5 Tools to Help You With Content Ideas

Creating a content strategy and sticking to it can be a challenge for any business owner or marketer. You're inevitably going to run into a case of writer's block, get bored with your writing, or simply fall into a rut.
The key is being willing to experiment with how you find inspiration, craft content, and explore different workflows and optimization strategies. If you're feeling stuck and creating content has become a chore, try some of these suggestions. These 5 tools take some of the pain out of the process.

 1. Google Keyword Planner

Google's Keyword Planner is a highly effective tool for writers struggling with content development. If you've already got a topic in mind, you can use the Keyword Planner to research keywords and concepts related to your core idea.

For example, if you know you want to write a blog post on mobile marketing, you can do a quick search using the Keyword Planner. Google will generate a list several pages long of keyword ideas such as mobile apps, text marketing, mobile ads, etc., and provide you with additional data, such as how many people are searching for that term on a monthly basis, and the level of competition for each keyword.

You can use the data you uncover from Google Keyword Planner to help brainstorm titles for upcoming pieces and optimize your content for search. Good old-fashioned keyword research provides you with a seed list of terms.

Pay special attention to long-tail keyword terms (for example, instead of "semantic indexing" you might look for "what is semantic indexing" or "how to apply semantic indexing to my blog") to give you more fully fleshed ideas that reveal searcher intent. If you can link your content to your reader's intent, it's likely to make a stronger connection.

2. Google Trends

Are you writing content that isn't resonating with your audience because it's not topical enough? Finding a news hook for your pieces could be the solution. 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.

For instance, maybe you'd like to know which topics were trending in business and industry over the past seven days. To do this, you'd select region, time frame, and category from the drop down lists provided. Google Trends then comes up with a graph illustrating search interest over time, as well as a list of topics that are popular search terms.

If you're interested 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.

3. Google Webmaster Tools

One of the easiest ways to map out a plan for your writing is to check out which keywords are driving the most traffic to your website and use that data to develop your content strategy.

You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find out what content is resonating the most with your audience, and help you create more of the same.

4. Quora

Question and answer sites like Quora can give you immediate insight into your audience's most pressing problems. This tool lets you review popular questions related to topics you're interested in.

To get started, simply create an account, select categories of interest, and choose subtopics under your preferred categories.

Q&A sites are great because they connect you to intent: users cared enough about solving this problem or finding this data to go and seek expert help. If there's a reasonable volume of questions and answers, you might have a hot niche on your hands.

If you've never used Quora, let's assume that you're an entrepreneur who's interested in SEO. You start by choosing "marketing" as a main category of interest, and then Quora will give you the option to choose from a range of subtopics such as search engine optimization and web marketing.

Once you've selected your categories and subcategories, you will then be directed to a page where you can review thousands of questions and answers about topics of interest, as well as recent blog posts from other Quora users.

Q&A sites give you a good sense of what people are interested in reading and learning about that's related to your field. It gives you an inside look at the way that they describe their problems, how these issues impact their lives, and the overall emotions behind the desire to solve the issue. All these factors will help you develop long lists of content ideas, and infuse what you write with insight and ideas that connect with readers.

5. InboundWriter

If your primary goal is more traffic to your site, InboundWriter is a tool worth considering. This tool is valuable for a few reasons:

•  It helps you create SEO-friendly content. As you're developing a piece in InboundWriter, the tool actually provides keyword suggestions and rates how well your writing is optimized for search.
•  The platform keeps all your content organized in one place.
•  It lets you analyze how your content performed with your readers.