How To Come Up With Blog Content Ideas

No matter what industry you’re in; a good blog post can easily become one of your most profitable customer acquisition channels when done right.

The difficulty is knowing what to write about so that you can attract a stream of high quality buyers/leads to your website.

After all, it’s all well and good driving traffic/visitors to your site, but if none of those visitors are turning into leads or sales, you’re probably getting the wrong visitors.

Well in this article, I’m going to be sharing how you can not only find an almost unlimited pool of ideas. But also how identify your high-profitability keywords which will attract the RIGHT people to your site.

Know Your Audience

The most critical component to all of this is truly knowing your customer/buyer.

Understanding their fears, doubts, concerns and desires will help you to understand the kind of content they are likely searching for.

One of the biggest mistakes people make with their blog and the reason they don’t make any money from their blog is because they make it all about their business. 

Remember, your potential customers don’t care about your business; not yet anyway.

What they do care about is solving their own problems or achieving their desires. However, if your blog feels like a sales pitch, people will be quick to leave.

That’s why you want to make your blog as customer-focused, value-driven and unbiased as possible.

Take the time to study your customer avatar and take the role of a trusted advisor.

If you haven’t already done so, I’d highly suggest creating an ideal customer persona/customer avatar for your business. This will help you immensely in almost every area of your business and marketing. You can grab our free worksheet on our blog here.

Where To Find Ideas For Blog Content

Once you’re clear on your who your audience is; including their fears, concerns and desires. You’ll want to write a list of potential searches they may be typing into Google. This could even be things that existing customers have asked you or said to you.

If you’re in need of additional inspiration for your blog content, there are then a number of tools you can use:

1. Google Autosuggest

By typing the first few words of a search into Google, you’ll be given a list of suggested search terms people have previously looked up.

This can be a great way of finding a flow of amazing content ideas.

2. Answer The Public

Answer The Public is another great free tool for coming up with content ideas.

It allows you to type in any word relating to your product/industry and be given a list of questions, phrases or statements that people search for in relation to that word.

3. Online Forums

Online forums like Quora can be another great way to find content ideas. Simply type in a keyword into the search bar and you’ll be able to access a list of questions people have asked.

The great thing about Quora is people will often anonymously ask things they may be too ashamed or embarrassed to ask in person. Creating content that addresses these fears/concerns can really help to build trust and demonstrate understanding in the eyes of your potential customers.

4. Facebook or LinkedIn Groups

One of the most underutilised methods for finding content ideas is in Facebook and LinkedIn Groups.

There are Groups for almost every topic imaginable from Menopause Support Groups to Tech Entrepreneur Masterminds all the way to Model Boat Enthusiasts. When you find and join the groups relating to your niche or industry, you’ll have direct access to sometimes hundreds of thousands of your ideal customer.

That means you can ask questions, run polls/surveys and even search through all historic posts, questions, and comments. The larger groups often have hundreds of posts a day meaning you’ll never be short on content ideas.

5. Keeping a List Of Commonly Asked Customer Questions

Sometimes, just keeping a record of commonly asked customer questions can be one of the best ways to create content.

If one of your customers is asking, you can bet there will be other people out there looking for similar answers.

Creating content around this gives you the opportunity to help them before your competitors do.

Segment Your Blog Content By Funnel Stages

Once you’ve started to compile a list of content ideas, you’ll want to start segmenting these by each stage of the funnel.

For example, let’s say you sell IT Support Services.

Somebody at the top of the funnel doesn’t necessarily know they need IT Support Services…YET.

As such, they are likely searching for the pains or issues they’re experiencing like “Microsoft exchange emails not working”

As we get toward the bottom of the funnel, they may now be looking up things like “how to find the RIGHT IT Support company”

Ideally you’ll want to spend most of your time toward the top of the funnel so that you can filter down. This also gives you more of a chance to build trust/credibility and eliminate the competition.

After all, most businesses fight after the scraps at the bottom of the funnel and end up being seen as a commodity by their customers. This is why so many companies get into price wars and end up having to justify with features/benefits alone.

The most successful businesses go beyond their product or service, and work on building a steady-stream of clients from the top of the funnel as the relationship/trust has been build over time.

However, you’ll want to make sure your content is appropriately segmented and that you are covering each stage of the funnel.

This will ensure that you have a steady flow of new prospects/buyers.

Picking High Profitability Keywords & Prioritising Your Blog Content

So now that you’ve got your blog content ideas, how on earth do you know figure out what to focus on first? Well, there are 2 key areas that will help you do this:

Search Volume Vs Competition

The first thing you’ll want to do is find the potential search queries that you actually have a chance of ranking for and will also bring in traffic. To do this, I’d suggest using a free tool like UberSuggest.

Ideally you want to find something with a low SEO difficulty and high search volume. Typically the higher the search volume, the higher the SEO difficulty but there will always be exceptions and this is what you want to look for.

The content ideas with the lowest difficulty and highest search volume should get priority. HOWEVER, there is one other element we need to give consideration to.

Identifying Buyer Intent 

Finding the keywords that show buyer intent is extremely important if you want to actually start generating leads or sales from your blogs. 

For example, let’s say you’re an Italian restaurant that sells freshly a beautiful seafood Linguine. Whilst a search like “how to make a seafood linguine” may be related, the intent behind that search is very different.

Your customer is somebody who wants to eat out, they want the dining experience. Somebody searching for “how to make” obviously want to make it for themselves.

Now, that’s not to say people looking up instructions couldn’t be potential customers. as this could come down to different stages of the funnel like we talked about earlier But there are also other factors to consider here like location. Can you serve on a national scale or are you fixed to a certain area? This will all need to be considered when it comes to the prioritisation and choice of content you create.