April 13, 2017

How to Develop Topics for Written Content

It’s easy to understand the value of good content for your company’s marketing purposes. Consumers are constantly hungry for quick, quality content in the form of articles, blogs and social media posts. The more content you produce and share, the greater your chances of connecting with potential clients.

Often, the most challenging part of creating content is deciding what to write about. The initial brainstorming process can often leave you feeling devoid of any good topics. There are plenty of digital resources that can inspire ideas and generate leads if you struggle to come up with relevant, attention-grabbing topics for your written content. 

Skim Quora
Quora is a community-based question and answer website where users can post any question and receive user-generated answers. Millions of people visit Quora each day, posting on over 400,000 topics, so there’s sure to be content related to your audience. Find a relevant category and skim through the most recently asked questions to get a sense of what’s trending in your industry. These questions can easily inspire the topic for a longer article or a quick blog post. Just take a question and turn it into a statement to create your headline. All you have to do next is share your knowledge.

Google News Alerts
Leverage your expertise by writing about a recent newsworthy event related to your field. An easy way to stay informed of current events is to set up Google news alerts for relevant keywords. When you’re looking for a good subject to write about, check your alerts for the most recent news, and write a commentary or analysis of the event. Content related to breaking news that people are already searching for will have naturally increased visibility on the web. 

Draw From Recent Experience
Most people turn to the internet for advice and quick solutions to their problems. Leverage that by positioning yourself as an advice provider. What kinds of problems have your clients run into recently? Use their experiences—and your experiences assisting them—to generate a topic on which you can provide help. If you or your clients have encountered a certain challenge, chances are others out there have, too. Present your advice in the form of a listicle or a short blog to ensure that people quickly skimming the web can find and engage with your work. 

Investigate Online Forums
There are countless online communities out there, with millions of people engaging in conversation and learning from each other. Add in your two cents and have your voice heard by expanding on a topic that has recently been discussed in an online forum. Find a forum relevant to your industry or expertise by searching keywords within a platform like Reddit. Forums are useful because they are genuine—they’re comprised of real people discussing real issues, so you know that whatever you add to the dialogue will be relevant. 

Get Involved on Twitter
Just like you would search for keywords on Reddit, you can search for them on Twitter to see what people are talking about in your field. To take this a step further, participate in a Twitter chat. Most chats operate on a question-and-answer format, where a moderator poses a question and participants tweet their answers, communicating with each other along the way. You can use one of the moderator’s questions or a participant’s tweet to generate a topic for a social or blog post.

Hire a Marketing Agency
You are so busy doing what you do best; who has the time to find topics and write on them? The best content strategy agencies will help you find trending topics and ghostwrite keyword rich pieces to place in the most appropriate publications. Strong content agencies with substantive knowledge can also participate in Twitter and other online chats for you.