Generating Content Ideas – 4 Tools to Try

Anyone who’s taken steps into the world of Content Marketing and tried generating content ideas knows that creating content can be time-consuming and out of our comfort zone at times – it is, however, worth it. Luckily, there are strategies and tools for generating new ideas, fleshing out existing ideas and evolving good ideas into awesome ones.

1. HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

It is quite easy to use, and free. It is also based on your keywords. The program asks you to type in three words (preferably nouns) and then gets back to you with five article headlines. If you don’t like the ideas that have been suggested, you can “try again” until you have a great idea to write about.

2. BuzzSumo

This is the most common and the best tool available using which you can generate tons of great content ideas. It’s awesome because it does more than just provide you with content ideas. Much more! What Buzzsumo does is that it not only shows the most popular blog titles. It also gives you the number of shares on different social media sites. You can also sort the content depending on the shares of different social media sites. The best part of this tool is that you can see who shared a particular content. In other words, you can quickly tell how well content is performing and what’s resonating the most with readers. This information is helpful because it lets you know which angles to take with your blog and makes it easier to strike while the iron is hot when topics are peaking.

3. UberSuggest

This tool suggests keywords related to the main word that you introduce into the blank space. This content creator will let you place a filter on the answers (web, images, shopping, YouTube or news). You can also choose the language, which comes in handy if you would like to write in a language other than English. Finally, you can browse through loads of resulting keywords, organized alphabetically. If you are especially interested in some of them, you can perform a search in Google or Google trends, and download the results. It’s kind of like the Google Keyword Planner but more streamlined.

4. Google Trends

If you want to grab your audience’s attention and get them talking, take a look at trending topics online to see what people are talking about right now. Google Trends is a helpful tool that lets you see what current events, celebrity names, and cultural memes have captured the world’s attention. You can search for a particular keyword or term, or simply select a category that’s interesting to you. Users can also track what’s trending in a particular region or what was hot during a specific time period. If you’re interested in shaking things up a little to get out of your writing rut, looking at what’s trending could help you find a timely angle to position your posts.

Everybody needs inspiration – it really doesn’t matter whether you are the best writer in the world or a complete beginner. These tools exist because of the needs of other writers before you, proving that everybody, at some point or another, will need external inspiration to beat the infamous writer’s block. Don’t forget that all these tools work with algorithms – always apply the best of your human judgment and ensure that whatever you’re writing is original, and not a copy of something from another source.