Free Tools for Generating Content Ideas
Starting a blog is easy. The difficult part is to keep it vibrant with information people like. We can for go for topics approved by our gut. And that may not be a bad idea because we have some idea of consumers and their mindsets. But what do we do once our home grown ideas get exhausted? Look for tools that can aid our imagination.
Basic Tools: Hubspot has a very basic idea generator. They don't use any direct insight related to your industry to tell you what you should be writing about. You insert a keyword (preferably noun) and their algorithm tries to churn some click bait titles. While that's not the best way to go about this, you can try that for starters. Some of their suggestions sound weird so you need to filter but it's worth a try. Similarlyhttps://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker gives some hilarious suggestions. You may not get to your topic there but you might get good with creating click worthy titles.
Better Tools: A lot of times people search on Google what they don't even ask their friends on social network. And they definitely don't tell you about their real needs in consumer surveys. So Google search has some really deep insights. Search something and Google comes up with suggestions on what other people are asking. That can be a great way to start. Google Trends is also an interesting tool if you want to write what people are searching about consistently every year. It will give you an idea about exactly when to plant the content. You can also turn to Google's Keyword Planner.
Advanced Tools: Answer the Public - They call themselves 'free visual keyword research' and 'content ideas tool'. Did you notice the word visual? Yes, you key in a keyword and the tool throws in a big image that gives 'what', 'when', 'why', 'how', 'where', 'which' and 'who' of that keyword. I typed in organic food and I got a lot of questions people are asking about organic food. I have got my topics
'What' organic food to buy on a tight budget?
'How' organic food prevents cancer
Organic food 'when' pregnant
'Who' certifies organic food labelling?
Which organic baby food brand is best?
The tools throws another visual which clubs consumer questions by prepositions like 'for', 'like','near','without','with','versus'. I got more ideas from there.
Organic food 'for' losing weight
Organic food 'near' Disneyland
Organic food 'to' lower cholesterol
Organic food 'vs' non organic food
Organic food 'with' protein
Organic baby food 'without' sugar
Lastly, the tools lists all questions alphabetically. That list gives another set of ideas.
The quality of topic depends on the search term. If you don't get the right ideas, you can try another search which is related. Since the tool is visual you spend no time with complex analytics on most searched question.
There are a number of other tools. The idea is to get some food for thought.