How to Find Original, Creative Ideas for Your Content

After growing for a while, many websites run out of ideas and content. They don't know what kinds of posts to produce that are both varied and suitable, and that draw readers. Here are tips from Mona Media to on 10 ways to find content ideas for your website, to help you keep your content fresh and keep readers engaged as well as possible.

What can you do to avoid running out of content ideas?

Build an SEO strategy

Your website's content needs to be updated regularly and consistently, at least weekly. If content is interrupted, readers' experience can suffer, and engagement and traffic fall with it. So as a content writer for a website, making sure content publishes smoothly is essential. You need some preparation and concrete plans so you don't run out of ideas or content while running the website.

The simplest thing you need to do, then, is set up a SEO strategy that is complete and optimized.

Specifically, when planning an SEO strategy, you need to take these steps:

• Keyword research: Identify a set of potential keywords that can help you rank at the top
• Research your potential audience (customer insights): Identify users' pain points.
• Research competitors: Identify the tactics and keyword sets your direct competitors use, and find the keyword and content gaps to exploit

The result of the SEO strategy process is a clear direction, a strong keyword set and an optimal content-building strategy for your website. With that, you will always have ideas and topics to write about.

See also: The process build content for your website, in detail

Research LSI keywords

But what if you want to expand your writing ideas further? Expand your keywords through LSI keyword research. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are keywords that are semantically similar or related to your main keyword.

LSI keywords and synonyms are alike in some ways, but not every synonym of your keyword is a promising keyword. So researching LSI keywords with keyword research tools helps you expand your keywords effectively and sensibly.

Form a keyword research team

Another tactic for expanding keywords to find writing ideas is to “recruit” colleagues to brainstorm with you. Before you reach for complicated keyword brainstorming tools, the “brains” of your colleagues and the people around you can help you find diverse and interesting keywords.

The more “brains” thinking about possible keywords, the more usable results you get.

Choose a diverse, in-depth keyword set

During keyword research, you will collect many different keyword sets. You can prioritize those with high traffic, a variety of keywords and some depth.

That way, you can easily expand your content without being locked into a few narrow topics.

How to find ideas for writing content

While producing content or building a content strategy for your website, you will run into a shortage of ideas. Website content has to appear continuously and regularly, so keyword ideas and content ideas are easy to run dry over time.

To limit this, keep your content frequency steady and keep engaging with your site's readers, you can use tools to help you find content ideas.

1. Google search suggestions

Besides searching for keywords, Google's search bar can also suggest related phrases. This is a convenient, free way to find content ideas, and you can find one in a few seconds.

Google's suggestions are based on words semantically related to what you type, or on what users around the world search for.

So Google Search suggestions can be very good keywords with solid volume, and ideas you shouldn't ignore.

2. Keyword research website: Answer The Public

Keyword research websites provide search insights, meaning related keywords that users often search for, which you can use as content ideas.

The best-known example is Answer The Public. On this site you just enter a short phrase, ideally 1-2 words. The engine then lists countless searches most related to the original phrase.

The results are also split into different groups, such as: what, who, when, where, how… The results are both varied and focused on specific traits and directions. This lets you rotate between different idea groups, so your content avoids repetition and cookie-cutter sameness while still revolving around the topic and niche of your website.

Alternatives to Answer The Public:

• FAQ Fox
• SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool
• QuestionDB (pulls data from Reddit)
• WordStream (supports search keywords only, not image or video keywords)

3. Q&A website: Quora

Another very effective way to hunt for content ideas is to use Q&A websites. The most popular one today is Quora. On this platform no topic goes unmentioned, from everyday subjects like life, cooking and sports to complex ones like cryptocurrency or cloud computing.

Just type your topic, field or niche into Quora's quick search bar and you will see a pile of related questions.

The first results are the most-followed questions, and they usually have some depth, making them well suited to expand into a blog post for your website.

The people who ask and answer are also experts or people with experience in those fields, so the content is very detailed, accurate and worth consulting.

These are priceless ideas and knowledge you can use and turn into content for your website.

