#whenever i google something and the answer is in a reddit post i scroll through the subreddit for a minute to see whats happenin

[soldiertransgender]

obsessed with this reddit post and its replies

[imanativeofswlondondahling]

Hiding in Plain Sight (1)- Tom Holland X Reader

Word Count-1792

A/N: This was inspired by this wonderful post by @starsholland. Without it this would not be happening. This will be a multi part fic, but I don’t know how many chapters or when it will be posted so if you’d like to be tagged let me know:)  Welcome to Tom being undercover on Tumblr. Quick notes- Y/T/B = Your Tumblr Blog, Y/A is your age :)

“You’re not going to make me go undercover on Tumblr are you?” Tom asks as they hook up the mike to his white t-shirt. “I’ve heard dangerous things about that site.”

“No, no. We’re sticking to Reddit, Twitter, Youtube. Maybe some Quora and IMDB.” The redheaded assistant sitting across from him states as she places the GQ laptop across from him. Tom sees Harrison’s shoulders silently moving up and down, laughing at the idea of him having to go undercover on the site that he had been telling horror stories of for weeks leading up to this interview. “If any of these don’t sound good to you, we can skip them.”

“No, those sound fine.” Tom says. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Camera A ready?” She asks the camera man sitting diagonally from where she is. In response she gets a nod. “Tom when you’re ready say something like I’m Tom Holland and I’m going undercover on the internet to answer your questions. It’s actually me. Something like that.”

From across the room Harrison watches as Tom flows through the questions easily, hoping from site to site with better technical luck than he normally has. He can guess that some of the answers will be giffed and blasted around social media within minutes of this interview going live. It would shock him if it didn’t.

“Check it out mate.” On his screen flashes Tom saying I drink tea darling over and over again. “Your fans love it. Which is good, seeing how upset a lot of them are over the Disney/Sony thing.”

“Where is this?”

“Your favorite site.”

“Instagram?”

“Tumblr.” Tom rolls his eyes and falls back into the couch.

“Why are you even on there?”

“Why aren’t you? So many fangirls, so little time.” Tom shoots a dirty look at Harrison. “But in all seriousness, there’s a lot of great reactions and gifs that you can only find on Tumblr. You should check it out.” Tom reaches for Harrison’s computer but he pulls away. “Make your own account. It costs nothing.”

“Ugh, fine.” Pulling his phone out of his pocket, downloads the app and creates an account. Expecting one of the fangirls to have already have taken his common username, he’s surprised to be able to fill out the form with tomholland2013 as his username. Will that seem too much like him? Who knows. It’s not like he’s planning to actually use this site. He just using it to see what Harrison wants him to see. “What do I look up?”

“Just search the hashtag Tom Holland and look under recent for the most recent stuff. Most of it is your undercover interview. Or you can look under the Tom Holland top posts and see what your fans are obsessed with.” Tom is on the main page and sees a suggestion of blogs. A lot of them have his name intertwined in them with his picture as the profile picture. Guess it wouldn’t hurt to follow some blogs while he’s on here? 

The first one he follows is @starsholland who seems to write fanfictions about him but also shares a lot of marvel pictures. By clicking follow it brings up a lot of suggested blogs to follow. He clicks on @tonguetiedholland and sees another fanfiction writer but also a lot of posts between them and other bloggers. “Is this site just fanfiction?”

“No, there’s pictures and edits and stuff too. Why? You only interested in the fanfiction?”

“I only seem to find fanfictions.” Tom replies as he clicks on a blog called @tomhollandsstan, finding a mix of fanfictions, pictures and conversations. However his eyes scroll through one of the fics and find something much more raunchy than he anticipated finding. “Holy hell. What are they writing all of this about?”

“Reading something steamy Tommy?” Harrison teases. Tom feels his face flush with the embarrassment of knowing that there are girls and guys out there picturing stuff like this with him as the main feature. 

“I’m getting off this site. It’s bloody porn.”

“No wait, you’ve just stumbled down the wrong path. Let me send you some blogs to look at.” Harrison pulls up some of the ones that are mostly pictures and reactions. “What’s your tumblr handle? I’ll send them to you?”

“Tomholland2013.”

“Really? It wasn’t taken?”

“Nope.”

“See how long it stays secretive.”

“I don’t plan on using it.” Tom says as he hits follow on some of the other blogs that Harrison sent him, including one that was @Y/T/B. He found himself scrolling through it a little more in depth than he had with any of the other pages he had been on. The posts and your reactions were more what he expected of tumblr. Glee filled, but not thirsty. Hitting follow was a no brainer.

Across the country, your phone lights up as you get a notification from Tumblr. You’re about to swipe it away, since your day is currently going down hill as the recipes you’re in the middle of trying out are turning into pinterest fails. Also you should have checked before you started baking a cake that you had powdered sugar to make frosting, so you’ll have to do another pinterest deep dive for a frosting recipe since you can’t use your tried and true recipe.

However, the name on the notification catches your eye- Tomholland2013 has followed you. Wow someone finally snatched the name. There had been jokes around the fandom for months that someone should snag the name so Tom could have it whenever or if-ever he decided to join tumblr. But it seems someone has decided to be Tom. Whoever it is though seems to enjoy your posts because they’re liking your posts in succession. While your stand mixer whirls, you open to their blog and see there’s nothing there. Not even a banner or an icon photo. They must be a super new blog. You back out of their blog and almost back out of the app when you see a message from this Tom Holland wanna be.

From: Tomholland2013

I really like all your edits of Tom. Can I use one as my profile pic? X

You pause for a second before replying. This person wasn’t the first to ask to use one of your edits as a profile picture. Why does this feel different though? It has to just be because of the name. You click to reply to the ask.

I’m so surprised someone finally took the name. Me and @imanativeofswlondondahling had a bet going on for how long it was going to stay open in case Tom wanted it. Anyway, feel free to use my edits, or if you have a favorite picture of Tom, send it my way and I’ll make an edit for you.

You hit send on the ask before you can change your mind and then you turn back to your cake- which has probably been overwhipped now.

“Do I have a favorite picture of Tom?” Tom mumbles to himself as he reads over your reply. He’d love to see something that was made for him, but that means finding a picture of himself that he wants edited. “Harrison, com’ere mate. Take a selfie with me.”

“What’s this for?” Harrison asks before posing. @Y/T/B wouldn’t know this was just a selfie. You’d probably think he just did a Google deep dive.

“Need a profile picture. For my blog.” Tom teases, before clicking back to his messages on tumblr. There has to be a way to send a direct message instead of an ask like he did before. He had been planning to use an edit you had done of him saying I drink tea darling, but he wasn’t going to toss up having a custom made icon. After fiddling around on the app for a few minutes Tom finally figures out how to send a message and sends the picture he had snapped with Harrison a few minutes earlier. He tacks on a quick message asking her to do whatever she wants with the picture and to take as long as she wants and or needs. After hitting send, he clicks back to your blog's main page, trying to learn more about you.

At the top of your page, simply stated, it reads Y/N, Y/A, Tom Holland Fan. Well that does tell him you’re around his age, so that makes him feel less like a creeper. He wants to know everything he can about you, but all he can find through scrolling is mainly, well him. He can’t explain why, but there’s a sort of pull towards you from what he can find in your messages to other people and responding to anon messages, you seem like someone he’d want to be friends with. You have a great sense of humor and make jokes as often as you can in your messages. 

“Haz, can I turn on notifications for, like a certain blog?” Tom calls across the living room.

“Thought you weren’t going to use it.”

“There’s a couple blogs I like.”

“Sure, let me show you.” Tom passes his phone over and watches as Harrison turns on notifications for your blog. “Oh she’s great. Her reactions when news is posted is great.” A notification pops up on your screen. “Apparently she just posted.”

A cake maker I am not destined to be. Gordon Ramsay will make an idiot sandwich out of me.

A picture of a very sad looking cake appears under her text. “Maybe she should stick to making edits.” Harrison jokes. 

“Mate, that’s rude.”

“But it’s not wrong. Plus it’s not like yours would look much better.”

“Mine would be worse.” Taking his phone back, he clicks on the comment bubble and types out: looks better than anything I would make X His inbox dings a couple moments later. 

How have I never seen this photo of Harrison and Tom? Did it get posted while I was attempting to bake?

I think it’s an old photo. Found it on my phone. X And technically that’s not a lie.

Well I’ll hop on that edit. Any colors you prefer?

Blue or Red would be good I guess. X

I’ll get right on that. What’s with all the x’s?

Oh it’s a European thing. It’s just how we sign off texts and messagesX

If it’s annoying I can try and not do it?X

It’s fine. Just didn’t know why it was there. 

Do you think Tom does it?

Oh most definitely. What kind of Brit would he be if he didn’t?X

Well I’ll go get on the edit, hopefully I’ll have it done in the next day or so

No hurryX

Thanks againX

[davidrsmithlove]

11 Proven Tips on How to Use Reddit for Your eCommerce Business

Before getting to the meat, let us just make a quick recap.

Reddit 101

In essence, it’s a mega discussion board. As many as 330 million unique users spend their time on this 5th largest US website (and 18th larges when talking worldwide).

Reddit is divided into tens of thousands of so-called “subreddits” which is a local term for a specific topic thread. Moreover, all users who rpartake in the discussion can personally receive either an appraisal or disapproval from peer Reddit patrons via score system called “karma.”

Karma is gained and lost when people upvote or downvote your posts, comments and when you engage in other onsite activity (like reposting). It could’ve remained a simple medal system if sometimes it wasn’t required to get into some subreddits (a sort of an entry barrier). Certain types of activity like making your posts with pictures or leaving comments in those subreddits also might have various krama requirements. Naturally, low karma of user’s post may be hidden from other users, which is the main defense mechanism against bots, local spammers and general bad-manner users.

Although using anonymous aliases on Reddit is a common thing (and is expected), these accounts each have a traceable history of posts and replies in addition to gained “karma.” Thus it is super-easy for any reader to assess the general usefulness, sincerity, and attitude of the writer for a preliminary decision of whether to trust what he/she posts. The importance of this transparency for e-commerce marketing on Reddit will be discussed a bit further.

Upon a glimpse of a Reddit from the marketing perspective, two things should immediately come to one’s attention.

