Tools to Help Generate Blog Content Ideas

2017.04.19

Magenet Team

(15 votes, average: 4.93 out of 5)

You’ve started a blog, and your first several posts were awesome. Your keywords were spot on, you had all the elements of a fantastic post to generate readers and keep them engaged. In fact, people even started commenting on your posts – you were gaining traction!

Then it happened. The dreaded “I have no idea what to write about” wall reared its ugly head, and now you’re stuck trying to think of ideas for blog posts in the future. Sound familiar? Here’s the good news, it’s familiar to ALL bloggers.

None of us are great at coming up with ideas for blog topics, and (I’ll speak for the blogging community as a whole here) most of relying on different tools to help spark that creativity for content ideas.

This is such a frequent problem among bloggers that we decided to write a blog post about not having a blog content idea! Pretty ingenious, right?

Getting Help with Ideas for Blogs

When you’re juggling multiple weekly posts, writing quality content can be a chore. It’s hard to come up with a unique content creation idea when you feel like you’ve completely exhausted all possible options. That’s where the wonderful world of content creation tools comes in hand.

Personally, as a blogger, I absolutely HATE coming up with a title for my blog posts. Despise it, really. They never have seen snappy enough to grab any reader’s attention. So I turned to my trusty friend HubSpot for a bit of assistance.

HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

AMAZING to help with content ideas AND can double as a tool to help you title your blog post. The best part about this particular tool is how easy it is to use. Seriously, you type in three nouns, and HubSpot will generate five blog post ideas.

I entered the following three nouns: “SEO”, “Blogging”, and “Marketing”. From these three nouns, I was given the following topics for consideration:

The Worst Advice We’ve Ever Heard About SEO
10 Quick Tips About Marketing
Think You’re Cut Out for Doing Blogging? Take This Quiz
The Ultimate Cheat Sheet on SEO
What Will Marketing Be Like in 100 Years?

There really isn’t an easier tool that provides such amazing results! There’s also a handy “try again” button at the end of the page that will allow you to start your search all over.

UberSuggest’s

Tool is just as simple as HubSpot but provides you results in a method that looks similar to Google Keyword Planner, but a bit more condensed. UberSuggest will also generate hundreds of results based on your search phrase, so don’t use this if you are easily distracted and want something to provide a narrow scope of results. This tool is NOT for you!

For example, when I entered “SEO Marketing” into UberSuggest, I was provided 247 different phrases that could be used as content marketing ideas. The plus to UberSuggest is that you can choose a topic that it generates and ask it to expand on that particular search result. From this action, you are given additional topics that pertain to the initial suggestion.

Alltop

Another option when you are on the hunt for original content that will generate traffic to your blog. Alltop is a news website that compiles news stories from various sources around the web. It lists many different topics, from politics to religion to fashion and pop culture. Whatever you’re looking for, Alltop has it.

When you hit the home page, don’t be overwhelmed by all of the options that are listed. Simply search your keywords or topic and start scrolling through the postings. You’re bound to get an understanding of the top trending topics on the web at the moment, which can help you to generate ideas for content on your blog!

BuzzSumo

The same lines as HubSpot, but with more features. BuzzSumo will not only give you different content ideas, but it will also provide you with other information and ideas for your blog.

This data includes:

The number of social shares/views of a specific topic.
Displays the number of backlinks on a certain topic.
Shows the top content trends.
Identifies key shares.

So, with BuzzSumo, you not only get your content, but you get to see how well it could perform on your blog as well. It really helps you create a more comprehensive marketing plan and plot out what topics readers want to hear about, and how to best schedule your blog posts to get the most bang for your buck!

Use BuzzSumo in conjunction with other tools on this list to create amazing content, and predict how it will perform once it is up and running on your blog. You may be surprised at the results!

Content Row’s Link Bait Title Generator

Great tool to use when you’re struggling with titling your blog posts. When using this tool, just add your keyword or topic to the search bar, click “get linkbait” and you’re hit with different titles for your subject.

The one drawback about Content Row’s Link Bait tool is that it will provide titles that may not necessarily work for the type of blog that you’re creating. For example, I entered the topic “SEO Marketing” into the search field and was provided some pretty random titles that would never work for my posts. Are they funny? Absolutely! Take a look at some of the topics that I’ve decided not to utilize:

guns don’t kill people — SEO marketing kills people
why SEO marketing is/are destroying America
SEO marketing die/s every minute you don’t read this article
why you should give up sex and devote your life to SEO marketing
8 deadly uses for SEO marketing

Again, the titles are funny and spark some great ideas for short stories, but they aren’t topical to SEO Marketing. That said, there were a few that jumped out as useable:

101 unusual uses of SEO marketing
8 unbelievable things you never knew about SEO marketing
13 amazing facts about SEO marketing
the most incredible article about SEO marketing you’ll ever read

This tool is fun to use, and interesting to see what comes out of the generator, but be warned, you’ll sift through a lot of topic titles that may not be useable before getting to the few that are acceptable.

