11 Smart Ways to Develop New Blog Post Topics

One of the biggest challenges in content marketing is how to develop new blog post topics that resonate with your target audience, generate value, and bring more people to your website.

I mean, come on, who has the time to find not just good content ideas, but great content ideas that are relevant to your buyer’s persona and support your marketing goals when you’ve got meetings to attend, podcasts to record, and videos to edit. 

Well… what if we tell you there is a way to do just that – find GREAT blog post topics – in just five minutes! In this blog, we share 11 ways to develop new blog post topics that will help you find new ideas for blogs that will keep your editorial calendar filled and your audience engaged.

11 Ways to Develop New Blog Post Topics

Here we go… let’s dive into the 11 ways to develop new blog post topic ideas so you keep your blog flowing!

1. Get Sales, Social Media, and Customer Support Teams Involved

If you want to go from good to great and create topics that your readers will love, ask your sales, customer support, and social media teams.

They interact with your existing customers and prospects day in and day out, and they come across questions and situations that can be developed as full-fledged blog topics.

You’ll be surprised to see how quickly they can offer dozens of topic ideas that fulfill what your customers are looking for, the problems they need solved, and more.

2. Get Content Ideas From Readers’ Comments

Another great place to discover content ideas is by reading social media comments, blog comments, feedback forms, emails, and any other medium your customers use to interact with you.

You’d be surprised how much customers share in comments about things they want to know, which you can use to develop new blog content topics.

In addition to checking your own website and social platforms, scan your competitors’ social media pages and online forums to find out what other information you can gather that could be relevant to your audience and brand.

By keeping track of what customers want to know, you can create articles and blog posts around these topics.

3. Research Content Ideas on BuzzSumo and HubSpot

Have you used BuzzSumo’s Content Discovery tool? With this tool, you can discover new topics, keywords, and trends to help develop new blog post ideas.

Best of all, the tool is super easy to use. Simply create an account, and in the search bar enter a topic you’re interested to know more about. The tool will generate content ideas you can use.

You’ll only get a 30-day trial with BuzzSumo, and then you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan or stay on the free plan, which has limited capabilities.

If you’re looking for a completely free tool, check out HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator. It’s free to use and will help you come up with new blog ideas.

It works much like BuzzSumo’s tool. Simply enter a keyword or idea, and it will provide you with a list of topic ideas you can expand on.

4. Scan ‘People Also Ask’ in Google Search

When you do a search in Google, you might not have noticed, but they also return a ‘People Also Ask’ section. This is a Google SERP feature that appears as rich snippets for around 43% of search queries. Ask a question and the answer will be shown in a box along with a link to the webpage where Google collected the answer.

Because actual searches trigger these questions, ‘People Also Ask’ can be a great way to develop new content ideas for your blogs and optimize your content for SEO.

‘People Also Ask’ can provide information about users’ questions regarding your brand, industry, or products and services. It will also reveal to you what kind of content Google considers worth displaying and who your competitors are!

5. Check Google’s Autocomplete and Related Search Suggestions

Similar to ‘People Also Ask,’ you can utilize Google’s autocomplete and related search suggestions to develop blog content ideas.

Autocomplete is a Google search feature aimed at speeding up searches by showing relevant queries. Autocomplete predictions represent actual searches done on Google.

When you type a word or phrase on the search bar, you’ll notice it starts to return suggestions for your query, as you see in the image below.

Related searches appear at the bottom of the SERP, which you can check in addition to autocomplete.

Using autocomplete and related searches, you will have an idea of what people are searching for and what might be relevant for you to write in a blog.

6. Use Community Tools Like AnswerThePublic and Quora

The best content is content that delivers value, and the user determines value. So, it only makes sense to turn to your audience and the public to find out what questions they need answered. Two of our favorite tools for community listening are AnswerThePublic and Quora.

AnwerThePublic is an online tool that listens to autocomplete data from search engines like Google and then combines it all to provide you every useful phrase and question people ask around your keyword.

