You always have to create content and then market it as a digital marketer. And the best thing in content marketing is planning the entire content for an entire year. You never run out of content ideas next time. This post will help you learn how to generate content ideas for one year for your blog or website.
As a blogger, I never find it challenging to find topic ideas for my blog or website. You can also easily find them if you look around and pay attention to the content around you.
You’ll get more ideas than you can handle, especially with how I’ll discuss this post. You’ll also learn how to do keyword research for your blog. Without further ado, let’s get started right away.
How to Generate Content Ideas for One Year Ahead (2022)
Generating content ideas may require a lot of effort at the start. But after you plan out your content for an entire year, you don’t have to worry about it again. And it means the effort is completely worth it.
In this first section, you’ll learn how to generate content topics with the help of the people around you. And then you’ll learn ways to do it yourself. The last section of the post will outline step-by-step guidelines to do keyword research for your blog.
How to Generate Content Ideas for One Year With Others
Small businesses grow 126% more with blog posts than those without them in the online world. For making a successful blog, you need to fill it with topics relevant to your audience. And for that, you need to brainstorm within the organization and understand your audience.
Brainstorm Content Topics Within Your Organization
Coming up with video or blog post ideas can be challenging for one. But if you do it with your team, it becomes way easier than you think. Organize brainstorming sessions and note every idea regardless of how ridiculous it seems.
This is how you do it correctly:
- Note every idea thrown by your team members
- Don’t limit your team’s ideas
- Help them generate as many ideas as possible
- But stay focused on your niche or theme
- Break up the bigger groups into smaller ones
- Include people who have little to no idea of what your business is
Group brainstorming sessions can be extremely valuable for your business, without a doubt. And you can do it among your family members and friends as well. Let’s jump on another way to generate content topics for your blog or website.
Listen to Your Audience
Start adding value to your audience, and they’ll respond. Listen to them always. Pay attention to their responses. And you’ll get to know what you need to do to grow your business.
For that, you need to:
- Ensure the right solution to their problems
- Think of the correct content formats for your audience
- Understand your audience by making buyer’s persona
- Encourage them to share their ideas (Create a survey asking what they want to learn)
How to Generate Content Topics Yourself
In this section, you’ll learn how to generate content ideas yourself. Of course, you can just think of the topics. But you need to look around carefully. Explore forums, social media, trends, and more.
Explore General Forums and Communities like Quora & Reddit
One great way to generate content topics is to explore general forums and online communities. Sites like Quora and Reddit are filled with passionate people who love to talk about a wide range of topics.
By spending some time browsing these sites, you can quickly develop a long list of potential content ideas. You can also get some great feedback and inspiration for different content formats.
Dive Into Social Media: Hashtags & Questions
Social media is all about people and their interests. Your audience is surely there too. All you need is to find them and see what they’re talking about. One of the best ways is to use hashtags on Twitter and posts on Facebook.
And if you look at questions people ask in Facebook groups; you can find some really good topics. This could be a great topic for an ebook or a blog post.
Social media helps you understand what people are up to. You must pay attention to trends if you create content around trends.
Benefit from the Power of ‘Google Autosuggest’
Most content marketers know the power of Google Autosuggest. This is a great way to get hot topics that align with what you type in Google.
For example, if you type “Email marketing” in Google, you’ll have these suggestions immediately:
And the list goes on. You can easily come up with dozens of potential blog post ideas just by doing this. Keep track of anything that looks promising.
Research Other Bloggers in Your Niche
A quick way to generate dozens of content ideas is to explore other influencers in your niche. For example, researching what Neil Patel writes on his blog will surely help if you are into digital marketing.
Here’s how you can do the research:
- Go to Google
- Search for the niche related blogs
- Make a list of the blogs that appear in SERPs
- Read individual blogs and see what resonates with you
The best thing about this method is that it saves a lot of time doing keyword research. You’re getting content ideas directly from your target audience. And you’ll have plenty of ideas for your blog posts, YouTube videos, or Quora spaces.
Answer the Public Using AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is a great tool that allows you to develop your potential topics on the fly. How it works is that you type in any keyword on the site and see all related phrases categorized as questions and more.
It’s like having an idea of what people are interested in on Google Autosuggest, but more accurate and organized.
The results you get are categorized into questions, comparisons, and more. You can also export the data to a CSV file for further analysis.
Repurpose Your Content for Other Platforms
One great way to come up with content topics is to repurpose your existing content. How many times have you already written blog posts? How about turning those posts into an ebook or a webinar?
This approach works because you already have the knowledge and expertise on the topic. All you need is to find a new medium for it to reach a new audience.