One is that this website is in English and US users account for over 50%. Which kind of limits the use of this website for e-commerce of goods that either

Can be delivered online or

Can be physically brought to the US soil at a reasonable price (and with easy logistics for the buyer)

Two is that Reddit is above all else a place where people come the exchange thoughts and ideas on mutual subjects of interest. Not to scroll the fancy pictures like in Instagram or get up to date with the news like in Facebook. Reddit boasts a higher than most websites readers to active commenters ratio (these readers are also called “lurkers”). This is important because not everything an e-commerce website has to offer is in fact worthy of being put to public discussion. The goods that are too specialized (e.g. some industrial tunneling equipment) will thus require copious amount of “knowledge seeding” and attracting rare individuals who are familiar with the subject before anything can be offered for sale. And the goods/ services that are too easy to come buy (like an Alibaba dropshipper) will need some god-like marketing skills for hype generation and building up of anxiety before trying to offer something (without risking your karma). But let us assume that your product (or service) meets the above criteria and you are good to go for the Redditors!

The need for naturally growing one’s credibility in the eyes of Reddit patrons can sometimes be too much for a regular business owner or a marketing manager, even if he/ she did well with other means of social marketing like Instagram. This is why there are a few essay writing service who are experienced at keeping close contact with the Reddit public. These people know how to keep Redditors entertained and sell stuff to them at the same time. But if you feel you are up to the challenge of winning hearts and minds on your own, proceed to the tips’ list below!

Obvious marketing

1.    Sponsored posts

Just like it says on the box: Reddit allows you to engage in paid marketing. Reddit payment system Your ad copy can either be “text ad” or “link ad.” Whichever you pick, it will get displayed for a respective target audience and marked as sponsored.

People who’ve dealt with Facebook or Google paid ads before will find the interface quite familiar. The following settings are available to pin-point you desired audience: 

Target users by their interests (keywords and negative keywords)

Choose specific subreddit they subscribe to

Location

Day and time

Device type (mobile or desktop)

All ads are displayed on an auction-based system (you need to set up daily bid starting from $5/day) and CPM (1000 impressions) is the only type of payment available on this platform.

This kind of marketing is treated by Reddit communities pretty much like any other online ads which try to look like regular messages: if your ad copy conveys clear message and is highly relevant to the selected audience you will get some interest. The difference lies in karma score of the account who posts the ads, as accounts with more karma are usually treated by patrons as certainly more worthy of attention.

2.        Banner Ads

You will find no self-service banner ads option on Reddit. Don’t bother looking for one. The only viable way to get your banners to be shown on Reddit is direct negotiations with the portal. Which is typically honored from a large and well-established business. So unless it say “Google” on your office, you’d best move to ninja marketing section. 

Here Comes The Meat! Ninja Marketing On Reddit

3.        Reddit hates spammers and promoters

Simply jumping into a subreddit topic closest to what you want to sell and offer your product or service there is a “highway to hell” with Reddit audience. Believe it or not – you are likely not to be the first person to try and push your goods forward here. And must Reddit patrons are smart enough to see that intention. In addition, unlike Instagram of YouTube Reddit offers them an instrument to quickly downvote your annoying advertising to the point of utter demise.

To be effective with your business on Reddit you should first understand the culture of this community and how to get your point (non-commercial and commercial) through in a most effective manner. There are different posts as well, and you should be prepared nor only for discussion, but for writing a long story to share your experience. You may are thinking right now, that I need someone to write my essay for posting on Reddit, and surely that can be a solution for creating a large number of long read comments. Above all else, you will have to truly and honestly commit yourself to some time of building up your Reddit account image and growing your karma before effectively offering people anything.  So think ninja.

4.        Where does your audience reside? Do your homework.  

To engage efficiently in the ninja advertising on Reddit, you will need first to  do some preliminary research. Find out what subreddits (topic threads) address the issues that are in your (and your product’s) subject field. Are you in car repairs? Search car maintenance audience.  Are you a massage therapist? Dig into sports or back pain discussions.

See how many people are partaking and what kind of info is most praised by local subreddit  audience.

5.        Be proactive and build up your karma and professional image

Once you’re done with the research and successfully found your potential customers, you should start working on the rename of your account. Do actively engage in discussion. Answer questions and comment where appropriate. Be polite and be helpful. Bring value to the table. Over time (and sometimes with sufficient karma gain) your contributions will get noted, and your advice on the subject X will start to be recognised as an expert by the community.

Only after this you should attempt to openly offer of a product or service and expect in to be met with enthusiasm and eager by Reddit patrons.

Why bother that much at all you might as at this point? Well, there is a good reason. Reddit is in fact great fo e-commerce shops as it allows you to address very specific needs of customers who you just can’t target effectively by any other means. And should you meet their expectations both with a word of advise and a quality product you are likely to get more devoted and trusting long-term customers than anywhere else on the Internet. This holds true to both paid and ninja advertising: the more renown you are amongst Reddi public the more trustworthy your ads will be, regardless if you pay Reddit for it ot not.

6.        Ask questions and study your customers

Now, this is the real meat. As Reddit tends to attract a more proactive audience in general (more so than the Facebook or Instagram) you will find some strong and well-grounded opinions here on a wide area of subjects. If so – why now use this feature and ask the people very specific and important questions:

What do they think of your product?

How do they like the new design?

Can we improve it somehow?

What about marketing?

Was our customer service helpful?

Being open and actively engaging your customers in such Q&A activities might help you with some surprisingly deep understanding as to how to make/ sell your goods better. Good advice would be to remain initiative and open a classical AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with your potential customers. Also, remember that whenever a person makes a buying decision, he or she is far more likely to address the salesman they know in person (even in it’s on the account name) than a totally strange shop offering of the same stuff. So treat this not only as research but as an extra marketing effort which may yield grade results by itself.

7.      Exclusive discounts and offers

When you do decide it’s time to engage your fellow Reddit audience with some selling materials – you may take it a step further. Offer the unique discount right there in the thread. Alternatively, run a lottery for the first five buyers to get some valuable little extra from you. Redditors, after all, are a somewhat unique gang. So why not reward them with a little extra for their trust in you and your product?

8.        Keep sticky contact with your customers

Another diamond opportunity Reddit offer to an e-commerce business is that it’s a much more two-way marketing channel than your usual social media with ads due to the nature of the community. It makes a perfect ground for troubleshooting and Q&A sessions with your customers. By no means, you should use it as the only customer service contact point, but rather as a place where you and your customers can get more intimate discussion and create that extra goodwill.

How should you go about it? Make sure you are there when somebody has purchased your good or service. Be bold and ask them if they found their purchase and usage experience satisfying? Did they like it? Did they encounter any trouble when buying or using it? Whom would they recommend it to? Etc.

Do so and not only you will gain respect (and more karma) from fellow Reddit users and those who will find this thread in future.

9.        Go for the fans and enthusiasts

While not an all-around advice, if you are into merchandising or a subculture tailored product – go for the fans. This range greatly from Star Trek fans to young mothers. From Linux users to vegans. And many are found on Reddit.

These people would certainly sniff out a bold promoter from a mile (and demise their karma respectively). But if you do give yourself labour to study their subreddits, their culture and values, if you take a genuine interest in the community and to partake in talks and making valuable content… You will surely get praised for offering and selling them something relevant to their passion later on.

10.    Keep an eye for market trends

This idea is somewhat similar to point 4, but the results can be used regardless of whether you are about to start ninja marketing on Reddit or not.

All you need is to define the existing subreddits which get visited by your potential customers and scrutiny them carefully. Moreover, if there is not one – than that is also an indication for you.

This tip arguably requires the least effort on your behalf: just gain enough karma to enter the subreddit in question (if it has a karma entry barrier at all) and that’s it. Once you do get inside and you see a living and vivid community – start gathering intelligence for your e-commerce business. Read on what’s hot right now. What are Redditors talking about the most (apart from kittens or sex that is; nothing beats kittens on Reddit). Learn of your potential customers’ pain and how they go about it. Assess your rival by how often they get mentioned and what the patrons find good and bad about them.

While not selling or promoting your product directly, you may still gather a great deal of info about your market niche and make sure that your respective product is up to the mark.

11.    Talk with other small-business owners

Would you sell your product to the people whom you find in small business owners subreddits? Probably not. So why is this a tip #11? Well, it because this is how you can get some seriously deep and free advice on things that bother you as a business owner:

How to sell more?

How to keep positive contact with your customers?

How to keep the work-life balance in December?

etc.

Reddit is there to help people get in touch, discuss and solve their problems. And rest assured that there were others before you at some point in their business careers who faced and successfully surpassed what you are facing now. Have the courage to step forward and ask their advice or help. And again you may well be surprised by the hidden power of Reddit. And its fellow patron Redditors.

Get a Free Consultation

[magnificentmktg]

11 Proven Tips on How to Use Reddit for Your eCommerce Business

Before getting to the meat, let us just make a quick recap.

Reddit 101

In essence, it’s a mega discussion board. As many as 330 million unique users spend their time on this 5th largest US website (and 18th larges when talking worldwide).

Reddit is divided into tens of thousands of so-called “subreddits” which is a local term for a specific topic thread. Moreover, all users who rpartake in the discussion can personally receive either an appraisal or disapproval from peer Reddit patrons via score system called “karma.”

Karma is gained and lost when people upvote or downvote your posts, comments and when you engage in other onsite activity (like reposting). It could’ve remained a simple medal system if sometimes it wasn’t required to get into some subreddits (a sort of an entry barrier). Certain types of activity like making your posts with pictures or leaving comments in those subreddits also might have various krama requirements. Naturally, low karma of user’s post may be hidden from other users, which is the main defense mechanism against bots, local spammers and general bad-manner users.

Although using anonymous aliases on Reddit is a common thing (and is expected), these accounts each have a traceable history of posts and replies in addition to gained “karma.” Thus it is super-easy for any reader to assess the general usefulness, sincerity, and attitude of the writer for a preliminary decision of whether to trust what he/she posts. The importance of this transparency for e-commerce marketing on Reddit will be discussed a bit further.

Upon a glimpse of a Reddit from the marketing perspective, two things should immediately come to one’s attention.

One is that this website is in English and US users account for over 50%. Which kind of limits the use of this website for e-commerce of goods that either

Can be delivered online or

Can be physically brought to the US soil at a reasonable price (and with easy logistics for the buyer)

Two is that Reddit is above all else a place where people come the exchange thoughts and ideas on mutual subjects of interest. Not to scroll the fancy pictures like in Instagram or get up to date with the news like in Facebook. Reddit boasts a higher than most websites readers to active commenters ratio (these readers are also called “lurkers”). This is important because not everything an e-commerce website has to offer is in fact worthy of being put to public discussion. The goods that are too specialized (e.g. some industrial tunneling equipment) will thus require copious amount of “knowledge seeding” and attracting rare individuals who are familiar with the subject before anything can be offered for sale. And the goods/ services that are too easy to come buy (like an Alibaba dropshipper) will need some god-like marketing skills for hype generation and building up of anxiety before trying to offer something (without risking your karma). But let us assume that your product (or service) meets the above criteria and you are good to go for the Redditors!

