Content creation is an absolute must when you’re building brand awareness. Small businesses have a lot to prove when it comes to earning the trust of their ideal audience, and content creation has proven time and again to be the most cost-effective way to do just that. Studies show that content marketing (creating and sharing high-quality content) can generate three times the leads at approximately 62% less cost than other marketing approaches.
Sure, the benefits can be amazing. However, trying to come up with content ideas can be challenging. Instead of flying blind, you may want to consider investing in blog topic research.
What is Blog Topic Research?
Blog topic research is the process of determining which topics will be most beneficial to you, your brand, and your audience. Blog topic research will help you identify the topics that are most relevant to your business, the keywords that people are using, and the topics that have the most potential for growth over time.
Why is Blog Topic Research Important?
Blog topic research is essential because it helps you understand the needs of your audience. The better you know your audience, the easier it will be to tailor your blog content to suit their interests. It also helps to ensure that you’re creating high-quality content that people will want to read.
Blog Topic Research Tools Worth Exploring
If you’re not very confident in your topic research skills, then you’ll be excited to hear that there are some outstanding tools available to you that can help you make topic research quite simple.
Some of the most popular tools include:
- AHREFs Content Explorer
- Answer the Public
- BuzzSumo
- Google Search Console
- SEMRush Topic Research
5 Steps to Conducting Blog Topic Research
No matter how you choose to approach blog topic research, the process is pretty much the same. With the right tools in hand, you can follow these five steps and feel confident that you’ll generate some outstanding blog topics to add to your website’s content.
1. Know Your Audience
The first step in conducting blog topic research is to understand your audience. If you already have a blog up and running, then you may want to dig a little deeper into your analytics. You need to pay particular attention to who has been visiting your site, what they’ve been looking at, and what kind of actions they’ve been taking.
If you’re not quite sure who your target audience is as of yet, then you’ll want to take some time to do some industry/competitor research. Who’s interacting with the content that your competitors are putting out? What do they seem to be responding well to? What solutions are they looking for?
Still not quite sure? Then take the time to build up a detailed consumer persona. Who would most likely benefit from the products or services that you provide? What are their interests? How would they come across your brand? What search queries might they enter into Google?
2. Brainstorm
There are so many ways to brainstorm your blog topics. You can write them all down on a piece of paper, or use a tool like the Blog Topic Generator. The goal is to start getting the creative juices flowing, and if you already have an idea of what your audience is looking for, you can begin by simply writing out a list of keyword seeds.
3. Conduct Keyword Research
For some businesses, keyword research is the most critical step in the blog topic research process. Keyword research is the process of determining which keywords your audience is most likely to be using when they search Google.
You’ll want to focus on the keywords that have the most potential to help you reach your audience. You can check out the search volume and competition of keywords using a tool like the ones mentioned above.
4. Use Your List of Keywords to Start Generating Blog Topic Ideas
Once you’ve created your list of keywords, you’ll want to start brainstorming blog topics around them. For example, let’s say you’re a fitness blogger, and your list of keywords includes “fitness,” “exercise,” and “lose weight.”
You could start brainstorming blog topic ideas around:
- How to lose weight fast
- Is your exercise routine enough to lose weight?
- How to exercise at home
The key is to understand how to best use these keywords to address the needs and concerns of your audience. So, while keywords such as “lose weight” may be trending during the summertime, they won’t do you any good if your audience isn’t looking for information on health, fitness, or losing weight.
5. Get to Work!
With your blog topics ready to go, it’s time to let the creative juices flow and start creating your content! Just remember, those keywords you researched earlier can (and should!) be put to use in optimizing your blogs. Practicing proper SEO optimization with these keywords will help to get your content seen by your targeted audience.
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Content Marketing Strategies Made Simple
It can be hard to juggle all the hats you need to wear to keep your workplace up and running as a small business. One thing you can’t let slip through the cracks is your content marketing strategy. If you’re struggling with building a strategy that you feel confident in, we need to talk.
I can help you increase your online presence and create outstanding content that will set you apart from your competition.
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