Much like the content idea generators we mentioned above, when you add a keyword to AnswerThePublic, it returns hundreds of suggestions that you can then use to develop blog topic ideas.

Using our ice coffee example from above, when typed into AnswerThePublic, it returns dozens of ideas and questions around the topic. You can view the results as a visual image or data, all of which can be downloaded as a .csv file.

On the other hand, Quora is an online tool that people use to ask questions they need answers to. The beauty of the platform from a content creator’s point of view is that you can follow ‘Spaces’ that revolve around specific types of content on the platform. For example, our team follows spaces related to small business, digital marketing, social media marketing, etc. When we log in, we can see the most recent and most popular questions asked, which can help to spur content ideas. 

Beyond that, we can also provide answers in the platform to answer questions and share our expertise. 

7. Write About Latest Reports and News

To do this, Keep an eye on the latest news and reports released on social media channels and turn them into report-style blogs. For example, many times company representatives will post updates on Twitter to keep others informed. 

Here’s an example of Google tweeting about the latest spam update, which was later developed into a blog post and shared on Search Engine Journal:

8. Use Google Trends

Creating content around trending topics is always a great way to build traffic. This is exactly why Google created Google Trends – as a way for you to explore what topics are trending across the globe.

You have a couple of options on how you can use the Google Trends tool. The first option is to enter a term or topic into the search bar and get an overview of the results. In the example below, we searched for social media marketing as a topic (you can search your keyword as a topic or a term). Below you can see the results, which include interest over time, interest-based on region, and related queries, which is where the best nuggets for content ideas are found.

Alternatively, you can use the tool to look up trending searches. Simply click the hamburger menu in the upper left corner and scroll down to trending searches. You can then adjust your search based on topics, date, real-time, and geographic location.

9. Turn Social Media Live Sessions into Blog Posts

Have you recently been on Facebook or LinkedIn live sharing information about a topic? If so, that’s great content to turn into a blog post! And even better… turn it into multiple blog posts!

Converting your social media live sessions is a great way to repurpose the videos and generate continuous value from your content. Additionally, it helps you connect deeper with the reader, as they can see you in the video.

10. Look for Content Gaps in Your Existing Content

Content gap analysis is the process of finding gaps in your existing content. The point is to identify missing pieces of content to support the various stages of the buyers’ journey and the sales funnel.

Content gaps will tell you which types of blogs and content formats you need to create to capture and nurture leads.

For example, if you realize that you are only creating top-of-the-funnel content, you should start by publishing some bottom-of-the-funnel content pieces to push the leads from the consideration stage to the decision-making stage.

11. Do Competitor Research

What works well for your competitors can work well for you. Do a little research to find the keywords that your competitors rank for and the best-performing articles. 

Now utilize those ideas to develop new blog post topics for your website.

A word of caution: you only want to use your competitor research as a guide to developing new content. You do not want to mimic what they are doing, or outright copy them. In doing so, you lose your uniqueness and what sets you apart from them. So, take what they’ve done, put your spin on it, and do it 1000% times better!

There you have it! Eleven simple ways to develop new blog post topics for your small business!

Now you just need to get started! 

Get Started with Our Small Business Blog Planner

As you start using these tools, you’ll want to create a way to document your ideas. We’ve created the perfect tool to help! Grab a copy of The Ultimate Small Business Blog Planner to keep your ideas organized. With this planner, you can brainstorm topics, do keyword research, and strategically plan your blog from a high level right down to the nitty-gritty of each post! Grab yours today to help turn your blog into a powerful marketing machine!

If you still need some help, then reach out to us.

We know the struggles of being a small business owner and having enough time to do what needs to be done. There is a lot of juggling. 

But when it comes to blogging and putting out content, the payoff and reward is too high to simply wing it! 

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Let us help you! When you work with the VirTasktic Content Marketing team, we’ll generate blog topic ideas for your business, create and manage your blog editorial calendar, and even write the best quality blogs that will position you as the true leader in your industry.

So tell us, now that you know 11 new ways to develop new blog content topics, which one do you want to start with and why? Let us know in the comments.