Besides Quora, there are some other popular Q&A websites:

• StackExchanged
• Stack Overflow
• Answers.com

4. Keyword research tools: Ahrefs and SEMRush

Besides websites, keyword analysis and research tools can also be used to find ideas for editing content.

Specifically, Ahrefs and SEMRush are very famous, reputable website analysis tools. With these two tools you can see detailed SEO metrics: keyword difficulty, competition, search volume or conversion rate (conversion rate),…

When you analyze a specific keyword, you get many suggestions for related keywords along with their metrics. Those are potential ideas you can use to create content for your website.

You can also use Ahrefs and SEMRush to find keywords and content that have strong potential but little competition. They also include advanced tools for analyzing competitor websites, which help you spot the keyword and content gaps between them and you.

Those gaps can be exploited to give you a competitive advantage, helping you win customers from competitors and outrank them in search results.

See also:

• How to analyze keywords with Google Keyword Planner
• 9 effective keyword rank checking tools

5. Forums and groups: Reddit

Forums and groups are also a rich, huge source of ideas for content writers. The most popular forum today is probably Reddit, with over xxx active users each month.

Reddit has thousands of subreddits on countless topics, and each subreddit gets 2-3 discussion threads a day.

Create a Reddit account and follow the subreddits related to your field and niche, and you will find plenty of good ideas every day from the issues the community cares about and asks about.

An alternative to Reddit, or a way to add variety and more sources of ideas, is the “blog social network” Medium.

6. Buzzsumo

BuzzSumo is a widely trusted social listening tool for finding ideas for website content. It shows how your keyword is mentioned on each social channel, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Reddit.

You can also view posts/tweets that mention what you care about directly, or look at detailed statistics to get finer content insights.

6. Social media

Nowhere will you find viral content better than on social media. It is also a huge source of writing ideas that no one can skip.

The most popular social networks today are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Each platform works differently and has different features, but they all have groups, where users with shared interests and concerns gather.

Moving around in these groups, you can learn which content is going most viral, which is drawing the most attention, which problems are giving users the biggest headaches, and so on.

This is an endless source of ideas for your blog and website. Besides groups, hashtag are also a way to see what is trending. Search for hashtags related to your field and niche and see what users are saying about them. Content ideas from hashtags are a timely, effective and highly shareable method.

Finally, social platforms always have influencers. Influencers are people with great influence on a community and so are followed by many people.

By watching, and even asking, influencers, you can learn what content is the community's top concern.

Usually, what influencers care about is also what their fans pay attention to. So influencers and the issues around them are a rich source of ideas for website content.

8. Your own website and your competitors'

Sometimes you don't need to go far; the answer can be right in your own house, your own website. Pay attention to the comment section under each post on your website, especially readers' questions and queries. They are straightforward hints for building the next content for your site.

They may even be problems of your own potential audience group. That means you should prioritize solving those problems first, because potential customers have a much higher conversion rate and a far better chance of becoming loyal customers than anyone else.

Conversely, if you can't find ideas at home, you can look next door!

A competitor's website, again its comment section, is also a great source of ideas. And if you make use of their readers' questions, you may be able to draw them over to your blog.

That is two birds with one stone: you grow traffic to your own website and take customers from your competitor.

9. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free SEO tool with many practical uses. Many users rely on Google Alerts to find ideas for content for their websites and blogs.

The main feature of Google Alerts is to monitor and alert you when a phrase you care about is mentioned by publishers, the press or other media.

From mentions on other sites about your topic, you can write your own content that is similar or related to them, or expand on them.

10. Books, newspapers and magazines

Besides the computer tools above, you can also use books, newspapers and magazines as effective brainstorming tools.

Look for titles and publications that fit your topic, field and niche. They may hold plenty of good ideas to turn into engaging posts and content.

If they are books by influencers in your industry, the chance of your content getting the community's attention is even greater.

That is the full list of 10 ways to find ideas for writing content can keep your content rich and engaging, with no more running dry. In reality these are just a few of the most common methods; there are many other ways to find ideas that Mona Media can't list in a single article. Some ideas even come “out of nowhere” from a photo or an ad. So besides applying the tricks above, stay creative and take risks, because in the end that is the nature of content writing.

See also: What should you do when you run out of ideas?