How to Do Keyword Research for Generating Content Ideas for One Year Using Ahrefs
Keyword Explorer is Ahrefs’ premium keyword research tool—and it does not disappoint! With this tool, you can get keyword ideas, generate lists of related keywords, and see how difficult it will be to rank for a given keyword.
It also predicts whether a keyword is worth targeting. You can divide keywords based on CPC, word count, and more.
Log into Your Ahrefs Account and Go to Keywords Explorer
Log into your Ahrefs account and go to Keywords Explorer to get started. If you’re not a member yet, you can also sign up for a 7-day trial.
- Type in a seed keyword.
- Ensure you choose ‘Google’ and press the ‘Enter’ button.
- Hover over to ‘Phrase match’ to see a list of related keywords.
- Use subfolders to organize your results.
Filter Results by Adding ‘Defining’ Words
Defining words define the stance of a keyword. These words include
- How to
- What
- Best
- Top
- Review
- Alternative
- Template
- VS
- Ideas
- Free
As you can see, these words define the intent of a keyword. For example, a keyword with ‘how to’ refers to a keyword requiring a how-to tutorial on something. If your niche is email marketing and you include ‘how to,’ you’re likely to get results like:
- How to get started with email marketing
- How to run a successful email marketing campaign
- And how to implement an effective email marketing strategy
People typing these lines and phrases in Google must look for different email marketing tutorials. And it’s not about ‘how to’ only. You can include the words like review, alternative, template, and more.
In this way, you’ll have different categories of content ideas for your blog. Download the results in .CSV format and start creating content.
Expand Your Research by Adding More Niche Keywords
Click on the ‘Phrase match’ and ‘Having same terms’ to see all the keywords related to your niche. You can follow the same steps to filter your results by adding more ‘defining’ words.
Another method is to enter your competitor’s site in Ahrefs Site Explorer. And see all the keywords he or she is ranking for. And then add those defining keywords to categorize your content accordingly.
Prioritize Your Keywords Based on These Factors
There are tons of parameters you can decide on while generating content ideas. These include
- Keyword difficulty
- Search volume
- Clicks
- Traffic potential
- Cost per click (CPC)
Let’s understand them one by one now.
Keyword difficulty shows you the approximate difficulty level of ranking for a given keyword. This metric considers the overall domain rating of the sites appearing on SERPs, content relevance, search intent, and more.
Search volume is the average number of times people search for a keyword per month. However, it’s not accurate but an estimate only. The higher volume a keyword has, the better it is. However, it’s not a hard and fast rule! But then, it may be more difficult for you to rank for that keyword.
Clicks in the Keyword Explorer refer to the average number of clicks a keyword gets per month. It may be different than the volume. For example, ‘time in the US’ may have an extremely high volume compared to clicks.
Traffic refers to the potential traffic a keyword gets per month.
Cost per click (CPC) refers to advertisers’ pay for each ad click from a keyword.
All these factors play an important role in prioritizing or categorizing your content.
I hope this post on generating content ideas for one year helps you never run out of topics. And after that, you can prioritize your content pieces based on keyword difficulty, CPC, volume, and more.
But as for questions, I always recommend answering them regardless of their difficulty and more.
FAQs on Generating Content Ideas
These are some of the most frequently asked questions.
What are Good Content Ideas?
For me, good content ideas are those that are evergreen. They are always relevant and will continue to be popular for a long time. These could be topics like “How to Do Email Marketing” or “The Best Ways to Lower Your Energy Bills.” You can also find content ideas by looking at what’s trending in your industry or social media.
How Can I Come Up with New Ideas?
One way to develop new content ideas is to look at what’s popular on other blogs in your industry or on social media. Brainstorm a list of topics related to your niche and then research to see which ones are most popular.
You can also look for content gaps – topics that haven’t been covered as much as you think they should be. And do your research with tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush and generate content ideas for one year or more.
How Do I Keep My Content Fresh?
One way to keep your content fresh is to update it regularly with new information. You can also switch up your content formats from time to time.
For example, if you usually write blog posts, try creating a video or infographic. Also, participate in conversations on social media and offer your insights on current trends.
Do I Need to Come Up with New Ideas All the Time?
No, you don’t need to come up with new content ideas all the time. You could even reuse some of your old content to repurpose it for a new audience or platform. You can also team up with other content creators to come up with content ideas.
How Do I Research Content Ideas?
There are a number of different ways to research content ideas. You can use Google Trends, BuzzSumo to find out what’s popular in your industry.
So that’s how you generate content ideas for one year or more. Have questions? Share them in the comments below.
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