Blog Writing: Tips & Inspiration

Here are some particularly helpful tips for creating that endless flow of web content for your sites, blogs, articles and even emails or short reports.

I’ll start by giving you a list of great places to find hot topics in your niche to inspire high quality web content.

Writing topics that will attract visitors and build a strong readership is not rocket science. In fact, if you pay attention your target market will even tell you exactly what they want you to write…

Sources For Web Content Ideas:

• Your first choice should always be keywords & phrases that you find through keyword research. Writing SEO content, or content that is optimized for specific search terms, will help you reach your ideal visitors when they are in the process of searching for solutions – when they are most likely to subscribe or buy.

• Search niche forums for hot topics when you’re looking for content ideas. Take notice of threads with the most views or the most replies. Most forum software is set up to show you these numbers at a glance while scrolling through the topics. Threads with the most replies sparked a discussion or raised more questions. Threads with a lot of views but no replies obviously had an interesting title, but perhaps didn’t deliver. Both are usually good topics to consider writing about.

• Watch for news or stories that surface that will be of interest to your market, or that you can write about with a slant that relates to your topic. Subscribe to Google Alerts with specific keyword phrases, scan traditional media such as magazines and television, search YouTube for new and interesting videos, etc. This type of content is great for niche blogs, along with your thoughts or opinions on the topic.

• If you blog, your comment section can be a great source for new web content. Especially when people leave you questions, or dive deeper into the topic. This gives you the opportunity to write a second “Part 2? blog post, and then offer the link to that post as a reply to their comment. The comments on other popular blogs in your niche is also a great source. Search Technorati or Google Blog Search for specific topics, and scan through the comments for questions or comments that inspire new content ideas.

• Share websites, blogs or resources in your niche that your readers would enjoy. If you sell running shoes, you could create a directory of marathons. If you promote financial calculators, you could review the top Finance magazines. Consider any other products, services or resources that your target market needs or would appreciate and use that as a source for new web content.

• Other blogs in your niche are also a great source for new content ideas. You can share a list of blog posts by various authors on the same topic, or take one good blog post and expand on that topic with a different angle on your own blog. If you publish this on a blog, linking to the other blog(s) will usually result in a trackback there which is also a great way to get targeted traffic.

• If you are an affiliate check in with your merchants frequently for sales, special offers, coupon codes or new products. These are always a good thing to announce on your blog or website, or send out to your mailing list.

• Search Twitter at http://search.twitter.com with your topical keywords and scan through the conversations. Find out what people are saying, asking or talking about. When you get in tune with how your target market feels about a topic, it helps you write web content they’ll be most likely to read and share.

I hope these web content writing tips & resources proved helpful for you, and sparked some new ideas you can use to create fresh content for your blog or website. These are the same ideas and resources that I use every single day across my own blogs and websites.

Catch Lynn Terry’s enlightening session where she outlines the pro’s secrets for writing blog posts during Online Copywriting 101′s FREE 10-day telesummit. Mark your calendar for September 5, 2010 so you won’t miss a second of this hour-long session.  Get your FREE pass today at OnlineCopywriting101.com

Tags: blog tips, blog writing, keywords, Lynn Terry, web content ideas