Content marketing involves creating blogs with a fair amount of consistency. This means for a lot of us marketers we have to constantly think about what topics to write about, ideas to share, and clever ways to write it—all while making sure our posts are search engine optimized and engaging.

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Personally, generating blog content ideas has proven to be one of the more challenging aspects of the whole process. Through the years, I have come to rely on several ways to help keep my ideas flowing:

1. Ask Your Audience What They Want to Read

If you have a pretty solid following on social media use that to your advantage. Ask your followers what kind of content they want to see from your blog. You’d be surprised what new ideas you can get. Another plus: It allows you to engage your followers on social media as well.

2. Turn to BuzzSumo

I’m a big fan of this platform. BuzzSumo not only simplifies my research process, but it also gives me a lot of insight into my industry. No matter how niche your sector or business is, it’s likely BuzzSumo will be able to deliver data on similar, high-engagement content from other companies. You can get a pretty good idea of what direction your content can take simply by running a quick search.

3. Check Google Keyword Planner

If you’ve done your homework and know your audience inside and out, you have a general idea of what they’re looking for. This can give you a big advantage when optimizing your posts for search engines. When you use Google Keyword Planner, though, not only are you able to maximize your post’s searchability online, but you also get an idea of what people in the same demographic and psychographics are searching. This allows you to branch out and explore new blog post ideas based on actual key phrases and words that your target audience is looking for.

4. Visit Quora

You all know how much I love Quora. It’s not just because I love answering questions whenever I can and reading about other answers that allow me to learn. Browsing through Quora pages allows me to explore new ideas from people who are interested in the same things. Start by searching for a general blog topic and you’ll get a plethora of topics and subtopics that will fill up that content calendar in no time.

5. Share Internal Company Expertise

If you’re an expert at one thing—with years of experience to back it up or have trained and studied for it—you have an opportunity to use it as content and share it with an audience who would love to learn more from you. Choose your topics carefully and make sure that it’s a subject matter that’s actually relevant to your audience to get great engagement.

Hope my answer helps! If you have more to add to this list, feel free to leave a comment below. If you have any questions, do get in touch with me via Leadspanda.