How to Find Article Ideas

Some days trying to come up with article ideas to blog about can be like mental constipation.

Especially after you have written over 400 posts,

NOW what do you write about?

One way is to follow daily news or gossip headlines for inspiration. Below are a few great tips and tricks you can use to tie in trending news with your niche. You can also combine your business or service with popular and interesting stories long since past.

Here are a few suggestions to help you come up with blog post ideas.

How to find good article ideas

A lot of people have given up watching the news on purpose. But there is no way to get away from it. It’s on Facebook, it’s in the sidebar of many of the websites you visit, and it’s plastered all over the screen as soon as I sign out of Outlook.

1. How to use the news to inspire content article topics.

For example – one of the top headlines in today’s news is about this woman who had her Instragram account blocked because she posted a picture of herself breastfeeding.

This article is great for spin-off ideas for social media stories, women’s rights posts, even inspire debates on public breastfeeding. If your local business is selling baby clothes, photography equipment, or you are a doula, or even a lawyer; you can use this for traffic to your website. Just write an article that begins with appropriate keywords and relevant and related commentary to the issue. Include advice or a general observations and link out to the original article. From there you can subtly offer a lead magnet. ie Photographer “Momma and Me Photo’s 45% off sign up for this coupon” ie Baby Clothes “Momma’s Public Spaces Breastfeeding Blankets special order – Sign up here” ie Lawyer “Have your rights been violated? fill out this form and learn more”

Article Title Ideas

2. Sometimes an entire article can come from a simple headline. So all you need to do is find a good catchy headline to inspire your article idea as well as catch the eye of your followers.

Anytime you need a headline try the magazine rack at your local grocer. Magazine headlines are used simply because they work. These big magazines have spent millions and millions of dollars on researching effective headlines – so why not “borrow” from them?

3. Other places you can look is online.

Some of the first magazine headlines that popped up that would work on this site were:
“Innovative E-Commerce”
“SEO in a Social Media World”
“Online Advertising Exchanges”

Headlines for weight loss were:
“Flat Ass, Tight Tush”
“How They Lost 100lbs”
“Fight Flab and Win!”

Adult headlines were:
Sorry, too graphic for this site 🙂

But you get the idea. Then all you do is just some research using related search terms, compile your notes into some flow and legible format, and voilà – another article completed.

Content Article Topics

4. Seek out other businesses advertisements for ideas.

This is a great way to get ideas for articles and products that your customers might be interested in. Whenever you see an ad that attracts your attention investigate what they are selling. You can use this for products you already sell in your business, or to inspire you for new product and service ideas, or something you can offer your customers as a referral product.

Inside the body of the copy can be a tonne of ideas.

You can:

• Write about the product itself.
• Write about the problem it solves.
• Write about the type of people who need that product.

You can easily get several articles and as a BONUS each of them can lead to your sales page about that particular product.

The first ad I saw was for Volusion. (probably using retargeting). Right away there are two articles for me. One a review on eCommerce platforms and another a general overview of retargeting methods to advertise your products and services.

When I click on their “services” tab I am introduced to the terms SEO, Templates, PPC, and about 15 other things. All good article ideas.

Just poking around their website I found article ideas from each benefit and each feature. It would be so simple to expand this excerpt into an entire post. Your competitors are selling what you are, why not use their ads for inspiration.

5. Sign up for government website news feeds. A complete treasure trove of ideas and research resources.

For example www.census.gov

The first on the list the day I wrote this post was Census Bureau to Participate in Google Hangout with League of American Bicyclists

The report talks about cycling – great for environment, fitness, weight loss, economical etc. Many spins on this.

The headline talks about Google and their Hangout feature. Great for a segue into how Google Hangouts work, how they can work for you and your business etc.

Also it inspires an idea to compare Webinars and Hangouts in a review post!

6. You can do the same thing looking at books related to your niche. Borrow from their chapter titles, check out the bullet points on the back cover or inside the front cover.

Speaking of books, check out Amazon for great ideas. Use their own internal “related items” to serve you with a litany of article ideas.

You can write about what’s currently on sale, or trends, or look at the magazines again. What are the top sellers associated with your business?

Just for the heck of it I clicked on Popular Science because it was close to the top.

Not a lot of ideas jumped out there – but – one of the magazines in the “Frequently Bought Together” section was Popular Mechanics. The headline on it was “Survival Tech -Stay Alive in any Disaster”. Excellent headline and idea for someone in the survival, outdoor sports, or DIY market.

Using that idea go back to the search and type in “survival”, find the most common listing its under (Sports & Outdoors) and then use the drop down menu to choose new and best selling.

Again you get products ideas to sell, and problems and solutions to write about. Just look at the reviews and it is a goldmine of ideas.

This guy indicates he needed to learn about “how to Sharpen a Knife” – great idea for a blog post on a survival, camping, or cooking site.

7. One really great place to find article ideas is right in your very own content. Go back to day one and start reading through your posts.

Check the links to make sure everything is still functioning right as well as the relevancy of the article. Make changes where needed to update but also, since you last wrote that article you have published more. There are probably some opportunities to link out to articles you have written since, as well as ideas to expand more into a brand new blog post.

Perhaps you already have an article that talks about Google Places and now you can amend this with “Whatever Happened to Google Places?” and link out to your new article on Google+ Local answering that question.

The world is chock full of article ideas that you can adapt to your niche. Feel free to leave a comment if you are stuck and I’ll help you come up with some ideas 🙂