Either you are a business owner writing your own content or you have hired someone to manage your content, sourcing the right content to engage your readers/audience can be daunting. Also, it can be hard to constantly stay up to date with trending content and identify opportunities to be part of an ongoing conversation.  There is an incredible amount of information floating on different channels, so what can you do? A lot with less effort actually.

The reasons you might need to find trending and relevant content include; getting inspiration for your content production, finding interesting content to educate and excite your audience, growing your search traffic, and staying on top of trending topics in your industry and niche. All these if planned out properly, can encourage people to become loyal and listen to what you have to say especially if you’re consistently producing and sharing interesting content your audience cares about. Yeah! this sounds nice, like a plan, however, the question is; how do we find the content that is relevant, to suit our marketing plan and fill our social content repository/calendar?

Truth is, trending content is easy to find but is it always relevant or useful? Not really. So, let’s get into the tips to help you find the content that’s truly relevant to your business.

Google Search Engine Results

This is your best friend. You search there too so why not start there? To start, type in one of your target keywords into the search bar, and Google will provide you with some suggestions, based on relevance and metrics from search history. For example: if I type in “content marketing”, google suggests “strategy” “tools” “course” “pdf”. The first two are most likely relevant to me because I want to educate my audience on relevant information on content marketing. The last two would help me if I wanted to learn about content marketing.

Google Search Results Suggestions
Google Search Results Suggestions

If you select one of the suggestions provided, take advantage of the ‘news’ tab. It helps if you want your writing to be relevant, clickable, and shareable. Also, writing content with such topics/ideas can help you grow your search traffic and improve your ranking in search engine results.

Using Readily Available Tools

If you want to find trending content quickly, use  Google Trends to see what’s happening in the ‘Trending Searches’ section. You can compare the search volume of a particular keyword in the present time to a period before to gain insights into what isn’t talked about anymore and why. The interface is user-friendly, so explore your options. This can help you improve on tactics that can grow your search traffic.

Use Google Alerts to be updated in real-time on what conversations or news is online about your preferred topic. All you have to do is to create an alert about the keyword and receive email updates.

Twitter is an easy platform to find what’s trending. The research might not bring valuable results, however, you can get an idea of what people are saying on a particular topic in real-time. Another is Ahrefs content explorer this tool will help you find and analyze content performing well in your industry including that of competitors.

BuzzSumo’s ‘Trending Now’ feature can help you find news that’s taking off at the moment. This is easy because you don’t need to spend time checking various websites for what you need. Check for the content with the most shares on the internet, this gives you an idea of what content is capable of getting a lot of engagement.

Answerthepublic tells us that there are 3 billion Google searches every day, and 20% of those have never been seen before. You can use this to gain insights on what answers to provide to people asking questions on Google. The questions you should choose to answer should be related to or relevant to the overall goal you are trying to achieve.

For example; If you want to educate your audience on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), simply type the keyword “search engine optimization” and suggestions based on “what” “who” “when” etc. will come up to help you figure out what exactly you need. Use the “alphabetical” option to see what queries people are searching for.

 

 

Tools for Keyword Research
Answerthepublic Keyword Research
Tools for Keyword Research
                                     Answerthepublic Keyword Research Suggestions

Competitor Analysis

Examining the high-performing content your competitors have published can be a good resource for getting content writing ideas. Also, you collect useful data on who your audiences are and what they need.  Look at the comments on their blog posts or YouTube videos to see the kind of questions people are asking them, this can lead to great ideas for content to write on.

Surveys/Audience Interviews

This is a method that can bring results others might not. This is because you are asking from the source you will be delivering relevant content to. Spur conversations with your target audience as this can reveal blind spots you wouldn’t have observed on your own. You get to define your audience accurately and serve them with the right content they require.

Take an audience survey that will ask specific questions to inform the topics you choose to write about. Before you begin, you need to know why you are conducting this, for who, and how you intend to. Encouraging people to fill the survey might be necessary by offering an incentive. Popular tools that can help you with this include SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, and Typeform.

Topic Generators

Topic research tools can help you save time on creating topics. Impact Plus’s topic generator lets you do your own thing. It generates topics using a keyword and provides blank spaces that allow you use your discretion to fill them out. Others include Portent, HubSpot, and SEMRush.

Forums

Not everything you see on these sort of sites will be worth implementing for your brand. Yes, they have a good reputation in terms of ranking, but you still need to think for yourself about what content is relevant to your business and industry. Joining online communities and forums to follow conversations about content topics you are interested in.

To find forums in your niche, use Google. Add the word “forum” to the suffix of your search query.

For example: if you need to find art-related forums, simply type “art forum” on Google then explore your options. Once you find a suitable one, look through the discussions, this can help you come up with ideas or topics to write content on.

Keyword Research

This is a more accurate way to get relevant content or topic ideas to write for your audience. What is better than using the words they are searching for to solve their problems? Carrying out keyword research allows you to know the common questions and phrases people are searching for answers with, that are relevant to your brand. Pay attention to results or statistics such as SEO difficulty, search volume, Pay per click (PPC) competition, and the top content ranking for those keywords.

There are free options if you are on a budget or do not plan to spend a dime on accessing these tools: KWFinder, Google keyword planner, keywordtool.io, WordStream. We have an article that can help if you want to know how to grow your search traffic and improve page ranking by using keywords and writing content that is SEO friendly,

Customer Messaging and Call-in

The salesperson or customer service representatives you have are a good way to get specific content ideas. Get the questions customers are asking because these people interact directly with the customers. The questions that are not fulfilled completely should also be worked with.

You can either talk to your team directly or create a survey for them to fill.

Industry Updates

Utilizing the information from industry research and marketing research firms can help you find insights relevant to your niche. These firms conduct research and publish the latest trends that may affect or are already affecting your market.

The insights you gain from these reports can form the basis for your blog post idea. You can create content in form of commenting on these findings or providing a summary of the reports. I like to use Statista or Emarketer.

Repurpose your Content

Sometimes you already have enough content to expand on every now and then. Look at your old posts and identify the ones you can update with new information. If you didn’t have the chance to be detailed on any, you can take advantage and add the valuable information you weren’t able to.

Check your web analytics for content that has been the most popular with good engagement. Find ways to expand, update or follow up on this content. Doing this helps with improving SEO, can increase your ranking and traffic on search engines with little effort as the bulk of the work has already been done.

Let’s wrap this up!

To build a reputation for your business or refine popular content, coming up with new ideas or topics for blogging is not that difficult. These tips help whether you are slowly running out of content or have been creating content for a long time. Exploring these tips and finding ways to utilize them on your own will create multiple opportunities for you.

Publishing relevant and interesting content is one sure way people will stay engaged and become loyal followers of your business. You can grow your search traffic and improve page rankings from this activity with consistency.

Let us know in the comments if you know any other tips that work. Thanks for reading!