The need for naturally growing one’s credibility in the eyes of Reddit patrons can sometimes be too much for a regular business owner or a marketing manager, even if he/ she did well with other means of social marketing like Instagram. This is why there are a few essay writing service who are experienced at keeping close contact with the Reddit public. These people know how to keep Redditors entertained and sell stuff to them at the same time. But if you feel you are up to the challenge of winning hearts and minds on your own, proceed to the tips’ list below!

Obvious marketing

1.    Sponsored posts

Just like it says on the box: Reddit allows you to engage in paid marketing. Reddit payment system Your ad copy can either be “text ad” or “link ad.” Whichever you pick, it will get displayed for a respective target audience and marked as sponsored.

People who’ve dealt with Facebook or Google paid ads before will find the interface quite familiar. The following settings are available to pin-point you desired audience: 

Target users by their interests (keywords and negative keywords)

Choose specific subreddit they subscribe to

Location

Day and time

Device type (mobile or desktop)

All ads are displayed on an auction-based system (you need to set up daily bid starting from $5/day) and CPM (1000 impressions) is the only type of payment available on this platform.

This kind of marketing is treated by Reddit communities pretty much like any other online ads which try to look like regular messages: if your ad copy conveys clear message and is highly relevant to the selected audience you will get some interest. The difference lies in karma score of the account who posts the ads, as accounts with more karma are usually treated by patrons as certainly more worthy of attention.

2.        Banner Ads

You will find no self-service banner ads option on Reddit. Don’t bother looking for one. The only viable way to get your banners to be shown on Reddit is direct negotiations with the portal. Which is typically honored from a large and well-established business. So unless it say “Google” on your office, you’d best move to ninja marketing section. 

Here Comes The Meat! Ninja Marketing On Reddit

3.        Reddit hates spammers and promoters

Simply jumping into a subreddit topic closest to what you want to sell and offer your product or service there is a “highway to hell” with Reddit audience. Believe it or not - you are likely not to be the first person to try and push your goods forward here. And must Reddit patrons are smart enough to see that intention. In addition, unlike Instagram of YouTube Reddit offers them an instrument to quickly downvote your annoying advertising to the point of utter demise.

To be effective with your business on Reddit you should first understand the culture of this community and how to get your point (non-commercial and commercial) through in a most effective manner. There are different posts as well, and you should be prepared nor only for discussion, but for writing a long story to share your experience. You may are thinking right now, that I need someone to write my essay for posting on Reddit, and surely that can be a solution for creating a large number of long read comments. Above all else, you will have to truly and honestly commit yourself to some time of building up your Reddit account image and growing your karma before effectively offering people anything.  So think ninja.

4.        Where does your audience reside? Do your homework.  

To engage efficiently in the ninja advertising on Reddit, you will need first to  do some preliminary research. Find out what subreddits (topic threads) address the issues that are in your (and your product’s) subject field. Are you in car repairs? Search car maintenance audience.  Are you a massage therapist? Dig into sports or back pain discussions.

See how many people are partaking and what kind of info is most praised by local subreddit  audience.

5.        Be proactive and build up your karma and professional image

Once you’re done with the research and successfully found your potential customers, you should start working on the rename of your account. Do actively engage in discussion. Answer questions and comment where appropriate. Be polite and be helpful. Bring value to the table. Over time (and sometimes with sufficient karma gain) your contributions will get noted, and your advice on the subject X will start to be recognised as an expert by the community.

Only after this you should attempt to openly offer of a product or service and expect in to be met with enthusiasm and eager by Reddit patrons.

Why bother that much at all you might as at this point? Well, there is a good reason. Reddit is in fact great fo e-commerce shops as it allows you to address very specific needs of customers who you just can't target effectively by any other means. And should you meet their expectations both with a word of advise and a quality product you are likely to get more devoted and trusting long-term customers than anywhere else on the Internet. This holds true to both paid and ninja advertising: the more renown you are amongst Reddi public the more trustworthy your ads will be, regardless if you pay Reddit for it ot not.

6.        Ask questions and study your customers

Now, this is the real meat. As Reddit tends to attract a more proactive audience in general (more so than the Facebook or Instagram) you will find some strong and well-grounded opinions here on a wide area of subjects. If so - why now use this feature and ask the people very specific and important questions:

What do they think of your product?

How do they like the new design?

Can we improve it somehow?

What about marketing?

Was our customer service helpful?

Being open and actively engaging your customers in such Q&A activities might help you with some surprisingly deep understanding as to how to make/ sell your goods better. Good advice would be to remain initiative and open a classical AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with your potential customers. Also, remember that whenever a person makes a buying decision, he or she is far more likely to address the salesman they know in person (even in it's on the account name) than a totally strange shop offering of the same stuff. So treat this not only as research but as an extra marketing effort which may yield grade results by itself.

7.      Exclusive discounts and offers

When you do decide it’s time to engage your fellow Reddit audience with some selling materials - you may take it a step further. Offer the unique discount right there in the thread. Alternatively, run a lottery for the first five buyers to get some valuable little extra from you. Redditors, after all, are a somewhat unique gang. So why not reward them with a little extra for their trust in you and your product?

8.        Keep sticky contact with your customers

Another diamond opportunity Reddit offer to an e-commerce business is that it’s a much more two-way marketing channel than your usual social media with ads due to the nature of the community. It makes a perfect ground for troubleshooting and Q&A sessions with your customers. By no means, you should use it as the only customer service contact point, but rather as a place where you and your customers can get more intimate discussion and create that extra goodwill.

How should you go about it? Make sure you are there when somebody has purchased your good or service. Be bold and ask them if they found their purchase and usage experience satisfying? Did they like it? Did they encounter any trouble when buying or using it? Whom would they recommend it to? Etc.

Do so and not only you will gain respect (and more karma) from fellow Reddit users and those who will find this thread in future.

9.        Go for the fans and enthusiasts

While not an all-around advice, if you are into merchandising or a subculture tailored product - go for the fans. This range greatly from Star Trek fans to young mothers. From Linux users to vegans. And many are found on Reddit.

These people would certainly sniff out a bold promoter from a mile (and demise their karma respectively). But if you do give yourself labour to study their subreddits, their culture and values, if you take a genuine interest in the community and to partake in talks and making valuable content… You will surely get praised for offering and selling them something relevant to their passion later on.

10.    Keep an eye for market trends

This idea is somewhat similar to point 4, but the results can be used regardless of whether you are about to start ninja marketing on Reddit or not.

All you need is to define the existing subreddits which get visited by your potential customers and scrutiny them carefully. Moreover, if there is not one - than that is also an indication for you.

This tip arguably requires the least effort on your behalf: just gain enough karma to enter the subreddit in question (if it has a karma entry barrier at all) and that’s it. Once you do get inside and you see a living and vivid community - start gathering intelligence for your e-commerce business. Read on what’s hot right now. What are Redditors talking about the most (apart from kittens or sex that is; nothing beats kittens on Reddit). Learn of your potential customers’ pain and how they go about it. Assess your rival by how often they get mentioned and what the patrons find good and bad about them.

While not selling or promoting your product directly, you may still gather a great deal of info about your market niche and make sure that your respective product is up to the mark.

11.    Talk with other small-business owners

Would you sell your product to the people whom you find in small business owners subreddits? Probably not. So why is this a tip #11? Well, it because this is how you can get some seriously deep and free advice on things that bother you as a business owner:

How to sell more?

How to keep positive contact with your customers?

How to keep the work-life balance in December?

etc.

Reddit is there to help people get in touch, discuss and solve their problems. And rest assured that there were others before you at some point in their business careers who faced and successfully surpassed what you are facing now. Have the courage to step forward and ask their advice or help. And again you may well be surprised by the hidden power of Reddit. And its fellow patron Redditors.

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[philipfloyd]

20 Free Ways to Find Blog Content Ideas That Convert

If you’re a content writer, you have a blog or work for a company, you might have struggled with this question before: How do I find good blog topic ideas? There might have been situations when you didn’t have any ideas and you had to write something just to keep your users engaged.

  For everyone that has stumbled on this, I understand you. I know what you’re feeling. And you’re not alone. For somebody who writes on a daily basis, you need to be like a factory of fantastic ideas and give valuable information to the audience, because they need it. They are looking for guidance in every possible way.

  I bet that not once it happened to you to remain stuck and don’t get any inspiration for an article. The desire was there but the playground was empty. 

Most of you have to become factory ideas overnight, but there are solutions for you during the day. That’s why we thought about the following effortless ways and platforms to find topic ideas:

  Look for Q&As on Quora

Use BrandMentions to Spy Your Competitors for Content Ideas

Uncover Trends and Identify Influencers on BuzzSumo

Search for Question Topics on  cognitiveSEO’s Keyword Tool 

Generate Niche Keyword Ideas Using Ubersuggest

Get Inspired Using Pinterest

Follow Influencers’ Articles on LinkedIn

Search Through Thousands of Courses on Lynda

Get Ideas from Discussions in Facebook Groups

Use Reddit to Find Questions Related to Your Topic

See What Other People Are Sharing on Zest

Explore Medium Posts

Check out What’s Popular on Flipboard

Explore Trending Stories on Trend Hunter

Search the Internet Using AllTop

Check Google News for Current Events

Stay Updated With Google Webmaster Hangouts

Look Through Shared Articles on Academia

Find Stats and Case Studies on Statista

Explore Global Development Data on World Bank Open Data

  Finding the right content topic is essential, but the way you write it is also important. Good content writers will always be in demand, just like Joel Klettke points out.

  “We don’t need to hire a writer. We’ve got formulas and a template!” pic.twitter.com/HREhKHCimw

— Joel K (@JoelKlettke) September 18, 2018

  1. Look for Q&As on Quora

  Quora is an abundance of information and continuous resource for content writers, users, noobies and people wanting to find specific answers to their problems. The information is organized and edited by users, which makes it easy to understand the user behavior.

  Besides all the ideas, you get the advantage of seeing what language and vocabulary people use, the way of writing and asking questions. And after you got some inspiration, you can write the article. Then you can answer questions by pointing people to your article.

