Look at a business blog or personal blog you admire…
Odds are nearly 100% that the blog is consistent. The author or authors post on a regular schedule. And they have likely been doing so for a long time. Several years in most cases.
Quantity and consistently alone don’t guarantee success with blogging, but you would be searching for a very long time to find a blog without those traits that provides quality. And if you do, the author probably build their expertise in other ways.
One of the biggest challenges with blogging is identifying sources of new ideas.
Here are a few underused sources of keywords and ideas for blogs…
1. Blog Comments
If you’re regularly publishing blog posts and have regular comments, these comments can be a source of keywords and ideas for future posts.
You can also look to other industry blogs and those comment sections for keywords.
A general rule of thumb is that if one person is asking a question, many more have the same question. At least enough to warrant a blog post on the topic.
Blogging is great for long-tail keywords. These are usually people seeking answers to questions. And blogs can be great providers of answers to questions.
If someone is reading a blog post about changing oil in a car and they comment:
What about if I live in cold weather climate?
Or maybe they ask this question:
What if my car has had a certain performance upgrade?
There are a number of questions people ask in comment sections. These are all keywords or ideas for future blog posts. Both on your own blog or on others in the industry.
2. Product Reviews
If you’ve ever purchased a product online you’ve probably read product reviews. These are great insight into the products. Especially when you haven’t purchased the item and used it yourself.
Obviously we all know that reviews aren’t perfect. We’ve all been disappointed when we’ve purchased something only to see that a review misled us. But the shear volume of online reviews has made for some great data on many products.
These reviews also paint an amazing picture when it comes to keywords. Reviewers write great thoughts on the products and how they use them. And they do it in their preferred nuances of language. They use keywords that they and others like them are likely to use and reuse.
Read product reviews to get more insight into what your blog readers are interested in.
3. YouTube Comments
Blogs comments are great. This is basically the same strategy, but instead you’re going to YouTube and sifting through the comments on relevant videos. These might be how to videos in your industry. They might be videos that you or your competitors are posting. They could be videos that customers or influencers are posting.
You’re looking through the comments to see what people are talking about or asking and using that information as inspiration for keywords and ideas for future blog posts.
4. Forums
There is pretty much a forum for any niche or industry or whatever. Forums have been around as long as the Internet. They’re just message boards with some basic, but effective organization. There are threads for different topics and you can usually sort by newest posts to see the active threads. But even the “dead” threads can provide some great insight.
People on forums are asking questions and having great conversations about all things. Forums are goldmines for insight into what you should be blogging about.
5. In-Person Interaction
Talking to customers in person or even on the phone can provide some great insight into the keywords they use in relation to your products and industry. Pay attention to the questions they’re asking. Pay attention to the questions that continue to come up with different customers.
The more you hear things from customers, the more likely that topic will be popular as a blog post.
Conclusion
For blogging, you’re mostly going to want to go after long-tail keywords. These are usually 3+ words long. These are generally questions that your target audience is asking and hoping to find an answer for. That’s where your blog can provide the answers.
Use the sources here as a way to identify great long-tail keywords and questions that you can use to fuel a consistent blogging effort.