• By michelle
• In Blogging Tips

5 Ways to Find Engaging Blog Topics When You’ve Exhausted Your Options

Cake. It’s decadent, delicious, and what some people might consider a basic human need. Yet, despite its many wonderful attributes, if you’re a bakery owner, there’s really only so much you can blog about cake.

Right?

Wrong.

Every day, business owners fall victim to the idea that they’ve exhausted their list of engaging blog topics. It’s possible you feel the same way.

But, there’s always something new you can write about, regardless of your profession.

To illustrate the idea that blog topic opportunities are endless, let’s pretend we are bakery owners today.

So please, strap up your apron and throw on a hair net, as I “whisk” you away on a journey to discover the countless ways you can find new and exciting ideas to keep your professional blog up to date, fun, valuable, and exciting.

Keep reading to discover 5 ways to find content inspiration that will help you “rise” to any blog topic creation-generating challenge.

Use Google Alerts to Generate Blog Topics

Bakers use timers as an “alert system” to ensure they take their pastries out of the oven before they burn.

Content creators, much in the same way, can use online “alarms” to alert themselves when newsworthy content gets published on the internet.

Personally, my team and I like using Google Alerts to find blog content inspiration because it’s easy to use, reliable, and absolutely free.

Here’s how it works…

Open your browser and visit www.google.com/alerts. When the page loads, you should see a box that looks like this below.

Because we’ve deemed ourselves as bakers today, I’m going to create an alert for the word “cake.”

When you hit the “Create Alert” button, you’ll notice that a list of different posts about cake will appear underneath the search box.

Above are just two of the many different search results featuring the word “cake” that appear.

All you have to do now is scroll through the list of articles that people have posted and find inspiration for your own content.

Take a look at the first article: Dairy-free honey cake. If I actually owned a bakery, I might want to write a series of blog posts on the different ingredients I used while baking–especially if I create dairy-free or gluten-free dessert options.

And there you have it. In less time than it takes to accidentally burn filo dough in the oven, I have an idea for an entire series of blogs.

Read National News Stories to Uncover Blog Topic Ideas

Remember the days when you’d sit in your grandmother’s kitchen as she made an apple pie (crust and filling) by hand, while your grandfather sat at the kitchen table smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper?

Ahhh, the good old days.

Now, thanks to the world finally realizing how brilliant and talented women are, more ladies are turning in their spatulas for briefcases.

While we love fierce, talented, intelligent women taking the workforce by storm (heck, the majority of our team are brilliant ladies) there is one small downside…we are forced to accept the reality that “homemade” pastries are most commonly now made of canned fillings and frozen crusts.

And don’t even get me started on how we’ve done away with newspapers and how people now consume“news stories” via Facebook phone apps.

Sad…I know. But, I do have some good news.

In order to uncover new blog topic ideas for your business, I’m going to take you on a little journey back in time–no time machine required!

All you have to do is walk out your front doorstep, pick up your paper, and instead of automatically throwing it into the recycle bin, take it inside and read it!

Cover to cover, these papers are still filled with breaking national news stories. Better yet, they are probably slightly more accurate and informative than the posts you scroll through on your Facebook wall.

As you read, find articles that can inspire your blog content. Maybe you’ll come across an article that talks about child hunger in America. That may inspire you to bake 30 extra loaves of bread a week to help feed the homeless in your community.

Helping those in need–fantastic blog content.

Perhaps you come across a story about genetically modified foods, and how they are making people sick.

I don’t know about you, but for me, that stirs of a great idea of writing a blog post about how I source organic ingredients from my local community!

Stories in the newspaper can be a great source of inspiration for blog content. And heck, you may even find yourself drifting back to the good old days sitting around grandma’s table with the scent of her famous apple pie drifting across the kitchen.

Let yourself sit in that atmosphere for a while as you brainstorm new ideas for your blog.

Well, unless you actually start smelling grandma’s pie for real. If that starts to happen, get yourself the hell out of that kitchen because clearly, it’s haunted, and ain’t nobody got time for that.