    Quora is a great space for keyword research and headlines/titles inspiration. For example, if we use the screenshot below and we want to write about keyword cannibalization, we can see if most people use a focus keyword such as – avoid keyword cannibalization or the question type such as – what is keyword cannibalization.  

  The site is divided into topics, which makes it easy to search for blogging ideas and get insights on what people are looking for. There is an entire community on Quora where a lot of people and experts on every subject you can imagine are actively contributing with knowledge.

  If you are focused on a specific topic, use the newly launched Spaces and follow the community that interests you.

    Besides all the ideas we’ve talked about, there are other things Quora is good at. Only by using a few clicks you can:

find what people are looking for. Search for general keywords on Quora and see questions regarding your topic.

get updates on trending topics right on the homepage.

    read sourced research from experts and get their permission to quote them in your new article.

find every influencer that you can contact for outreach.

    2. Use BrandMentions to Spy Your Competitors for Content Ideas

  Wouldn’t it be a shame to miss an opportunity to talk about something that has great traction and create a massive, evergreen blog post that will get a good social media score and links 3 years after you’ve written it?

  We’ve previously talked about the advantages of using a social monitoring tool, such as BrandMentions, that gives insights based on what finds online. You can spy on your competitors to see what are they writing, what type of content gets more engagement. And based on the response they get from the audience, you can see the topics of interest and try to create a better piece of content than theirs.

  You can monitor fresh topical content related to your business and create better content in your niche. You just have to search for a topic and the tool will show you the results.

    Whenever your brand is being brought up on the web, a marketing opportunity is rising and that applies to your competitors as well. If you know what people are talking about them and find their strengths and weaknesses, you’ll know what to offer to the audience and steal them from your competition.

  Using a social monitoring tool such as BrandMentions helps you manage the mentions and go right on the spot by offering live support. You can find what people are saying about a specific brand and not necessarily to it, because there might be lots of untracked brand mentions, without any direct link to the brand.

  For example, people might talk on social media but not place the @ before the name of the brand. And we must remember that it’s not only influencers in your industry who mention brands on the web, but there are also lots of other people that are consumers.

    3. Uncover Trends and Identify Influencers on BuzzSumo

  BuzzSumo can help you generate new content for your blog and see what the audience craves. You can search for popular topics and see results based on total engagement, evergreen score, number of links and other more. You have lots of filters available to go into deeper analysis and get more accurate results based on your needs.

    For example, we searched for video marketing and we wanted to see the pages with the highest engagement.

    Another great thing about this tool is that you can get some ideas of keywords based on the results you get. If we look at the search we’ve made for video marketing, we can see that video and SEO, or video marketing tips, or video marketing statistics are valid recommendations we could use in our content.

  4. Search for Question Topics on cognitiveSEO’s Keyword Tool 

  If you’re in search of customer questions use cognitiveSEO Keyword Tool to generate content ideas and monitor question on various subjects and brands.

Based on the keywords you’re interested in writing topics on, you can filter the results and get:

phrase match;

search suggestions;

focus keywords;

questions;

or group topic.

    Did you know?

Within the Keyword Tool you can see results based on location, language and device option (desktop vs mobile). So you can see niched topic ideas based on what people are searching and following in a particular place, city.

Besides, you could spy your competition and see which type of content triggers more traction in SERP. Get a sneak peek on what are they writing about, what kind of content is ranking for a particular keyword (product page, homepage, blog post, YouTube video and so on), the subject line.

With just a few clicks, you can get valuable insights on some keyword and topics ideas, plus do a short competitive analysis on any keyword you are interested in ranking for. 

  5. Generate Niche Keyword Ideas Using Ubersuggest

  Ubersuggest is a keyword suggestion tool that lets you perform keyword research and also give you common phrases and some articles inspiration related to the keyword. With just a scroll you get a list of keyword recommendations plus some important metrics (search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, CPC, volume search) and in the end some articles along with social shares from Facebook and Pinterest.

  Below you can see an example for blogging. if you haven’t considered using Ubersuggest for content ideas now is a good time. 

      6. Get Inspired Using Pinterest

  Another free way to find content marketing ideas is by using Pinterest. The motto of the platform describes it very well: Discover recipes, style home ideas, inspiration and other ideas to try. So inspiration is at its place on Pinterest.

  If you’ve never used Pinterest until now, then you did miss on lots of great opportunities. The social media content you get here, might not be found on the other social channels. You can use Pinterest to:

get free ideas for blog posts.

create content that your audience actually wants.

find keywords you should use in your blog post to help with SEO on Pinterest.

  The process is very simple and very intuitive for beginners. Just search for a keyword, such as blog and see the results:

    Then look in the search suggestions box for other keywords that are used for searches and get topic ideas and headlines that intrigue the user. Look at the most popular keyword suggestions, such as marketing (blog marketing), for beginners (blog for beginners), ideas (blog ideas), tips (blog tips) and so on.

  That means there are a lot of new bloggers looking to learn about blogging or bloggers that are in the marketing field and search for ideas and so on.

    Getting those recommended keywords means that those are what your audience is searching for. Use those keywords into your titles tags and description.

  If you decide to use Pinterest, then those keywords should be into your pin description and heading to boost your Pinterest “SEO rankings”. So that when people are searching for those keywords, your post gets a higher chance of being on the top. That’s how easy it is to get creative content marketing ideas using Pinterest.

  7. Follow Influencers’ Articles on LinkedIn

  LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that you could use to connect with experts and people that write valuable information. You can comment and create connections and, most important of all, you can get inspired by what they are writing and talking about on LinkedIn.

  You can find the posts they make and the questions they ask by scrolling on the homepage:

    You can go deeper and look at their published articles. LinkedIn Pulse is the platform owned by LinkedIn where influencers write their articles. 

    If you get an idea and write about it, then you can contact the influencer and let them now that you quoted them in one of your articles and they can check the blog post once its published. After that, you can ask them for a share or you can share their post by tagging them.

  It will create a snowball effect and you can get more people to share your content afterward and get new contacts that you can ask for their ideas in your next piece of contact. For example, you can create a blog post asking a single question to industry influencers where you could quote their answer. And then repeat the sharing process to build a strong online presence. It works very well as a growth hacking technique, too.

  LinkedIn is a great source of inspiration. And it makes it easy to get exposure for yourself and your business if you decide to share your articles there.

  8. Search Through Thousands of Courses on Lynda

  Lynda is a platform with online courses on lots of work fields for people that want to receive a certificate or want to learn software, creative, and business skills to achieve personal and professional goals. 

    No matter the topic, there is some valuable information that you can find on Lynda. Find and learn new content writing tips in one shot. You can even find information for any difficulty level. For example, if you search for some photography related content, select the photography category or search for a niched topic. 

    9. Get Ideas from Discussions in Facebook Groups

  Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and customers and get new content ideas. Facebook Groups is an underrated asset. It a strong base for an active community. You can see new trending topic discussion, recommendations, tips, new insights from business owners and specialists.

    You can use communities in case you have any doubts about a specific topic. Let’s say, for example, that you heard lots of times that multiple links coming from one and the same domain are considered to have lower value, so unique linking domains are typically a more reliable metric than link count. And you’d like to know if anybody experienced a situation when this statement isn’t true and get some examples that you could use in your article (of course, after asking for permission).

  Or you can ask for tips on client retention and see what comments and answer you get and use them in creating a new piece of article. The combinations are endless. You just need to be on the right community, where people comment and are active.

  There are lots of types of blog posts that work differently on every business page or group, so make sure you get ideas and adapt the message to the type of audience you target.

    10. Use Reddit to Find Questions Related to Your Topic

  Reddit is a resourceful collection of data, or as they promote themselves “the front page of the internet”. And they don’t call like it that for no reason. Reddit has hundreds of groups named reddits which are designed based on lots of domain of interest/typology of content. They promise to give you the best of the internet in one place. You can find inspiration on many topics no matter the form – text, video or visual content.

  There is a highly active community with over 542 million monthly visitors (234 million unique users), ranking as the No. 6 most visited website in U.S. according to Alexa. 

    One of the most famous subreddit is r/IAmA where you can find Q&A series. AMA means “ask me anything” and attracts all sorts of characters, and personalities that answer to the people’s questions. They are a great way to get firsthand knowledge about what it’s like to be a firefighter, a corporate whistleblower, get better at sales, content writer etc. Or you can join niched subreddits such as r/SEO, r/marketing, r/science, r/CrazyIdeas, r/GetMotivated and more. 

  Moreover, you can select your topic and type of content by choosing “Popular” posts or “All”. For know-it-all people I would recommend using RedditList or RedditMetrics to find up-and-coming subreddits. Follow people discussions and generate your next content topic. 

    11. See What Other People Are Sharing on Zest

  I usually use Zest for finding new blog post ideas. Right after you enter the page, you’ll see each article in a box format which includes the title, the cover attached and a short description. 

    The friendly design works very well to skim through the content and makes it very easy to share and save it in your account for future inspiration.  

    There are other ways than scrolling to search for content on Zest. You can apply specific tags and get the articles that are related.

    Other options for filtering results are by the type of content (audio, video), shares, clicks or latest posts.

    There are lots of experts that share their articles here. You can follow people and get instant notifications. It is very easy to use and easy to share content, as well. This comes in hand if you want to amplify your content and give it a boost after publishing.

    If you haven’t used it before, you should definitely start now because it is a gold mine.

  Don’t miss all the Zest from the content marketing juice. Your content needs all the zest and personality you can get.

  12. Explore Medium Posts

  Medium, just like Zest, collects lots of articles that people share, write and appreciate. The content is engaged and maintained by its users. It is a good source of inspiration because you can see what content is resonating with readers around specific topics. Needless to say that Medium is a solid platform for finding hundreds or thousands of content topics. 

  Based on what you’re reading, following and liking you get recommendation “From Your Network”. People appreciate the articles by using “claps”, so the more claps a page has the more likely audience is interested in that topic. 

    Besides the recommendation you received based on what you read, you can also select the topic and the domain of interest: art & entertainment, industry, innovation & tech, life, society. 

    13. Check out What’s Popular on Flipboard

  Flipboard is a great source for curated content. Search through technology, news, entertainment, design, and health topic around the web. It has a collection of articles just like Zest, where you can search, read, save and share stories yourself. Create an account and share interesting stories to be a part of the community. There are lots of authors and people that share stories on various topics. 

    If you install the mobile app you have all that information at your finger. Swipe left to flip pages and get to stories that interest you and get instant inspiration whenever you are.

    If you want to search for a specific topic that you’re interested, type in and look through the results. Follow that topic to receive notifications based on new articles shared on Flipboard. For example, if you want to see what’s new regarding Huawei and US issue, search and scoop through the results.

