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How To Come Up With 50 Content Ideas in 30 Minutes or Less

Last Updated on December 1st, 2015 by 39 Comments

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How to Come Up With 50 Content Ideas in 30 Minutes or Less - Kim Garst

You sit and stare at your computer screen, willing yourself to come up with a great idea for your next blog post or newsletter. You don’t have much time before your next meeting, so you need that stroke of genius NOW!  But what do you do when no ideas come to you? Everyone should have a list of ‘go to’ sources of inspiration for new content ideas. Below you will find out how to come up with 50 content ideas in 30 minutes or less! Never be without ideas again!

How to Come Up With 50 Content Ideas in 30 Minutes or Less

  1. Use Portent’s Content Idea Generator.
    1
  1. Imagine you are writing for your ideal customer: What is one of your most asked questions? Answer that question(s) in a blog post!
    2
  1. Visit Reddit to find trending topics.
    3
  1. Look through your website analytics to find out which topics are most popular with your audience.
    4
  1. Send a short poll or survey to your email list or social media followers to ask them for their most pressing questions.
    5
  1. Set up Google Alerts for keywords related to your business and niche.
    6
  1. Join a Facebook group in your niche to see what your target market is talking about.
    7
  1. Ask your social media followers…ask what they want to know and/or learn.
    8
  1. Visit popular websites or blogs in your niche to see which topics they are writing about: find one that jumps out at you, and then spin the title to create your own, original content.
    9
  1. Visit Google Trends to find trending topics.
    10
  1. Use HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator.
    11
  1. Use Facebook Interest Lists to find content of interest in your industry. For more on this, see my post How to Use Interest Lists to Find Content Ideas to Share.
    12
  1. Page through a book that would be of interest to your audience and see if any topics jump out at you.
    13
  1. Take a look through your Facebook ‘Posts to Page’ to see if there are any questions you can answer in a blog post.
    14
  1. Use Buzzsumo to find top content in your industry.
    15
  1. Ask yourself this question: What is the #1 issue my target market struggles with? Attempt to write a blog post that solves this problem.
    16
  1. Look through your email marketing program’s analytics to find out which topics and headlines have gotten the most opens, click-throughs and conversions.
    17
  1. Look through your blog comments to find questions or topics you could address.
    18
  1. Use the Google Keyword Planner to uncover other keywords and topics and you can write about.
    19
  1. Use Social Mention to listen in on social media conversations: Find out what topics are really of interest to your target market.
    20
  1. Do a Google search for a popular keyword in your niche: See what others are writing about the topic and add your thoughts to the conversation.
    21
  1. Take a current list post (e.g. Top 10 Ways to…) and write a detailed post breaking down just one of your top points.
    22
  1. Visit Yahoo Answers to find questions you can answer on your blog.
    23
  1. Go to StumbleUpon and ‘stumble’ to find possible sources of inspiration.
    24
  1. Compile current blog posts into a resource list: For instance, on my blog I might create a post called Top Resources For Facebook Marketing, and include links to my most popular Facebook marketing posts.
    25
  1. Ask a fellow business or website owner for ideas!
    26
  1. Find top hashtags in your niche using a tool like Hashtagify.me.
    27
  1. Use The Blog Post Ideas Generator from Build Your Own Blog.
    28
  1. Visit an industry forum and read through comments and questions.
    29
  1. Look through your offline marketing materials for content ideas.
    30
  1. Visit Quora to find questions you can answer.
    31
  1. Visit a LinkedIn group to find out what people in your industry are talking about.
    32
  1. Check out the trending topics in your Twitter sidebar.
    33
  1. See what’s happening the news: Write about a current news story as it relates to your niche.
    34
  1. Visit Mind The Book to find questions that will trigger content ideas.
    35
  1. Take a brisk walk and see what ideas come to mind!
    36
  1. Look through your Facebook newsfeed to see which topics are consistently popping up in your feed.
    37
  1. Spend 10 uninterrupted minutes with a pen and paper brainstorming possible content ideas.
    38
  1. Use Ubersuggest to find keywords suggestions and variations based on a particular topic.
    39
  1. Use Google auto-complete to find popular content ideas.
    40
  1. Attempt to answer a question that you’ve always wanted to know the answer to!
    41
  1. Visit a competing blog and look for a list of their most popular posts (you can often find such a list in the sidebar). Use this as a starting point for your own post.
    42
  1. Start typing a keyword into Pinterest’s search box to find popular searches (it will automatically populate the search box with the most popular searches starting with the letters you type in).
    43
  1. Visit Blog Engage to find popular topics that bloggers in your niche are writing about.
    44
  1. Browse through Pinterest to find popular images that inspire your own content ideas.
    45
  1. Scour your social media accounts and blog comments and compile a list of FAQ’s you can answer in a blog post.
    46
  1. Leaf through an industry magazine to see what inspires you.
    47
  1. Ask your social media moderators for content ideas based on what they see every single day.
    48
  1. Use a plugin like CommentLuv on your WordPress site to see what your commenters have been blogging about.
    49
  1. Use WordStream’s Free Keyword Niche Finder tool to find popular subtopics based on a general keyword search.
    50

