2 Ways To Get Blog Ideas

Getting blog ideas can be a real bear. We all come up against the brick wall of "what do I write about that would interest my readers?"

Some industries and businesses never run out of topics. Take search engine marketing and anything to do with websites. There's no lack of topics to educate our readers on or to catch them up on the latest.

But what if you're in a business or industry that you think is boring? That you think is really, really limited in updates, changes or new things to talk about?

I never really think that's the case. But it can be challenging to come up with topic ideas that resonate with your readers. So let's look at three ways to find topics of interest or pain points and concerns that are meaningful for our prospects.

Let's say you run a junkyard, or an auto salvage business. Not very sexy, is it? Doesn't sound like there's a lot of potential, does it?

Well, let's take a look at a few tools to see if we can dig up some meaningful topics for this business.

Ubersuggest For Blog Ideas

I love this site. It rocks! Basically, you type in a word or short phrase, and this tool goes out and finds all kinds of Google suggestions people have typed in to find answers or information.

I typed in "junkyard," and here a few topics that could be spun into content:

There's some location-specific phrases that would work for my local SEO strategy. I could create an interesting blog post on "junkyard parts prices" to educate prospects.

Here, we could use "junkyard car parts online" to get internet-savvy car parts shoppers to our site.

What if I specialized in foreign car parts? Honda is one of the most popular, best-selling foreign cars in the U.S., and there are several great phrases here we could use for a variety of content pieces, ranging from web pages to blog posts.

Get Blog Post Ideas From Quora

This is yet another great site to find out what searchers want to know on specific topics. Quora is a question and answer site, and if you haven't been here, I'm guessing you'll bookmark this site and visit it constantly, just as I do. Again, typing in "junkyard" yields these questions:

• When should a car be sent or taken to a junkyard?
• Where can I find car parts for cheaper besides the junkyard?
• What are the legal issues involved in taking just the engine and transmission off a car I bought from the junkyard?

Not only will you find questions directly related to your business, but you could also come up with related topics that are just as interesting:

• Startup Ideas: What business should I start? I'm looking for a business idea.
• What happens if you don't register your car for a long period of time?
• What is your strangest car story?

See where you can go with these questions? Make blog posts, create videos, podcasts or even webinars.

And you thought running a junkyard couldn't make a decent website!

So here you go. Happy hunting with these sites - they're free to use, by the way - and develop a list of direct and related topics to your business.

By the way...this is all part of inbound marketing. Read more about it in this post.

Get more content marketing ideas along with search engine optimization in an Invenio SEO class. Register now, and I look forward to seeing you, and answering all of your SEO questions.

Or if you prefer, check out our online SEO course!

Until we meet again, keep it safely between the ditches!

All the very best,

Nancy McDonald

Image courtesy of www.pexels.com