9 Places to Find Content Ideas Your Audience Can’t Resist

If you’ve been producing content for any amount of time, you’ve probably hit a dry spell at some point.

You’re out of fresh ideas.

You’ve exhausted all your go-to topics.

Everything you think of feels tired and boring.

Nothing is calling your name screaming WRITE ABOUT ME!

I’ve been there. In fact, that’s exactly where I was when I started writing this post.

Luckily, I’ve got a few old reliable places I turn when my inspiration runs out, and I always walk away with a few new ideas that are highly relevant to my target audience—the key pillar of great content.

Here are 9 places to source awesome ideas for content your audience will love.

1. Quora

Quora is a question-and-answer website where anyone can create a free account and ask the community about any topic. People then submit answers, and the community votes on the best one.

The format is a lot like Yahoo Answers, but the answers are generally of much higher quality. Experts and public figures regularly visit the site to answer questions about themselves and their niches.

To use it to find great content ideas, register for an account using Google, Facebook, Twitter or your email address.

Then, complete your profile by selecting your topics of expertise—these should be things pertaining to your blog or business. For example, a few of the topics I selected were Social Media, Marketing and Twitter.

Every few days, Quora will send you an email digest of topics it thinks you’ll be interested in. Sometimes they’re related to your niche; other times they’re just random interesting topics (which, I have to admit, I really enjoy reading).

Mixed in with these email digests are unanswered questions—queries people have submitted that have not yet received an answer.

Lots of people like to use this as an opportunity to flex their “expert” muscle and build authority in their field. That’s great, too. But I like to steal these questions and answer them in the form of posts on my blog.

You can do the same using the questions related to your field.

2. Reddit

Reddit is a treasure trove of content ideas. It’s a place where people come and say anything that’s on their mind, so you can bet you’re going to find some real and raw ideas about any given topic.

I write in detail about how to use Reddit for marketing purposes here, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version:

Find a subreddit in your niche.
Read it.

The end.

People are always using Reddit to ask questions about things, from cars to cats and everything in between. Take one of these questions or topics and turn it into a blog post.

3. Google Autocomplete

Call this one “content marketing for dummies.”

Go to Google. Start typing in a topic. See what related topics come up.

4. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is an awesome tool for finding content that has gone viral in your niche.

When you see what kind of content is spreading like wildfire, it’s easy to spinoff your own related content ideas people will probably like, as wel.

Type in any keyword and Buzzsumo will return a list of the most-shared articles on the topic within your specified time frame.

If fitness is your coverage area, you might take one of these topics and tweak it slightly, then write about it yourself.

A few examples:

Their idea: Which Type of Exercise is Best for the Brain?

Your idea: 12 Ways Exercise Makes You Smarter

Their idea: How Meditation Changes the Brain and Body

Your idea: A Step-By-Step Guide To Changing Your Body with Meditation

For more cool ways to use Buzzsumo, watch my video here.

5. Online Communities

If you spend time online, I’m willing to bet you know of at least one digital “community” within your industry. In most cases it’s a forum, but it might also be a go-to resource site or a popular blog everyone you work with reads.

Is there a thread getting hundreds of responses? An article on the site with a comment section that’s blowing up? It’s proooobaably a good topic for a blog post.

6. Amazon

This is a bit of an unconventional way to find content ideas, but it works, especially if you write about a B2B topic like marketing, sales, etc.

I discovered this as I was looking for e-books in the marketing space. I haven’t written one myself but it’s something I’ve considered, so I wanted to check out what others were doing.

The ‘Reviews’ section was a gold mine.

People were ruthless, calling out everything they hated about some of the books they’d purchased.

My takeaway? Don’t do those things if I ever write my own e-book. It also gave me some great content pointers.

An example one-star review:

“A fifth grader could have done a better job writing this “book” which is light on material and substance. Any basic search engine search could have gleaned the material found in this skimpy pamphlet.”

Nice.

Okay, so this reader doesn’t want material that just scratches the surface. He wants to go deeper into the subject matter, learning things he might not be able to find with a quick Google search.

You’d think this might be obvious, but in fact there are many times I wonder Am I going into too much detail here? Is this novel of a blog post going to bore my readers to tears?

This Amazon review tells me otherwise—that there’s a section of the marketplace looking for extensive, substantive information on the topic of marketing.

I should write my content accordingly.

7. Facebook Groups

I highly recommend joining Facebook groups related to your industry. Not only are they an ongoing source of content ideas, they’re also a good way to stay up-to-date with what’s going on in your field and to compare notes with your peers.

To find groups to join, just type your field into the search bar.

On the search results page, click on the ‘Groups’ tab at the top, then hit the ‘Join’ button for any that sound relevant to you.

8. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is by far my favorite way to find topics that are not only interesting, but that are going to bring me organic search traffic.

Use Google Keyword Planner to find terms lots of people search for every month. Focus on terms that aren’t in high competition.

I show you how to do this in a 5-minute video here.

9. Real People

Want to know the hands-down best way to find out what your target audience wants to read about?

Here’s a genius idea: ask them.

Having conversations with real people in your target market is an invaluable way to hone in on what matters to them, what their pain points are, and what makes them tick.

When you know your customers inside and out, grabbing their attention online is a piece of cake.

You can engage in these real-world conversations in a few ways.

Call through your client list. Ask for five minutes of their time in exchange for something, like a store coupon or entry into a raffle for a gift card.
Send out a survey email. You can easily set one up using Survey Monkey, then blast the link out to your mailing list. Again, offer a reward for filling it out.
Hold a focus group. If you’re one of those people who has a never-ending social circle, hold an informal focus group of 5-10 of your acquaintances.
Take someone to lunch. Think of the person in your network who best represents your target audience. Reach out with a call or email asking to pick their brain on a project, and offer to take them out to lunch for their time.

Work through this list and I guarantee you can easily come up with a few dozen amazing content ideas to keep your site running on full blast for the next several months.

What are you favorite ways to break a content dry spell?