Write Sequel Content for Your Blog

When you find a recipe for a batch of chocolate chip cookies, you bake them, and they turn out perfect, you can bet you’re going to use that recipe again.

The same principle goes for blog posts.

If you write a piece of content that people enjoy, it’s a good idea to create more similar pieces of content in the form of sequel blogs.

Here’s what I mean by that…

Let’s say you wrote a blog on buttercream frosting vs. cream cheese frosting.

You laid out all the details for both types of frosting…which is creamier, sweeter, holds up to warm temperatures better, has higher levels of sugar, etc.

The objective of the blog: to end the debate about which type of frosting is truly the best to bake with and consume.

People go nuts over this blog because they…

1. a) have their own preference and want to know what frosting you claim as superior b) find it really interesting to learn what goes into making both types of icing.

At the end of this blog it’s determined that, naturally, buttercream is the superior type of frosting.

A neat sequel post might then compare buttercream frosting to a totally different type of icing, let’s say a whipped frosting made with whipping cream and sugar.

Using this method, you could create an entire blog series that gives different information on each type of frosting including recipes, health tips, and design techniques.

At the end of the series, you would eventually crown whichever frosting you deem to be the most superior.

There are so many ways you can create sequel content for your already existing blogs. Take a look through your content to find some inspiration.

Use the Answer the Public Tool to Inspire Blog Ideas

To eat some cake, or to not eat some cake? What a stupid question…

Clearly, there are some questions, like the one above, about cake that are rather silly. That being said, there are also a lot of great questions about cake…questions such as…

What cake can I eat on a diet?

Why does my cake turn out too dry?

And…

How is cake icing made?

These are all great questions I pulled off a handy tool I love using called Answer the Public. Not only does this tool provide great blog topics for me to write about, it’s also incredibly easy to use.

Here’s how it works…

Simply visit https://answerthepublic.com// . You’ll arrive at a website that looks like this below.

All you have to do is type in a word in the search box and pick your country of origin. Because we are bakers today, I once again opted for the word cake.

Once you’ve added your word, hit the “get questions” button.

Instantly you’ll be taken to page full of who, what, when, where, why, etc., questions. These questions should inspire at least a handful of different blog topic ideas.

The coolest part is that this tool pulls up actual questions that people are asking online.

For this reason, it will be easier for people to find your blog content because you are specifically addressing the questions they are typing into search engines.

Use Popular Keyword Searches to Write Blogs That Will Drive Traffic

The phrase “cooking is an art and baking is a science” is so true.

If you don’t use the correct ingredients and exact measurements while baking, you’re going to end up with desserts that are too dry, too moist, don’t rise, are too sweet, too bitter, or any other number of problems.

When you’re writing blog content, you also need to include a key ingredient, something many of us call keywords.

Without SEO optimization, it’s easy for blog traffic to fall flat and for blog creators to feel bitter about the lack of people reading their content.

In order to ensure our blogs stay SEO optimized, I like to use keyword searches to inspire what I write about.

It may sound complicated, especially if you’re not an SEO expert, but I promise it’s easy as pie.

Here’s how it’s done…

Personally, I enjoy using MOZ SEO tools. They are easy to use and a lot of them are completely free, like their keyword explorer tool.

Start by visiting https://moz.com/products/pro/keyword-explorer.

You’ll end up at a website that looks like this.

In the search bar, type in a keyword you want your blog post to focus on. I’m using “pie” for this example.

Then, hit the “try free” button, and you’ll be taken to the page below, which shows some of the most searched key terms related to the word pie.

I noticed that “pie recipes” tends to be a largely searched term.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Nope, that’s not the timer on a batch of scones…it’s the light bulb that just went off in my head that said, “a lot of people are searching for pie recipes, so it’s probably a good idea to write some blog posts on pie recipes!”

I told you, it’s really that easy!

Do a few keyword searches, and in no time, you’ll have a whole list of different blog post ideas that will help drive traffic to your website!

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