    14. Explore What’s Popular on Trend Hunter

  Trend Hunter is the world’s largest, most popular collection of cutting edge ideas, fueled by 233,000 people, big data & Trend Hunter AI as they mention on the website. Select from lots of domains of interest and filter type of content by searching ideas, lists, videos, photos or insights. If we look at the business category these are the trends right now: 

    If you want to deliver quality content and always be the first informer for your audience, it is recommended to know the trends and write evergreen content including the trends. 

  15. Search the Internet Using AllTop

  Another free way to find blog content ideas is to look on AllTop, where are collected all the top stories. For example, I searched for sports news and you get all sorts of recommendations you could get inspiration from. 

    There are lots of A-Z posts you could take inspiration from. As a good practice to use AllTop to find blog content topics, start by searching the topic and look for articles that are similar. Take the next example, I searched for SEO blogging and I got the next results. 

    I’ve highlighted two articles that interest me. Both articles focus on the same type of content. Use them as a starting point, and divide your search then by looking for “blogging” only and see what results you get. 

  16. Check Google News for Current Events

  Google News can fit very well in your content marketing strategy to see what is trending in digital marketing and other industries. It is the easiest way to look for current events and news in your industry. An interesting news post relevant to your query can be used to write a quick, creative and even controversial content.

  You can search for anything regarding digital marketing or business, technology, entertainment, science, sports and many more. Or search for things you might be interested in, based on what you find in other categories and get directions from there.

    If you want awareness and have a relevant audience then finding a news hook for your pieces could be the solution. You have the possibility to select the language and the country and get more personalized results, which afterward can be saved in your account.  

    17. Stay Updated With Google Webmaster Hangouts

  If you’re a digital marketing or work in the SEO field then following Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout is a good option to find content topics. There is a big community of SEO experts, business owners, and knowledgeable people, in general, that participate in the meeting. All the Hangouts are hosted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, that answers to the questions that are added before the meeting on the Google Webmaster Youtube channel or asked live by those who participate. There are limited seats and people are very keen to learn and set some clear directions on where the SEO world is heading by finding inside tips from John.  

    If you want to find out more about Google, updates, and SEO, in general, you can follow what do people ask and extract some valid tips. We even wrote an entire article based on the finding from Webmasters hangouts, named 21 Intriguing SEO Facts Exposed by Google on Webmaster Central & Hangouts, which I highly recommend you to scoop through.   

  18. Look Through Shared Articles on Academia

  Whenever you need academic papers, research articles I’d recommend you to use Academia.edu. Not only you’ll find valuable content ideas from well-documented papers written by specialists, professors, students and many more, but you’ll also find references for the articles you’re writing right now. You can elaborate new topic discussions for all sorts of meetings, podcasts, roundups, and get an abundance of new content ideas.

  Search for people, papers, jobs and download documents if you’d like. With just a simple scroll you get a lot of smart content to take inspiration and pin down the right topics. 

    19. Find Stats and Case Studies on Statista

  Statista is another source of inspiration for documented data. Here you can find large researches, case studies, stats and graph performed on a large number of participants from lots of locations.  

    There are all sorts of studies on Statista and you can make great discoveries if you search through them. For example, you can find out that excitements is the main feeling related to discovering new music among adults in Brazil or the fact that most deepwater discoveries happened in South America (315 from 2010 until 2016), or maybe you want to know that most of the people watched Discovery Channel’s Shark Week on TV or may you want to know that 64 percent of people aged 18-24 consume new in online media, people aged 55+ are looking at news on TV and those aged 25-34 are divided between online and TV mostly. 

  All the stats available on site are a great starting point for an article. Remember that numbers will always add value to your piece. It is very important to know how to use them and how to draw attention to the user’s eye.

  Belinda Weaver from CopywriteMatters offer some valuable tips on how to use numerals and numbers in a copy:

Use numbers instead of spelling them out.

Don’t start sentences with numerals.

Spell out “percent,” instead of using the % symbol.

Use monetary values in numerals ($5,000 or $5K versus five-thousand dollars).

  Numbers influence how our readers perceive us and it can have a high power of persuasion if used correctly.

  20. Explore Global Development Data on World Bank Open Data

  World Bank Open Data offers global financial and development data. It lets you explore through various collections of time series data on a variety of topics no matter if you look for international or local data.

    The site has lots of resources and only the data catalog provides access to over 2,000 indicators, solely. Check out all the resources:

Open Data Catalog;

DataBank;

Microdata Library;

World Development Indicators;

Open Finances;

Projects & Operations;

Open Data Toolkit;

Living Standards Measurement Study;

Global Consumption Database.

  Conclusion

  As a farewell message and recommendation after all these tips, I shall leave you with one that can complement the other ideas and it could help you be a better content creator. Grow the skill of becoming content savvy, which means developing the ability to see valuable content everywhere. The content creation process can be hard, but there are lots of ways to make it easier.

  Whether you’re in the bus/metro/car and see a commercial ad or somebody reading an interesting book (look at the title), reading useful posts on social media, listening to the radio or podcasts, watching a video/movie, reading something online or skimming through the news, you must see content inspiration everywhere. This way you’ll never run out of blog post ideas again.

  When you found yourself a great topic, combine more options that we’ve elaborated here to have a more insightful article and cover all the information. 

The post 20 Free Ways to Find Blog Content Ideas That Convert appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

from Marketing https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/20710/blog-content-ideas/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[wjwilliams29]

20 Free Ways to Find Blog Content Ideas That Convert

If you’re a content writer, you have a blog or work for a company, you might have struggled with this question before: How do I find good blog topic ideas? There might have been situations when you didn’t have any ideas and you had to write something just to keep your users engaged.

  For everyone that has stumbled on this, I understand you. I know what you’re feeling. And you’re not alone. For somebody who writes on a daily basis, you need to be like a factory of fantastic ideas and give valuable information to the audience, because they need it. They are looking for guidance in every possible way.

  I bet that not once it happened to you to remain stuck and don’t get any inspiration for an article. The desire was there but the playground was empty. 

Most of you have to become factory ideas overnight, but there are solutions for you during the day. That’s why we thought about the following effortless ways and platforms to find topic ideas:

  Look for Q&As on Quora

Use BrandMentions to Spy Your Competitors for Content Ideas

Uncover Trends and Identify Influencers on BuzzSumo

Search for Question Topics on  cognitiveSEO’s Keyword Tool 

Generate Niche Keyword Ideas Using Ubersuggest

Get Inspired Using Pinterest

Follow Influencers’ Articles on LinkedIn

Search Through Thousands of Courses on Lynda

Get Ideas from Discussions in Facebook Groups

Use Reddit to Find Questions Related to Your Topic

See What Other People Are Sharing on Zest

Explore Medium Posts

Check out What’s Popular on Flipboard

Explore Trending Stories on Trend Hunter

Search the Internet Using AllTop

Check Google News for Current Events

Stay Updated With Google Webmaster Hangouts

Look Through Shared Articles on Academia

Find Stats and Case Studies on Statista

Explore Global Development Data on World Bank Open Data

  Finding the right content topic is essential, but the way you write it is also important. Good content writers will always be in demand, just like Joel Klettke points out.

  “We don’t need to hire a writer. We’ve got formulas and a template!” pic.twitter.com/HREhKHCimw

— Joel K (@JoelKlettke) September 18, 2018

  1. Look for Q&As on Quora

  Quora is an abundance of information and continuous resource for content writers, users, noobies and people wanting to find specific answers to their problems. The information is organized and edited by users, which makes it easy to understand the user behavior.

  Besides all the ideas, you get the advantage of seeing what language and vocabulary people use, the way of writing and asking questions. And after you got some inspiration, you can write the article. Then you can answer questions by pointing people to your article.

    Quora is a great space for keyword research and headlines/titles inspiration. For example, if we use the screenshot below and we want to write about keyword cannibalization, we can see if most people use a focus keyword such as – avoid keyword cannibalization or the question type such as – what is keyword cannibalization.  

  The site is divided into topics, which makes it easy to search for blogging ideas and get insights on what people are looking for. There is an entire community on Quora where a lot of people and experts on every subject you can imagine are actively contributing with knowledge.

  If you are focused on a specific topic, use the newly launched Spaces and follow the community that interests you.

    Besides all the ideas we’ve talked about, there are other things Quora is good at. Only by using a few clicks you can:

find what people are looking for. Search for general keywords on Quora and see questions regarding your topic.

get updates on trending topics right on the homepage.

    read sourced research from experts and get their permission to quote them in your new article.

find every influencer that you can contact for outreach.

    2. Use BrandMentions to Spy Your Competitors for Content Ideas

  Wouldn’t it be a shame to miss an opportunity to talk about something that has great traction and create a massive, evergreen blog post that will get a good social media score and links 3 years after you’ve written it?

  We’ve previously talked about the advantages of using a social monitoring tool, such as BrandMentions, that gives insights based on what finds online. You can spy on your competitors to see what are they writing, what type of content gets more engagement. And based on the response they get from the audience, you can see the topics of interest and try to create a better piece of content than theirs.

  You can monitor fresh topical content related to your business and create better content in your niche. You just have to search for a topic and the tool will show you the results.

    Whenever your brand is being brought up on the web, a marketing opportunity is rising and that applies to your competitors as well. If you know what people are talking about them and find their strengths and weaknesses, you’ll know what to offer to the audience and steal them from your competition.

  Using a social monitoring tool such as BrandMentions helps you manage the mentions and go right on the spot by offering live support. You can find what people are saying about a specific brand and not necessarily to it, because there might be lots of untracked brand mentions, without any direct link to the brand.

  For example, people might talk on social media but not place the @ before the name of the brand. And we must remember that it’s not only influencers in your industry who mention brands on the web, but there are also lots of other people that are consumers.

    3. Uncover Trends and Identify Influencers on BuzzSumo

  BuzzSumo can help you generate new content for your blog and see what the audience craves. You can search for popular topics and see results based on total engagement, evergreen score, number of links and other more. You have lots of filters available to go into deeper analysis and get more accurate results based on your needs.

    For example, we searched for video marketing and we wanted to see the pages with the highest engagement.

    Another great thing about this tool is that you can get some ideas of keywords based on the results you get. If we look at the search we’ve made for video marketing, we can see that video and SEO, or video marketing tips, or video marketing statistics are valid recommendations we could use in our content.

  4. Search for Question Topics on cognitiveSEO’s Keyword Tool 

  If you’re in search of customer questions use cognitiveSEO Keyword Tool to generate content ideas and monitor question on various subjects and brands.

