in your niche.
Anne @ Unique Gifter recently posted..CSA: Groceries as a Wedding Gift
I could see your niche being quite effective to use the yahoo answers strategy with. I’m sure all kinds of people are asking questions about gifts. That probably uncovers some random ones that you just wouldn’t have considered. Using pinterest for gift related topics would be a little trickier though.
I haven’t really had to find ideas from outside sources yet. I’ve been able to come up with things from past experiences and as new experiences arise. Another place for ideas is the news. Current events always provide somethingto write about.
Justin @ The Family Finances recently posted..Painting Our Kitchen Cabinets: Part 2
I think early on it is easy enough to come up with ideas, but over time you’ll find the topic selection gets a lot tougher. Luckily within personal finance there is so much you can write about. So it can take a long time until you really do need to look around for topic ideas.
I like the concept of video! Great idea. Also, yahoo answers is an awesome source. I found some really interesting topics on there.
Marissa @ Thirtysixmonths recently posted..House Cleaning and Getting ready for fall
Glad to hear you liked the ideas in the video. I really appreciated Matt providing this video full of solid tips. It made me feel a little less guilty about not providing this week’s blogging tip myself.