6 easy ways to find new blog topics for your clients

Whether you write weekly, monthly or quarterly blogs for your clients, coming up with fresh content ideas for blogs can get tougher as time passes. Finding new things to say on a specific niche topic or specialist subject doesn’t always come naturally to copywriters, who might not be experts in that particular field. If you’re struggling with blog ideas to flesh out your content calendar, these tactics should help.

Whatever industry your client is in, setting up Google alerts means you’ll always be one step ahead when it comes to breaking news stories. Google Alerts monitors the web for mentions of specific keywords you choose. While it makes sense to monitor specific brand terms, it can also be helpful to monitor generic industry-related terms too.

So, if your client was a travel company, setting up alerts for “holidays” “vacations” and “flights” will mean you have a fresh supply of news stories and updates delivered to your inbox as they happen. Go to google.com/alerts and enter a search term to track for blog inspiration.

If your client’s blog has been active for several years, this can be a great source of inspiration. Older blogs might include outdated information, or could be written in a way that isn’t optimised for SEO to the standards you would recommend. Updating older blogs with new information or optimising them for keywords can produce great results with a minimum of effort. Creating follow-up blogs with more detailed information and linking to the older pieces is another option.

Consuming content is just as important as creating it. Reading online articles and thought pieces, watching vlogs, looking at memes and laughing at the latest viral joke on social media isn’t just entertaining, it helps content creators understand what kinds of content work (and don’t work), and ensures that the content you create is fresh, fun and engaging.

Curate your own content library with Feedly. Organise your sources into Feeds by client or industry, save articles to read later, and skim-read the insights you need to keep ahead.

One easy way to find blog topics is by answering questions people are searching for in your client’s field. How can you find out what questions they’re asking? With Answer the Public. Simply type in a word or phrase and the tool will return dozens of commonly asked questions in that area. So, let’s say I searched for “holidays” again, some of the questions returned are:

From whitepapers and infographics to industry updates, press releases and social media posts, many content forms can be repurposed into blogs to work even harder. Ask the client to keep you in the loop from their end so that you are aligned with the content they’re sending out on their channels.

Websites like Reddit and Quora might be fun for light entertainment and falling down conspiracy theory rabbit holes, but for digital marketers, they can be a treasure trove of information. Subscribe to industry-specific threads to chat with other digital marketers, or simply lurk to learn about algorithm updates and new social media features before they make the headlines. These sorts of updates and insights can help you generate ideas for new types of content.