Based on the keywords you’re interested in writing topics on, you can filter the results and get:

phrase match;

search suggestions;

focus keywords;

questions;

or group topic.

    Did you know?

Within the Keyword Tool you can see results based on location, language and device option (desktop vs mobile). So you can see niched topic ideas based on what people are searching and following in a particular place, city.

Besides, you could spy your competition and see which type of content triggers more traction in SERP. Get a sneak peek on what are they writing about, what kind of content is ranking for a particular keyword (product page, homepage, blog post, YouTube video and so on), the subject line.

With just a few clicks, you can get valuable insights on some keyword and topics ideas, plus do a short competitive analysis on any keyword you are interested in ranking for. 

  5. Generate Niche Keyword Ideas Using Ubersuggest

  Ubersuggest is a keyword suggestion tool that lets you perform keyword research and also give you common phrases and some articles inspiration related to the keyword. With just a scroll you get a list of keyword recommendations plus some important metrics (search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, CPC, volume search) and in the end some articles along with social shares from Facebook and Pinterest.

  Below you can see an example for blogging. if you haven’t considered using Ubersuggest for content ideas now is a good time. 

      6. Get Inspired Using Pinterest

  Another free way to find content marketing ideas is by using Pinterest. The motto of the platform describes it very well: Discover recipes, style home ideas, inspiration and other ideas to try. So inspiration is at its place on Pinterest.

  If you’ve never used Pinterest until now, then you did miss on lots of great opportunities. The social media content you get here, might not be found on the other social channels. You can use Pinterest to:

get free ideas for blog posts.

create content that your audience actually wants.

find keywords you should use in your blog post to help with SEO on Pinterest.

  The process is very simple and very intuitive for beginners. Just search for a keyword, such as blog and see the results:

    Then look in the search suggestions box for other keywords that are used for searches and get topic ideas and headlines that intrigue the user. Look at the most popular keyword suggestions, such as marketing (blog marketing), for beginners (blog for beginners), ideas (blog ideas), tips (blog tips) and so on.

  That means there are a lot of new bloggers looking to learn about blogging or bloggers that are in the marketing field and search for ideas and so on.

    Getting those recommended keywords means that those are what your audience is searching for. Use those keywords into your titles tags and description.

  If you decide to use Pinterest, then those keywords should be into your pin description and heading to boost your Pinterest “SEO rankings”. So that when people are searching for those keywords, your post gets a higher chance of being on the top. That’s how easy it is to get creative content marketing ideas using Pinterest.

  7. Follow Influencers’ Articles on LinkedIn

  LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that you could use to connect with experts and people that write valuable information. You can comment and create connections and, most important of all, you can get inspired by what they are writing and talking about on LinkedIn.

  You can find the posts they make and the questions they ask by scrolling on the homepage:

    You can go deeper and look at their published articles. LinkedIn Pulse is the platform owned by LinkedIn where influencers write their articles. 

    If you get an idea and write about it, then you can contact the influencer and let them now that you quoted them in one of your articles and they can check the blog post once its published. After that, you can ask them for a share or you can share their post by tagging them.

  It will create a snowball effect and you can get more people to share your content afterward and get new contacts that you can ask for their ideas in your next piece of contact. For example, you can create a blog post asking a single question to industry influencers where you could quote their answer. And then repeat the sharing process to build a strong online presence. It works very well as a growth hacking technique, too.

  LinkedIn is a great source of inspiration. And it makes it easy to get exposure for yourself and your business if you decide to share your articles there.

  8. Search Through Thousands of Courses on Lynda

  Lynda is a platform with online courses on lots of work fields for people that want to receive a certificate or want to learn software, creative, and business skills to achieve personal and professional goals. 

    No matter the topic, there is some valuable information that you can find on Lynda. Find and learn new content writing tips in one shot. You can even find information for any difficulty level. For example, if you search for some photography related content, select the photography category or search for a niched topic. 

    9. Get Ideas from Discussions in Facebook Groups

  Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and customers and get new content ideas. Facebook Groups is an underrated asset. It a strong base for an active community. You can see new trending topic discussion, recommendations, tips, new insights from business owners and specialists.

    You can use communities in case you have any doubts about a specific topic. Let’s say, for example, that you heard lots of times that multiple links coming from one and the same domain are considered to have lower value, so unique linking domains are typically a more reliable metric than link count. And you’d like to know if anybody experienced a situation when this statement isn’t true and get some examples that you could use in your article (of course, after asking for permission).

  Or you can ask for tips on client retention and see what comments and answer you get and use them in creating a new piece of article. The combinations are endless. You just need to be on the right community, where people comment and are active.

  There are lots of types of blog posts that work differently on every business page or group, so make sure you get ideas and adapt the message to the type of audience you target.

    10. Use Reddit to Find Questions Related to Your Topic

  Reddit is a resourceful collection of data, or as they promote themselves “the front page of the internet”. And they don’t call like it that for no reason. Reddit has hundreds of groups named reddits which are designed based on lots of domain of interest/typology of content. They promise to give you the best of the internet in one place. You can find inspiration on many topics no matter the form – text, video or visual content.

  There is a highly active community with over 542 million monthly visitors (234 million unique users), ranking as the No. 6 most visited website in U.S. according to Alexa. 

    One of the most famous subreddit is r/IAmA where you can find Q&A series. AMA means “ask me anything” and attracts all sorts of characters, and personalities that answer to the people’s questions. They are a great way to get firsthand knowledge about what it’s like to be a firefighter, a corporate whistleblower, get better at sales, content writer etc. Or you can join niched subreddits such as r/SEO, r/marketing, r/science, r/CrazyIdeas, r/GetMotivated and more. 

  Moreover, you can select your topic and type of content by choosing “Popular” posts or “All”. For know-it-all people I would recommend using RedditList or RedditMetrics to find up-and-coming subreddits. Follow people discussions and generate your next content topic. 

    11. See What Other People Are Sharing on Zest

  I usually use Zest for finding new blog post ideas. Right after you enter the page, you’ll see each article in a box format which includes the title, the cover attached and a short description. 

    The friendly design works very well to skim through the content and makes it very easy to share and save it in your account for future inspiration.  

    There are other ways than scrolling to search for content on Zest. You can apply specific tags and get the articles that are related.

    Other options for filtering results are by the type of content (audio, video), shares, clicks or latest posts.

    There are lots of experts that share their articles here. You can follow people and get instant notifications. It is very easy to use and easy to share content, as well. This comes in hand if you want to amplify your content and give it a boost after publishing.

    If you haven’t used it before, you should definitely start now because it is a gold mine.

  Don’t miss all the Zest from the content marketing juice. Your content needs all the zest and personality you can get.

  12. Explore Medium Posts

  Medium, just like Zest, collects lots of articles that people share, write and appreciate. The content is engaged and maintained by its users. It is a good source of inspiration because you can see what content is resonating with readers around specific topics. Needless to say that Medium is a solid platform for finding hundreds or thousands of content topics. 

  Based on what you’re reading, following and liking you get recommendation “From Your Network”. People appreciate the articles by using “claps”, so the more claps a page has the more likely audience is interested in that topic. 

    Besides the recommendation you received based on what you read, you can also select the topic and the domain of interest: art & entertainment, industry, innovation & tech, life, society. 

    13. Check out What’s Popular on Flipboard

  Flipboard is a great source for curated content. Search through technology, news, entertainment, design, and health topic around the web. It has a collection of articles just like Zest, where you can search, read, save and share stories yourself. Create an account and share interesting stories to be a part of the community. There are lots of authors and people that share stories on various topics. 

    If you install the mobile app you have all that information at your finger. Swipe left to flip pages and get to stories that interest you and get instant inspiration whenever you are.

    If you want to search for a specific topic that you’re interested, type in and look through the results. Follow that topic to receive notifications based on new articles shared on Flipboard. For example, if you want to see what’s new regarding Huawei and US issue, search and scoop through the results.

    14. Explore What’s Popular on Trend Hunter

  Trend Hunter is the world’s largest, most popular collection of cutting edge ideas, fueled by 233,000 people, big data & Trend Hunter AI as they mention on the website. Select from lots of domains of interest and filter type of content by searching ideas, lists, videos, photos or insights. If we look at the business category these are the trends right now: 

    If you want to deliver quality content and always be the first informer for your audience, it is recommended to know the trends and write evergreen content including the trends. 

  15. Search the Internet Using AllTop

  Another free way to find blog content ideas is to look on AllTop, where are collected all the top stories. For example, I searched for sports news and you get all sorts of recommendations you could get inspiration from. 

    There are lots of A-Z posts you could take inspiration from. As a good practice to use AllTop to find blog content topics, start by searching the topic and look for articles that are similar. Take the next example, I searched for SEO blogging and I got the next results. 

    I’ve highlighted two articles that interest me. Both articles focus on the same type of content. Use them as a starting point, and divide your search then by looking for “blogging” only and see what results you get. 

  16. Check Google News for Current Events

  Google News can fit very well in your content marketing strategy to see what is trending in digital marketing and other industries. It is the easiest way to look for current events and news in your industry. An interesting news post relevant to your query can be used to write a quick, creative and even controversial content.

  You can search for anything regarding digital marketing or business, technology, entertainment, science, sports and many more. Or search for things you might be interested in, based on what you find in other categories and get directions from there.

    If you want awareness and have a relevant audience then finding a news hook for your pieces could be the solution. You have the possibility to select the language and the country and get more personalized results, which afterward can be saved in your account.  

    17. Stay Updated With Google Webmaster Hangouts

  If you’re a digital marketing or work in the SEO field then following Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout is a good option to find content topics. There is a big community of SEO experts, business owners, and knowledgeable people, in general, that participate in the meeting. All the Hangouts are hosted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, that answers to the questions that are added before the meeting on the Google Webmaster Youtube channel or asked live by those who participate. There are limited seats and people are very keen to learn and set some clear directions on where the SEO world is heading by finding inside tips from John.  

    If you want to find out more about Google, updates, and SEO, in general, you can follow what do people ask and extract some valid tips. We even wrote an entire article based on the finding from Webmasters hangouts, named 21 Intriguing SEO Facts Exposed by Google on Webmaster Central & Hangouts, which I highly recommend you to scoop through.   

  18. Look Through Shared Articles on Academia

  Whenever you need academic papers, research articles I’d recommend you to use Academia.edu. Not only you’ll find valuable content ideas from well-documented papers written by specialists, professors, students and many more, but you’ll also find references for the articles you’re writing right now. You can elaborate new topic discussions for all sorts of meetings, podcasts, roundups, and get an abundance of new content ideas.