Build Your Own Blog

An incredibly easy tool that will generate different ideas for your blog content. When you visit the site, you don’t actually enter a topic. Instead, you just click the orange button that state “Generate Blog Post Idea”. The site will then generate a generic title for you. You do have to fill in the blanks with subjects related to your topic, but the basis is there!

Here are some examples of Build Your Own Blog:

Top X _______ Mistakes You Must Avoid
Warning: Use these 5 ______ at Your Own Risk
The one thing you need to know about….

Much like Content Row’s Link Bait, you will need to tailor these topics to your particular audience and subject matter… and you may have to click that orange button a few times to get a topic that is useable for you and your blog, but the possibilities are endless, and will get the creative juices flowing!

Google Trends…

You didn’t think we’d get through a list without mentioning a Google tool, did you? Google Trends works as a marketing tool and generally is used to see how topics are performing online, sort of like your own personal market research company.

However, Google Trends can also be helpful to generate content. How? Well, start by searching for a keyword term. You can then browse through popular topics and see where your ideas rank, or pull a new idea from the results – and know (vaguely) how it will perform online.

Google Trends will also display to you what people are searching for on Google itself. Who doesn’t want that insight when planning their next blog post? It gives you inside information on how to formulate your posts, titles, and what keywords your audience will search!

You can also see how the topic you’re writing about or thinking about writing about, will trend overtime. While this may not be rocket science, the ability to see a trend moving up or down can be incredibly beneficial to deciding what topics you want to include in your blog posts!

While Google Trends may not be the easiest tool to use for content ideas. It does provide a great comprehensive view if you’re willing to work and research the topics a bit!

Content Row’s Link Bait Title Generator

Content Idea Generator by Portent

Probably the most creative layout of all the tools on this list. While it isn’t the most in-depth content creator, and won’t necessarily provide you information on social shares and whatnot. It does give you some amazing titles for future blog posts.

The best part of the Portent Content Idea Generator is that the titles that it generates some humor into its suggested titles. So your blog posts will not only be on topic, but they will be funny as well!

Tweak Your Biz.com Title Generator

The final tool we’re going to discuss. This tool works as a title generator and content creator. When you hit this page, enter your subject, and select if it is a noun or a verb. Click submit, and you are given a list of different topics to write about!

The list is long, and the ideas are great – AND the site offers you the option to download the list and print them out to reference later. Tweak Your Biz actually divides the topic into different sections – Lists, titles, how-to, questions, love, best, business, snark, motivation… and much more.
As bloggers, we love options and Tweak Your Biz really delivers in a comprehensive, easy to digest format. After HubSpot, this is personally my favorite tool for content and title generation.

Putting it All Together

So, we’ve established the obvious – blogging can really be difficult at times. Coming up with content that is unique, interesting, and on point in the market can be tiring and downright discouraging at points. However, there are tools out there that allow us, bloggers, to get a little respite from the never ending questions of “what can I possibly write about now?” without getting ready to close up our blogs for good.

The key to creating decent content topics is to do research. With the tools that are listed above, you can gain a great understanding of what people are looking at out in the world, and how it pertains to your specific topic.

Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone from time to time. While it’s important to remain true to a niche for your blog (that’s the reason people repeatedly visit your site, remember – they see you as the expert on a specific topic!), you can decide to write on a subject that is still in the realm of your specialty, but a bit outside of it as well.

For example, if your blog focuses on generating great SEO topics and optimizing your website, you can branch out into content creation for website, and how to best utilize tools and tricks of marketers across the web. It’s within your topic tree, but a little bit different, and opens a huge door for additional content ideas!

Remember that the tools listed above are to get the creative juices flowing, and help you create titles and blog posts that will be SEO friendly, make your readers want to click on the post and continue reading, and keep your blog up as high as possible in search engine rankings.

After the ideas are generated, the content is up to you! Keep your posts engaging, and topical – and always leaving your reader wanting to come back for more information.

What tools do you find most helpful to come up with blog post ideas or titles? We’d love to hear from you on any we missed!