Bookmark this list of how to come up with 50 content ideas in 30 minutes or less so you can pull it up the next time you find yourself wondering what to write about! I hope it helps!

Visit my post titled, The Ultimate Content Marketing Tools List, for more content ideas for your business!

I also want to give a big shout out to Contellio who created an infographic with these 50 tips that I broke up for this post. You can see their full infographic here.

What would you add to this list? What do you do when you’re not sure what to write about? Share below!

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Comments

  2. All great tips! Focusing on #2 should give you more than enough ideas. Instead of, or in addition to, a FAQ page, answer each question in a blog post. Think through the questions that you were asked over the last week. Type out the answer or make a quick video with your response.

    Reply

  8. Kim thank you for this list. There are quit a few ideas i would have never thought of. Love your blog. Can’t get enough of it. I learn something new every time. Love this blog!

    Reply

  14. Excellent ideas Kim. I want to introduce our app as well : OOYUZ

    You can explore news events by various parameters on any topic (USA related) on OOYUZ : http://www.ooyuz.com/

    For example, for the term “Obama” what are the news articles popular on social media on last 7 days, or headlines or publisher wise results, or simply timeline results. OOYUZ is a great way to explore news or do research on any topic with its Timeline,Publisher,Social Media , Headline & News Clusters search. Hope you will like it.

    Reply

  17. I have many of these types of posts bookmarked but I still struggle to come up with an idea! Is it because of my niche topic? (horses..) This happens to me time and time again even writing a novel or story is difficult for me. I can come up with the idea but everything else just goes AWOL 🙁

    Reply

  18. Ever since I retired from my offline job, I’ve rekindled my love for Saturdays. The weekends are also when I don’t sponsor tour stops for my online job, so it’s like I can get up and do anything I want. Remember how that was as a kid? You wake up and you lie there a second and then your head shoots off the pillow and you scream, “It’s Saturday!” My head won’t shoot anywhere like it used to but I had the very same feeling when I woke up this morning. I can do anything I want today.

    Reply

  21. Wow, this was terrific. I did try hubspot’s but it was repititive after a while. But all others are just mindblowing. No one can ever complain of writers block ever after reading this. 🙂

    Reply

  22. I am only in the half and it is already wonderfull! well done Kim!! and to those that created so usesfull sites.

    Reply

  27. Hello Kim and many thanks for sharing this invaluable post. Wow so many superb content generation ideas and tips.

    In particular I am very interested in BuzzSumo, Portent’s Content Idea Generator (sounds like fun) and UberSuggest – will definitely be checking these ut today.

    Valuable content is just so important to all of us bloggers and I have found Google Alerts to be absolutelyt fantastic – as wll as “ContentGems” which is another similar site.

    Another great site for content creation ideas is called FAQFOX (http://faqfox.com/) and this has provided me with lots of really great specific niche forum ideas.

    Thanks again for this valuable post – will be sharing it widely that’s for sure.

    Peter
    Look what Peter Beckenham just posted..How To Fail Your Way To Success With Internet MarketingMy Profile

    Reply

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