  Search for people, papers, jobs and download documents if you’d like. With just a simple scroll you get a lot of smart content to take inspiration and pin down the right topics. 

    19. Find Stats and Case Studies on Statista

  Statista is another source of inspiration for documented data. Here you can find large researches, case studies, stats and graph performed on a large number of participants from lots of locations.  

    There are all sorts of studies on Statista and you can make great discoveries if you search through them. For example, you can find out that excitements is the main feeling related to discovering new music among adults in Brazil or the fact that most deepwater discoveries happened in South America (315 from 2010 until 2016), or maybe you want to know that most of the people watched Discovery Channel’s Shark Week on TV or may you want to know that 64 percent of people aged 18-24 consume new in online media, people aged 55+ are looking at news on TV and those aged 25-34 are divided between online and TV mostly. 

  All the stats available on site are a great starting point for an article. Remember that numbers will always add value to your piece. It is very important to know how to use them and how to draw attention to the user’s eye.

  Belinda Weaver from CopywriteMatters offer some valuable tips on how to use numerals and numbers in a copy:

Use numbers instead of spelling them out.

Don’t start sentences with numerals.

Spell out “percent,” instead of using the % symbol.

Use monetary values in numerals ($5,000 or $5K versus five-thousand dollars).

  Numbers influence how our readers perceive us and it can have a high power of persuasion if used correctly.

  20. Explore Global Development Data on World Bank Open Data

  World Bank Open Data offers global financial and development data. It lets you explore through various collections of time series data on a variety of topics no matter if you look for international or local data.

    The site has lots of resources and only the data catalog provides access to over 2,000 indicators, solely. Check out all the resources:

Open Data Catalog;

DataBank;

Microdata Library;

World Development Indicators;

Open Finances;

Projects & Operations;

Open Data Toolkit;

Living Standards Measurement Study;

Global Consumption Database.

  Conclusion

  As a farewell message and recommendation after all these tips, I shall leave you with one that can complement the other ideas and it could help you be a better content creator. Grow the skill of becoming content savvy, which means developing the ability to see valuable content everywhere. The content creation process can be hard, but there are lots of ways to make it easier.

  Whether you’re in the bus/metro/car and see a commercial ad or somebody reading an interesting book (look at the title), reading useful posts on social media, listening to the radio or podcasts, watching a video/movie, reading something online or skimming through the news, you must see content inspiration everywhere. This way you’ll never run out of blog post ideas again.

  When you found yourself a great topic, combine more options that we’ve elaborated here to have a more insightful article and cover all the information. 

The post 20 Free Ways to Find Blog Content Ideas That Convert appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

[krisggordon]

20 Free Ways to Find Blog Content Ideas That Convert

If you’re a content writer, you have a blog or work for a company, you might have struggled with this question before: How do I find good blog topic ideas? There might have been situations when you didn’t have any ideas and you had to write something just to keep your users engaged.

  For everyone that has stumbled on this, I understand you. I know what you’re feeling. And you’re not alone. For somebody who writes on a daily basis, you need to be like a factory of fantastic ideas and give valuable information to the audience, because they need it. They are looking for guidance in every possible way.

  I bet that not once it happened to you to remain stuck and don’t get any inspiration for an article. The desire was there but the playground was empty. 

Most of you have to become factory ideas overnight, but there are solutions for you during the day. That’s why we thought about the following effortless ways and platforms to find topic ideas:

  Look for Q&As on Quora

Use BrandMentions to Spy Your Competitors for Content Ideas

Uncover Trends and Identify Influencers on BuzzSumo

Search for Question Topics on  cognitiveSEO’s Keyword Tool 

Generate Niche Keyword Ideas Using Ubersuggest

Get Inspired Using Pinterest

Follow Influencers’ Articles on LinkedIn

Search Through Thousands of Courses on Lynda

Get Ideas from Discussions in Facebook Groups

Use Reddit to Find Questions Related to Your Topic

See What Other People Are Sharing on Zest

Explore Medium Posts

Check out What’s Popular on Flipboard

Explore Trending Stories on Trend Hunter

Search the Internet Using AllTop

Check Google News for Current Events

Stay Updated With Google Webmaster Hangouts

Look Through Shared Articles on Academia

Find Stats and Case Studies on Statista

Explore Global Development Data on World Bank Open Data

  Finding the right content topic is essential, but the way you write it is also important. Good content writers will always be in demand, just like Joel Klettke points out.

  “We don’t need to hire a writer. We’ve got formulas and a template!” pic.twitter.com/HREhKHCimw

— Joel K (@JoelKlettke) September 18, 2018

  1. Look for Q&As on Quora

  Quora is an abundance of information and continuous resource for content writers, users, noobies and people wanting to find specific answers to their problems. The information is organized and edited by users, which makes it easy to understand the user behavior.

  Besides all the ideas, you get the advantage of seeing what language and vocabulary people use, the way of writing and asking questions. And after you got some inspiration, you can write the article. Then you can answer questions by pointing people to your article.

    Quora is a great space for keyword research and headlines/titles inspiration. For example, if we use the screenshot below and we want to write about keyword cannibalization, we can see if most people use a focus keyword such as – avoid keyword cannibalization or the question type such as – what is keyword cannibalization.  

  The site is divided into topics, which makes it easy to search for blogging ideas and get insights on what people are looking for. There is an entire community on Quora where a lot of people and experts on every subject you can imagine are actively contributing with knowledge.

  If you are focused on a specific topic, use the newly launched Spaces and follow the community that interests you.

    Besides all the ideas we’ve talked about, there are other things Quora is good at. Only by using a few clicks you can:

find what people are looking for. Search for general keywords on Quora and see questions regarding your topic.

get updates on trending topics right on the homepage.

    read sourced research from experts and get their permission to quote them in your new article.

find every influencer that you can contact for outreach.

    2. Use BrandMentions to Spy Your Competitors for Content Ideas

  Wouldn’t it be a shame to miss an opportunity to talk about something that has great traction and create a massive, evergreen blog post that will get a good social media score and links 3 years after you’ve written it?

  We’ve previously talked about the advantages of using a social monitoring tool, such as BrandMentions, that gives insights based on what finds online. You can spy on your competitors to see what are they writing, what type of content gets more engagement. And based on the response they get from the audience, you can see the topics of interest and try to create a better piece of content than theirs.

  You can monitor fresh topical content related to your business and create better content in your niche. You just have to search for a topic and the tool will show you the results.

    Whenever your brand is being brought up on the web, a marketing opportunity is rising and that applies to your competitors as well. If you know what people are talking about them and find their strengths and weaknesses, you’ll know what to offer to the audience and steal them from your competition.

  Using a social monitoring tool such as BrandMentions helps you manage the mentions and go right on the spot by offering live support. You can find what people are saying about a specific brand and not necessarily to it, because there might be lots of untracked brand mentions, without any direct link to the brand.

  For example, people might talk on social media but not place the @ before the name of the brand. And we must remember that it’s not only influencers in your industry who mention brands on the web, but there are also lots of other people that are consumers.

    3. Uncover Trends and Identify Influencers on BuzzSumo

  BuzzSumo can help you generate new content for your blog and see what the audience craves. You can search for popular topics and see results based on total engagement, evergreen score, number of links and other more. You have lots of filters available to go into deeper analysis and get more accurate results based on your needs.

    For example, we searched for video marketing and we wanted to see the pages with the highest engagement.

    Another great thing about this tool is that you can get some ideas of keywords based on the results you get. If we look at the search we’ve made for video marketing, we can see that video and SEO, or video marketing tips, or video marketing statistics are valid recommendations we could use in our content.

  4. Search for Question Topics on cognitiveSEO’s Keyword Tool 

  If you’re in search of customer questions use cognitiveSEO Keyword Tool to generate content ideas and monitor question on various subjects and brands.

Based on the keywords you’re interested in writing topics on, you can filter the results and get:

phrase match;

search suggestions;

focus keywords;

questions;

or group topic.

    Did you know?

Within the Keyword Tool you can see results based on location, language and device option (desktop vs mobile). So you can see niched topic ideas based on what people are searching and following in a particular place, city.

Besides, you could spy your competition and see which type of content triggers more traction in SERP. Get a sneak peek on what are they writing about, what kind of content is ranking for a particular keyword (product page, homepage, blog post, YouTube video and so on), the subject line.

With just a few clicks, you can get valuable insights on some keyword and topics ideas, plus do a short competitive analysis on any keyword you are interested in ranking for. 

  5. Generate Niche Keyword Ideas Using Ubersuggest

  Ubersuggest is a keyword suggestion tool that lets you perform keyword research and also give you common phrases and some articles inspiration related to the keyword. With just a scroll you get a list of keyword recommendations plus some important metrics (search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, CPC, volume search) and in the end some articles along with social shares from Facebook and Pinterest.

  Below you can see an example for blogging. if you haven’t considered using Ubersuggest for content ideas now is a good time. 

      6. Get Inspired Using Pinterest

  Another free way to find content marketing ideas is by using Pinterest. The motto of the platform describes it very well: Discover recipes, style home ideas, inspiration and other ideas to try. So inspiration is at its place on Pinterest.

  If you’ve never used Pinterest until now, then you did miss on lots of great opportunities. The social media content you get here, might not be found on the other social channels. You can use Pinterest to:

get free ideas for blog posts.

create content that your audience actually wants.

find keywords you should use in your blog post to help with SEO on Pinterest.

  The process is very simple and very intuitive for beginners. Just search for a keyword, such as blog and see the results:

    Then look in the search suggestions box for other keywords that are used for searches and get topic ideas and headlines that intrigue the user. Look at the most popular keyword suggestions, such as marketing (blog marketing), for beginners (blog for beginners), ideas (blog ideas), tips (blog tips) and so on.

  That means there are a lot of new bloggers looking to learn about blogging or bloggers that are in the marketing field and search for ideas and so on.

    Getting those recommended keywords means that those are what your audience is searching for. Use those keywords into your titles tags and description.

  If you decide to use Pinterest, then those keywords should be into your pin description and heading to boost your Pinterest “SEO rankings”. So that when people are searching for those keywords, your post gets a higher chance of being on the top. That’s how easy it is to get creative content marketing ideas using Pinterest.

  7. Follow Influencers’ Articles on LinkedIn

  LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that you could use to connect with experts and people that write valuable information. You can comment and create connections and, most important of all, you can get inspired by what they are writing and talking about on LinkedIn.

