Where to find inspiration for articles.

Almost every blogger, at some point, faces the dreaded writer’s block. No doubt you have heard of it: you are sitting at your computer, motivated and ready to write, but for some reason, you freeze.

Writer’s block can be crippling… if you don’t have tools to help you overcome it. What is it that your audience wants? What are they looking for and talking about? And where do you go to find this information?

If you sit staring at your screen trying to come up with article topics, you could be there for a long time. Luckily for you, there are a few excellent sources of information—both online and offline—which you can draw upon for inspiration.

Online sources

Often, the fastest ways to find inspiration for article topics is to look online. Here are a few places you should try.

Google Adwords ‘Keyword Planner’ tool

When you add a keyword (a single word or phrase) into Google’s Keyword Planner tool, it will return a list of other keywords relevant to your original ‘seed’ keyword. Each keyword in the returned list is accompanied by the approximate number of searches in Google, per month, for that keyword.

By reviewing this list, you can discover what people are searching for and how often they are searching for it. What’s more, the Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool gives you the opportunity to filter the returned list of keywords. Try filtering the returned list to only include questions (phrases containing “how”, “what”, “why”, “where” etc.) The tool will return a list of questions relevant to your industry.

Give people the answers to those questions on your blog.

Google Autocomplete

When you type a word into Google, you’ll notice that Google gives you suggestions on other search phrases as you type. This is known as Google Autocomplete (sometimes referred to as Google Suggest) and can be another useful tool to come up with article topics.

There are a few third-party tools that allow you to see an expanded list of keywords from Google Autocomplete. Two great examples are Ubersuggest.org and Keywordtool.io. Have a play around with both tools and you’ll find plenty of search phrases that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Q&A websites and forums

Another place to find inspiration is question & answer websites, such as Quora.com, along with relevant industry forums.

These types of websites contain real questions from real people. By scanning through the relevant category pages on these websites, you’ll be able to find a list of relevant questions that you can turn into blog articles.

Social media

One of the best sources of inspiration is social media. By browsing through open social media such as Twitter, you can find out what people are talking about, sharing and linking to.

Try going to Twitter and searching for a phrase relevant to your industry. Let’s say you sell consumer electronics. Go to Twitter and search for ‘iPad’. You’ll receive a list of tweets mentioning the word “iPad”. Some of those tweets are promotional—ignore those. But some are from users commenting on their opinions and problems with their iPad. This can be perfect article material.

News websites

Go to any mainstream news website and use their search feature to search for a phrase relevant to your industry. There’s a good chance that this news website will have written about the topic at some point in the past.

Have a quick browse through those previous articles and see if there is anything you can use for your blog.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Do you have a list of FAQs on your current website? If so, there’s a good chance the answers to these questions are short—maybe only one or two paragraphs.

FAQs are exactly that—questions that have been asked multiple times that people want to know the answers to. There’s no reason why you can’t elaborate on your answers in article form.

Don’t have FAQs on your website? Why not look at your competitors’ websites and use the questions that they have published in their FAQs?

Your most popular articles

A quick scan through your website’s Google Analytics data will tell you which of your previous articles are generating the most interest.

Look at metrics such as visits, pageviews and average time spent on the page. Once you know which of your previous articles are the most popular, it is a good idea to add to, expand upon, or repurpose those articles.

If people are finding that information valuable in its current format, why not make it even better?

Your competitors’ most popular articles

Don’t just look to your own articles for inspiration. You can also find inspiration by looking at popular articles on your competitors’ websites.

While you will not have access to your competitors’ Google Analytics data, there are tools that allow you to see which articles are the most popular on social media. One example is Buzzsumo.com.

Once you find something that has received a lot of social media activity, try rewriting that article and adding your own personal opinion. When using this tactic, don’t copy. Always aim to make your article better than the original, by adding valuable information, opinion or insight that did not exist before.

Offline sources

In addition to online sources, there are also many offline sources that are great for inspiration.

Industry magazines and books

Magazines and books have been around a lot longer than blogs. Most industries have a magazine or trade publication of some sort.

These magazines and books will often contain information that hasn’t been transferred online. Take some time to flick through them and you’ll discover plenty of article ideas. Don’t just look at your own industry; look at complementary industries, too.

Newspapers

Newspapers are dying somewhat, but they still exist and are still a good source of inspiration. While a newspaper is unlikely to contain much information relevant to your specific industry, it can be a great source of trending topics.

When writing articles, try making extended analogies and comparisons with these trending topics. This will keep readers engaged.

Current offline content

Presumably, your business has produced content before to try and promote your business offline. You may have produced brochures, flyers, white papers, reports or case studies.

There’s no need to start from scratch every time. You can repurpose a large part of this information into blog articles.

Brainstorm with employees / colleagues

Any person in your company who comes into contact with customers is a good source of inspiration for articles.

No matter what their position in your company, if an employee comes into contact with customers, you will find inspiration by simply talking to them.

Take them out for coffee and have a chat about their customer pain points. Keep a notepad handy for all the article topics that will spring to mind.

Ask others in your industry

Businesses can sometimes fall into the trap of living in their own bubble. It helps to talk to other people in your industry. If you have external relationships, use them. Take someone out for lunch and have a chat about some of the challenges or opportunities faced by your industry.

Having conversations with other people in your industry will help you to see a different perspective—something you probably wouldn’t have got while sitting in your office, consumed by your own, internal world.

Ask your customers!

While all the above are great sources of inspiration, there’s no better way of getting to know your current and prospective customers than to simply ask them questions.

Ask them how they feel about your company and how they feel about dealing with your industry on the whole. Ask them what they feel would make their lives easier and what they like and dislike about being your customer.

How you will communicate with your customers will ultimately depend on what kind of business you are. Best case scenario is to speak to them face-to-face; worst case would be to run a customer survey. The point is, so long as your questions are worded well, you can gather valuable customer intelligence by just asking.

Do you have any tips of your own? We’d love to hear them!