Trying to find the perfect topic to write about is frustrating, isn’t it?
You want to provide value in a way that will keep readers glued to your site.
So week after week, you open a draft in WordPress and gaze at the blinking cursor, hoping that it will magically give you the perfect blog post idea.
And every week you find yourself in the same position—wanting to write articles that will delight your readers, but grasping at straws to find the perfect topic.
Well, I have some great news for you.
There are four tools you can use to find topics that will delight your readers and boost the likelihood that your post will go viral.
After reading this post, you will know how to find topics your audience will practically drool over.
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So whether you’re pitching a guest post, or you want to publish an epic blog post on your own site, the good news is that you can find dozens of topics in under one hour!
1. Go to The World’s Largest Retailer
You know that you’re not the only one writing on your topic.
There are other blogs, magazines, newspapers and books.
And that’s a good thing, because these other resources are a great way to find excellent article ideas.
In fact, you can find a plethora of ideas that your audience is desperate to know more about through the world’s largest retailer: Amazon.
Go to Amazon.com, and search for a popular book in your niche.
For example, my blog topic is entrepreneurship. I teach people how to do what they love by starting businesses. So I might choose The $100 Startup as a popular title in my blog topic.
If your topic is personal finance, you might choose Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
When you’ve chosen a book in your niche, scroll down to the review section.
5-star reviews will only have complimentary feedback, and 1- and 2-star reviews are often too negative to be helpful, so start reading through the 3- and 4-star reviews to see what people want more of.
For instance, The $100 Startup has over 1,000 reviews.
This review was at the top of the 3-star reviews.
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The reviewer wants to know more about the struggles faced by the entrepreneurs featured in the book.
After I read this review, I wrote a post about my own struggles called The Painful Unspoken Truth About Building Something You Love, which became one of my most popular articles to date.
The following review asks very specific questions, such as how to land your first client, how to gain people’s respect as a consultant, and how to learn about your field.
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These are all topics that my target audience is interested in.
Spend some time reading through 3- and 4-star reviews of popular books in your niche, and you’ll find tons of great blog post ideas to delight your readers.
2. Check Out the Big Shots
As a blogger you should spend some time on popular blogs in your niche. These will help you to find more blog post topics than you could possibly write about.
Start by identifying the most popular blogs in your niche, and on each one, find popular articles with as many comments as possible.
If the blog doesn’t have a “popular posts” section, you can find popular posts by using Quicksprout.com and typing in the blog’s URL to bring up the most shared posts on the blog.
Visit these popular posts and read through the comments.
Let’s say you have a health blog and you’re stuck on what to write about. You know Nerdfitness.com is a very popular health and fitness blog.
Nerd Fitness has a Popular Posts section, and its top post is The Beginner’s Guide to the Paleo Diet. As you can see, this post has over 2500 comments.
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Start reading through the comments to see what questions people are asking about the topic. These and the comments will help you think of dozens of blog post ideas.
The very first comments I saw when I visited the post, for instance, included a great blog post topic idea:
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If I had a blog in the health niche, I’d immediately consider writing a blog post about eating paleo on a budget, or saving money on the paleo diet.
If you’re not sure which blogs are the most popular, you can use Alltop.com to find the top blogs in your niche.
If you have a very “niche” topic and can’t find articles on your topic on popular blogs, you can find them by typing the keyword into Buzzsumo.
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If your niche is paleo diets, these are the results you could get from typing “paleo” into the Buzzsumo search bar.
Once you’ve combed through the comments sections of popular blogs, you can move on to the front page of the internet.
3. Dig for Topics on the Front Page of the Internet
I always liken Reddit to eavesdropping (ethically!) on your target audiences’ conversations. It’s the perfect place to discover amazing article ideas to provide value to your target audience.
After all, there’s a reason Reddit is called the front page of the internet. Reddit sees over 7.55 billion page views a month, and if there’s ever a central place that all audiences hang out, it’s there.
Use the Subreddit search function to type in keywords related to your topic.
For example, if you have a gardening blog, you’d search for the keyword “Gardening.”
You can see below that there is a gardening Subreddit with over 108,000 subscribers.
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Visit the Subreddit with the most subscribers in your topic, and read through the thread. Look for questions people have, or topics they want to know more about.
A large number in grey to the left of the topic means many people have “upvoted” the topic. The more upvotes there are, the more popular the question or comment or thread is.
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As you can see above, there are quite a few questions about various plant conditions (poblano pepper leaves and cucumber seedlings.)
It certainly seems as though a blog post on how to diagnose plant health issues would be popular.
4. Listen In on a Group of Like-minded People
Even though it seems as if Facebook is going out of style as a social media channel, the user count just keeps climbing.
In fact, the stats show that there are over 1.4 BILLION active users on Facebook.
So one of the best ways to find blog post topics is to join active Facebook groups.
For instance, if you have a photography blog for beginners, you would search for Facebook groups for beginner photographers.
Here’s what I found:
Ask to join private groups with a sizable number of members. I requested to join the first group in the list.
When you are granted access, read through the members’ posts. For instance, one member wanted to know what lightbox equipment to use for a shoot in no natural light:
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Questions like this will help you craft blog post topics relevant to your audience.
Take the Guesswork Out of Writing
As a blogger, you love your readers. You want to give them the best of the best—content that will solve their pains and ease their strugglese.
With these easy—and free—tools, finding content ideas has never been easier.
So start listening in on Facebook. Dig for topics on Reddit. Read the comments on popular blogs. Pay attention on Amazon.
And watch your comments section explode with action, watch the happy emails roll in, and see how much you’ve helped your readers.
How did you come up with the idea for your most popular article? Share in the comments below. And if you liked this post, please share on social media.
