As a writer, you not only have the unenviable task to not only produce long-form articles about a subject for a blog. You also have to brainstorm for ideas to write about.

Even if you’ve been in a game for a long time, writing doesn’t get easier especially if you got stuck in a rut.

In this post, however, you will learn how to come up with article ideas so you can keep writer’s block in check. 

The tips below will ultimately help you create a system of finding new ideas to write about even when you think you’ve written just about everything.

Use Google Search

Part of learning copywriting or content writing is to find ideas to write about in your articles. And arguably the best way to do this is by searching Google.

The fact that users find information about their search query on Google automatically makes it a great place to scour for article ideas.

For instance, if you have a topic you want to write about, you can break it down into smaller or related topics using the Google autocomplete feature.

From here, you can narrow your search by choosing from the auto-completed search query. If you choose “digital marketing course,” it generates a fresh batch of ideas from Google autocomplete.

Keep doing this until you find the topic you want to write about.

If you go to the search engine results page (SERP), you may see this section known as People Also Ask:

These are questions users ask about the search query you entered on Google.

You can expand the list of queries by clicking on one of them. It brings down two new questions related to the question you clicked on:

Click on as many questions as relevant to your site to unveil additional queries.

Finally, if you scroll down the page, you may see a Related Searches feature that lists down related companies and people to your post. Below is an example:

The data you’ll view here will depend on the topic you’re searching for. Broad topics tend to have most of the SERP features above available. However, the narrower the search query becomes, the fewer features you’ll see.

This is a great way to find article ideas that you want to rank on Google. The fact that the search engine shows these topics and questions means that it deems these topics important.

Thus, it’s in your best interest to try and write about the best ones you’ll find here.

Find Questions People Ask for in Your Industry

Questions are great sources of topic ideas for your articles.

One of the best places to start is Quora.

Just type your topic to find the best initial results.

From here, you can filter the results by type, author, and time.

To focus on queries about your topic, click on Questions as the type to narrow down your selection.

Focus on questions with lots of followers. This alludes to the demand for questions to the question. Click on the best questions with the most followers.

On this page, you’ll see answers provided by other users to the question. The best answers are the ones with the highest engagement. 

Should you decide to create articles for this topic, you can use the top answer to build your content. This helps cut down on research time so you can go straight to writing.

Another tool you can use here is TextOptimizer. It’s a content optimization tool that allows you to create with increased chances of ranking on top of Google.

It also has a feature that lets you find out questions folks ask about a topic.

By typing in your topic, you will see a list of questions organized to the number of people asking the questions and the number of sites with a published answer.

The goal here is to target questions that lots of users ask but not a lot of sites provided answers for.

This premium feature requires you to have an active subscription to TextOptimizer. But even though you don’t have one, you can still unearth a few article ideas you can write about.

Questions have an informative keyword intent. This means they help increase awareness of your brand.

This may not help you make money from your website now, but you have to look at the big picture.

Not all of your visitors are primed to become customers; some of them simply want to know information about a topic. This part is where your content comes in.

By providing them with the best answer to their questions, they move down your sales funnel and could eventually become customers if you play your cards right.

Keep this content marketing lesson to heart so you understand the type of content you need to create for the different stages of your buyer’s journey.

Watch Out for Trends

The previous two tactics presuppose that you already know the topic you want to write about.

But what if you don’t? How can you narrow your blog post ideas without a topic in mind?

A great place to start is by looking at current trending topics. You can see this by going to Google Trends.

The idea of writing about trending topics is to ride the wave of their popularity. You can generate lots of traffic if you can produce a great article about a topic people are interested in at the moment.

From here, you can look for daily or real-time trends to find topics you’re interested in writing about. If you’re writing for a particular location, click on the drop-down menu and change it to the country of your choice.

If you click on one of the trending topics, it shows you related queries to provide context to the topics and related blog articles that have been written about it.

Use this information to decide on topics to write about. Then use Google search and Quora to break down the topics into smaller topics. 

Check What Forums and Community Boards are Talking About

Similar to Quora, you can tap into the hivemind of your niche or industry by going to its top online community boards.

One of the best boards nowadays is Reddit. You can find subreddits about your topic and see what people are talking about there.

The great thing about Reddit is you can check out the latest trending posts as it happens or filter the results to show the top posts over a period (week, month, or year).

Some of the top posts can be indirectly related to the topic of the subreddit. They could be memes, anecdotes, PSAs, and the like. So you have to comb through the list of posts to find ideas you can use for your content plan.

When checking out a post, you can filter comments to feature the best (most upvoted) ones and draw inspiration from them to write an article. 

On the downside, not all subreddits are the best places where you can find ideas for your article.

If you want to write about SEO, for example, none of the subreddits currently compare to the quality of discussion and content found in the SEO Signals Facebook Group.

Therefore, you must check Google and social media for forums and online communities that are worth checking out.

You can easily determine this by the number of members and threads the forum or group has, as well as how recent the posts are.

The higher both numbers are, the more engaged the community is. Therefore, you can assume that there will be more article ideas for you to draw from. 

Research for Keywords

Sometimes, it’s not enough to just pick a topic that you like to write about.

Because if you’re writing content to increase organic traffic, you need to determine topics that people type in on Google.

This is where keyword research comes in.

Finding keywords that’ll help you maximize your search rankings and generate more traffic is a crucial component of your lead generation strategy.

You want to find keywords that users look for on search engines. From there, you can create content using the content optimization tool of your choice.

A really good keyword tool to use for starters is KWFinder.

It not only shows you suggestions and ideas from your seed keyword. KWFinder also reveals to you how many times people look upon a keyword in a month and the difficulty of ranking for that keyword.

Using a tool like this allows you to determine which among your article ideas are worth pursuing both on these metrics. 

What’s Next?

Knowing how to come up with article ideas is just one of the many things you must do to ensure the quality of your content. 

Right now, it’s just a matter of putting all these things into action so you can maximize the effectiveness of the articles you’ll create.

Below are ideas to help you get on the right track once you’ve scoured for story ideas:

• If you’re working with a content team, you can place your gathered ideas into a knowledge base and let the writers pick what they want to write about from the lot. This is a step towards streamlining your writing process.
• Related to the point above, create a project brief to put your topics into action. This makes writing the content much simpler since the research is out of the way.
• Align your article ideas with your content marketing strategy. Write articles about a subject geared towards readers in the different stages of your sales funnel. This way, you’re not just writing content for writing’s sake. You give each piece purpose by fitting them into your marketing plan.

By following the tips above, you can come up with fresh article ideas without burning out. This lets you provide your blog with a steady stream of blog posts that will endear you to your readers.