Brainstorming for blogs topic ideas for Niche Marketing

Finding Topic Ideas

There are lots of ways to find topic ideas for new blog posts. But you don't want to find just any topic ideas - you want to find the ones that have the best chance of becoming popular. The best way to do this is to start by seeing what topics get the most social shares in your niche.

 

As you go through these different tools to analyze the most popular topics on particular blogs, note what makes those topics popular.

 

- Are they how to posts, case studies, interviews, etc.? 

- Are they longer or shorter posts?

- Do they have a lot of images?

- Do they have video or other media?

 

This can help you go beyond just popular topic ideas to find out what really makes a post a hit within your niche. Now, let's look at some tools.

 

BloggerScope

 

If your niche is online marketing, you can start with BloggerScope. This site currently tracks 60 of the top blogs in the online marketing industry.

 

 

You can sort the posts by popularity on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and StumbleUpon.

 

Topsy

 

If you want to see the popularity of content from any blog on Twitter, then Topsy is the answer. Unfortunately, you can't sort posts by the most tweets. But typically, the most popular posts are on the first pages.

 

To see the most popular posts on a particular blog, use the following URL and replace mashable.com with the blog you want to research.

 

http://topsy.com/s/mashable.com

 

 

You can use the date ranges on the left to see the most popular posts within the last hour, day, 7 days, 30 days, or all time.

 

To see the most popular posts on a blog on a specific topic, use Topsy's advanced search.

 

 

You can also use the free portion of Topsy Analytics to see what content has been most popular on each day for up to a month on specific topics.

 

 

You can hover over each dot on the graph to see the top story on the topics you searched based on the number of tweets. The graph can also helps you see what topics are most popular on Twitter and the days that topics are trending highest in your niche.

 

Beneath the graph, you can see additional top stories for the topics you search. In both the chart and the graph, you can click through to see the original content.

 

 

LinkedIn Today

 

If your niche falls into any area of business interest, you can research popular topic ideas using LinkedIn Today. Simplyselect the channel that best fits your niche and you will see the most popular blog posts of the day.

 

 

There are currently 23 channels on LinkedIn Today including Entrepreneurship, Healthcare, Law & Government, Marketing Strategies, Recruiting & Hiring, Social Media, and Technology.

 

Social Bookmarking Networks

 

Want to know what posts get the most stumbles, reddits, and other social shares? Take a tour of the top social bookmarking networks to find out. Here are some quick links to use to research specific topics from a few networks. Just replace technology in the URLs with the keyword you are researching. Add a + sign between multiple keywords, such as social+media

 

- http://www.stumbleupon.com/interest/technology

- http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/top/?sort=top&t=all

- http://www.diigo.com/tag/technology

- http://digg.com/tag/technology (click show tags to see more)

 

Q&A Networks

 

Question & answer networks like Quora can give you a good idea about the questions people have about particular topics. Just use the following URL and replace web-marketing with the topic you are researching to find the most asked and answered questions.

 

http://www.quora.com/web-marketing

 

Since questions tend to be specific, think about a broader topic for a group of questions. For example, are people asking about the best tools to use? Then create a post about the top tools.

 

Qualaroo

 

Care to find out what your audience wants? Qualaroo is a tool that allows you to add a form that will pop up from the bottom of your web page, asking visitors a specific question. One simple question you can ask your visitors is what topics they would like to see you write about. This is an easy way to get topic ideas that your readers really want!

 

 

Unfortunately, it won't be cheap. Qualaroo starts at $79 per month with a 14 day free trial. But it can be handy in getting quick answers from your visitors.

 

An alternative is Google Consumer Surveys. It's not as pretty as Qualaroo, and it's not necessarily less expensive. But as opposed to a monthly fee basis, you can set up one question at a time and only pay for the responses you receive. Responses are $0.10 each, and during the survey setup, you have to choose to allow 1,000 ($100), 1,500 ($150), or 2,500 ($250) responses per question. 