  You can find the posts they make and the questions they ask by scrolling on the homepage:

    You can go deeper and look at their published articles. LinkedIn Pulse is the platform owned by LinkedIn where influencers write their articles. 

    If you get an idea and write about it, then you can contact the influencer and let them now that you quoted them in one of your articles and they can check the blog post once its published. After that, you can ask them for a share or you can share their post by tagging them.

  It will create a snowball effect and you can get more people to share your content afterward and get new contacts that you can ask for their ideas in your next piece of contact. For example, you can create a blog post asking a single question to industry influencers where you could quote their answer. And then repeat the sharing process to build a strong online presence. It works very well as a growth hacking technique, too.

  LinkedIn is a great source of inspiration. And it makes it easy to get exposure for yourself and your business if you decide to share your articles there.

  8. Search Through Thousands of Courses on Lynda

  Lynda is a platform with online courses on lots of work fields for people that want to receive a certificate or want to learn software, creative, and business skills to achieve personal and professional goals. 

    No matter the topic, there is some valuable information that you can find on Lynda. Find and learn new content writing tips in one shot. You can even find information for any difficulty level. For example, if you search for some photography related content, select the photography category or search for a niched topic. 

    9. Get Ideas from Discussions in Facebook Groups

  Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and customers and get new content ideas. Facebook Groups is an underrated asset. It a strong base for an active community. You can see new trending topic discussion, recommendations, tips, new insights from business owners and specialists.

    You can use communities in case you have any doubts about a specific topic. Let’s say, for example, that you heard lots of times that multiple links coming from one and the same domain are considered to have lower value, so unique linking domains are typically a more reliable metric than link count. And you’d like to know if anybody experienced a situation when this statement isn’t true and get some examples that you could use in your article (of course, after asking for permission).

  Or you can ask for tips on client retention and see what comments and answer you get and use them in creating a new piece of article. The combinations are endless. You just need to be on the right community, where people comment and are active.

  There are lots of types of blog posts that work differently on every business page or group, so make sure you get ideas and adapt the message to the type of audience you target.

    10. Use Reddit to Find Questions Related to Your Topic

  Reddit is a resourceful collection of data, or as they promote themselves “the front page of the internet”. And they don’t call like it that for no reason. Reddit has hundreds of groups named reddits which are designed based on lots of domain of interest/typology of content. They promise to give you the best of the internet in one place. You can find inspiration on many topics no matter the form – text, video or visual content.

  There is a highly active community with over 542 million monthly visitors (234 million unique users), ranking as the No. 6 most visited website in U.S. according to Alexa. 

    One of the most famous subreddit is r/IAmA where you can find Q&A series. AMA means “ask me anything” and attracts all sorts of characters, and personalities that answer to the people’s questions. They are a great way to get firsthand knowledge about what it’s like to be a firefighter, a corporate whistleblower, get better at sales, content writer etc. Or you can join niched subreddits such as r/SEO, r/marketing, r/science, r/CrazyIdeas, r/GetMotivated and more. 

  Moreover, you can select your topic and type of content by choosing “Popular” posts or “All”. For know-it-all people I would recommend using RedditList or RedditMetrics to find up-and-coming subreddits. Follow people discussions and generate your next content topic. 

    11. See What Other People Are Sharing on Zest

  I usually use Zest for finding new blog post ideas. Right after you enter the page, you’ll see each article in a box format which includes the title, the cover attached and a short description. 

    The friendly design works very well to skim through the content and makes it very easy to share and save it in your account for future inspiration.  

    There are other ways than scrolling to search for content on Zest. You can apply specific tags and get the articles that are related.

    Other options for filtering results are by the type of content (audio, video), shares, clicks or latest posts.

    There are lots of experts that share their articles here. You can follow people and get instant notifications. It is very easy to use and easy to share content, as well. This comes in hand if you want to amplify your content and give it a boost after publishing.

    If you haven’t used it before, you should definitely start now because it is a gold mine.

  Don’t miss all the Zest from the content marketing juice. Your content needs all the zest and personality you can get.

  12. Explore Medium Posts

  Medium, just like Zest, collects lots of articles that people share, write and appreciate. The content is engaged and maintained by its users. It is a good source of inspiration because you can see what content is resonating with readers around specific topics. Needless to say that Medium is a solid platform for finding hundreds or thousands of content topics. 

  Based on what you’re reading, following and liking you get recommendation “From Your Network”. People appreciate the articles by using “claps”, so the more claps a page has the more likely audience is interested in that topic. 

    Besides the recommendation you received based on what you read, you can also select the topic and the domain of interest: art & entertainment, industry, innovation & tech, life, society. 

    13. Check out What’s Popular on Flipboard

  Flipboard is a great source for curated content. Search through technology, news, entertainment, design, and health topic around the web. It has a collection of articles just like Zest, where you can search, read, save and share stories yourself. Create an account and share interesting stories to be a part of the community. There are lots of authors and people that share stories on various topics. 

    If you install the mobile app you have all that information at your finger. Swipe left to flip pages and get to stories that interest you and get instant inspiration whenever you are.

    If you want to search for a specific topic that you’re interested, type in and look through the results. Follow that topic to receive notifications based on new articles shared on Flipboard. For example, if you want to see what’s new regarding Huawei and US issue, search and scoop through the results.

    14. Explore What’s Popular on Trend Hunter

  Trend Hunter is the world’s largest, most popular collection of cutting edge ideas, fueled by 233,000 people, big data & Trend Hunter AI as they mention on the website. Select from lots of domains of interest and filter type of content by searching ideas, lists, videos, photos or insights. If we look at the business category these are the trends right now: 

    If you want to deliver quality content and always be the first informer for your audience, it is recommended to know the trends and write evergreen content including the trends. 

  15. Search the Internet Using AllTop

  Another free way to find blog content ideas is to look on AllTop, where are collected all the top stories. For example, I searched for sports news and you get all sorts of recommendations you could get inspiration from. 

    There are lots of A-Z posts you could take inspiration from. As a good practice to use AllTop to find blog content topics, start by searching the topic and look for articles that are similar. Take the next example, I searched for SEO blogging and I got the next results. 

    I’ve highlighted two articles that interest me. Both articles focus on the same type of content. Use them as a starting point, and divide your search then by looking for “blogging” only and see what results you get. 

  16. Check Google News for Current Events

  Google News can fit very well in your content marketing strategy to see what is trending in digital marketing and other industries. It is the easiest way to look for current events and news in your industry. An interesting news post relevant to your query can be used to write a quick, creative and even controversial content.

  You can search for anything regarding digital marketing or business, technology, entertainment, science, sports and many more. Or search for things you might be interested in, based on what you find in other categories and get directions from there.

    If you want awareness and have a relevant audience then finding a news hook for your pieces could be the solution. You have the possibility to select the language and the country and get more personalized results, which afterward can be saved in your account.  

    17. Stay Updated With Google Webmaster Hangouts

  If you’re a digital marketing or work in the SEO field then following Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout is a good option to find content topics. There is a big community of SEO experts, business owners, and knowledgeable people, in general, that participate in the meeting. All the Hangouts are hosted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, that answers to the questions that are added before the meeting on the Google Webmaster Youtube channel or asked live by those who participate. There are limited seats and people are very keen to learn and set some clear directions on where the SEO world is heading by finding inside tips from John.  

    If you want to find out more about Google, updates, and SEO, in general, you can follow what do people ask and extract some valid tips. We even wrote an entire article based on the finding from Webmasters hangouts, named 21 Intriguing SEO Facts Exposed by Google on Webmaster Central & Hangouts, which I highly recommend you to scoop through.   

  18. Look Through Shared Articles on Academia

  Whenever you need academic papers, research articles I’d recommend you to use Academia.edu. Not only you’ll find valuable content ideas from well-documented papers written by specialists, professors, students and many more, but you’ll also find references for the articles you’re writing right now. You can elaborate new topic discussions for all sorts of meetings, podcasts, roundups, and get an abundance of new content ideas.

  Search for people, papers, jobs and download documents if you’d like. With just a simple scroll you get a lot of smart content to take inspiration and pin down the right topics. 

    19. Find Stats and Case Studies on Statista

  Statista is another source of inspiration for documented data. Here you can find large researches, case studies, stats and graph performed on a large number of participants from lots of locations.  

    There are all sorts of studies on Statista and you can make great discoveries if you search through them. For example, you can find out that excitements is the main feeling related to discovering new music among adults in Brazil or the fact that most deepwater discoveries happened in South America (315 from 2010 until 2016), or maybe you want to know that most of the people watched Discovery Channel’s Shark Week on TV or may you want to know that 64 percent of people aged 18-24 consume new in online media, people aged 55+ are looking at news on TV and those aged 25-34 are divided between online and TV mostly. 

  All the stats available on site are a great starting point for an article. Remember that numbers will always add value to your piece. It is very important to know how to use them and how to draw attention to the user’s eye.

  Belinda Weaver from CopywriteMatters offer some valuable tips on how to use numerals and numbers in a copy:

Use numbers instead of spelling them out.

Don’t start sentences with numerals.

Spell out “percent,” instead of using the % symbol.

Use monetary values in numerals ($5,000 or $5K versus five-thousand dollars).

  Numbers influence how our readers perceive us and it can have a high power of persuasion if used correctly.

  20. Explore Global Development Data on World Bank Open Data

  World Bank Open Data offers global financial and development data. It lets you explore through various collections of time series data on a variety of topics no matter if you look for international or local data.

    The site has lots of resources and only the data catalog provides access to over 2,000 indicators, solely. Check out all the resources:

Open Data Catalog;

DataBank;

Microdata Library;

World Development Indicators;

Open Finances;

Projects & Operations;

Open Data Toolkit;

Living Standards Measurement Study;

Global Consumption Database.

  Conclusion

  As a farewell message and recommendation after all these tips, I shall leave you with one that can complement the other ideas and it could help you be a better content creator. Grow the skill of becoming content savvy, which means developing the ability to see valuable content everywhere. The content creation process can be hard, but there are lots of ways to make it easier.

  Whether you’re in the bus/metro/car and see a commercial ad or somebody reading an interesting book (look at the title), reading useful posts on social media, listening to the radio or podcasts, watching a video/movie, reading something online or skimming through the news, you must see content inspiration everywhere. This way you’ll never run out of blog post ideas again.

  When you found yourself a great topic, combine more options that we’ve elaborated here to have a more insightful article and cover all the information. 

The post 20 Free Ways to Find Blog Content Ideas That Convert appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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