 

As an added bonus, you can target your surveys to specific demographics (age, gender, or location) or create a screening question to see if the visitor qualifies.  

 

Google Keyword Planner

 

Search engine optimization is a key part of promoting a blog post. If your post ranks well for a particular keyword, then it stands the chance to receive a lot of search traffic that can lead to more social engagement. To choose a topic that will be popular in search, you can start with the Google AdWords Keyword Planner (formerly the Google AdWords Keyword Tool).

 

To use this tool, you need to have a Google AdWords account. Don't worry - you won't need to actually create AdWords ads. If you have a Google account already for Gmail, YouTube, Analytics, etc., just go to Google AdWords and sign up for an account. All you have to do is set your timezone and preferred currency, and you're all set.

 

Next, navigate to the Keyword Planner under Tools & Analysis menu. Here, you will select Search for keyword and ad group ideas. Enter your base topic and then click Get Ideas.

 

 

On the next screen, click on the Keyword ideas tab. If you've previously used the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you'll recognize this.

 

 

To narrow down results, you can use the Include / Exclude filter in the left sidebar. For example, I want my keyword ideas to focus completely on guest blogging, so I would include social media so all keyword matches will have social media in them.

 

 

From here, you can export your list of keywords using the download icon at the top of the results. Choose the Excel CSV options.

 

 

Open the downloaded file and save it as a standard Excel spreadsheet (XLS or XLSX). Next, delete all of the columns except Keyword and Avg. monthly searches, then add a column for Topic Ideas. Now go down the list, which should be sorted in the order of most searched keywords first, and come up with some topics that could go with these keywords. Keep the popular topics you saw in your research earlier in mind.

 

 

Note that it is harder to rank for keywords with high search volume and that you'll have better luck aiming for long-tail keyword phrases (the ones with 3 or more keywords). As an example, social media for small business with 9,900 estimated searches is easier to rank for than social media with 3 million searches. Also note that the average monthly searches are estimates - the actual search volume for any given keyword varies from month to month. This tool can be used to figure out if one keyword is more popular than another on search.

 

SEMrush

 

Want to know what kinds of pages and content ranks number on the first page for a particular keyword on a specific domain? SEMrush can help with that. First, I will warn you that this tool is pricey - a regular subscription plan is $69.95. If you are just doing one-time research, I would suggest going with a one-month plan for $79.95 and just using it when you need it.

 

Once you have signed up for an account (or if you just want to see how this tip works), use the following URL and change the domain.com to the domain you want to research.

 

http://www.semrush.com/info/mashable.com+(by+organic)

 

Now you will see a list of the top keywords a domain ranks for in organic search. The number of keywords could range from the hundreds to the hundred thousands, depending on the domain. If you don't have an account, you will only see 10 results.

 

 

You can sort the information in a few different ways.

 

If you want to see the keywords that a domain is ranking #1 for, then sort the Pos column in ascending order.

 

If you want to see the keywords with the most search volume that a domain is ranking for, then sort the Volume column in descending order.

 

If you want to aim for keywords with a lower number of results in search engines (for less competition), then sort the Results column in ascending order.

 

For domains with a large number of organic keywords, you might want to use the filters option to show only particular keywords. Once you have it sorted and filtered, use the export option to download the information to Excel.

 

Unfortunately, not all of the organic keywords and corresponding data will download when you export them. Sometimes you will only get a max of 10,000 keywords. This is why you need to sort the information in SEMrush first so you get the most important keywords.

 

When you download the results and open your spreadsheet, apply a filter to the top row to resort the data by position in search, volume, or results. You can also highlight the entire workbook and use the Data > Sort option to sort by search volume and position, search volume and number of results, or other combinations to find out which pages on the domain well rank for a keyword with a high search volume or a keyword with a high search volume and low results.

 

 

Depending on the domain, you may also need to apply filters in the URL column to only show posts from a blog, only show posts from a particular date, or not to show pages with words like category in them.

 

 

Now you will have a wealth of data about the types of content that blogs rank for in search along with the keywords that are driving the most search traffic to their website.