Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com.
When you commit to creating content on an ongoing basis, one of the biggest challenges you will face on a week-to-week basis is figuring out what to write about. You may feel like you have covered all of the important aspects of your niche after writing for several months. You may not be sure what your audience wants to read about or just may not be inspired to write on any particular subject. Fortunately, choosing content topics does not have to be an excruciating process. Here are some strategies that will help you quickly identify topics to write about:
- Ask Your Audience – Send a message to your email list asking your audience what they want to learn about relating to your niche. If you hear a suggestion more than once, you should probably create a piece of content around the idea that was suggested. For every one person that suggests a topic for you to write about, there are probably 10 or 100 more that want to learn about the same topic but didn’t email you. If you don’t have an email list yet, you can use the same strategy using your social media accounts.
- Cover the Basics – Every niche has a list of basic topics that everyone who is interested in that niche needs to learn about. Make a list of 10 to 20 topics that when read together will provide a basic level of understanding to anyone that is first learning about your niche. You can also combine theses posts together into a PDF document and use it as a lead magnet to collect email addresses.
- Check What Questions People Are Asking on Quora – Quora (www.quora.com) is community-driven questions-and-answers website where anyone can ask a question to other Quora members. Quora is particularly useful for content creation because you can look at the questions people are asking related to your niche. If you see common themes that are posted in the questions, you can write an article that answers those questions. You can also put an abbreviated version of your answer as a response to the relevant questions on Quora and provide a link back to your article as a way of generating traffic for your website.
- Review What Your Competitors Are Writing About – Review the content created by other people in your niche. Are there any topics that they are covering that you have not yet covered yet? You should never copy a competitor’s articles point-by-point, but you can use the subjects that others in your niche write about for inspiration on content that you create. Have any of your competitors written anything that you disagree with that you can create a response to? You might be able to attract the attention of your competitor’s audience if you provide a counterpoint to their ideas.
- Look for Books in Your Niche on Amazon – There are more than 2 million e-books published on Amazon, so there’s a pretty good chance there is at least one book written about your niche. Download some of the best-selling books in your niche. Review the table of contents for each book and you may find a subject that you want to write about on your website.
- Review Forums and Community Sites in Your Niche – If there any public discussion forums or community-driven websites in your niche, review them thoroughly. Look for topics that come up repeatedly as they are likely of interest to many readers in your niche. Also look for problems that your industry or niche faces and see if you can create content to address those problems. Make sure to bookmark any discussion forums in your niche and check back regularly to see what new content users are posting.
- Look for Industry Events and Conferences – If there are any big conferences or events for your niche, review the agenda and speaker topics for the event. If you are able to attend the event or watch it online, a summary of some of the speakers’ talks may make for compelling content on your website. If you aren’t able to participate in the event, the topics presented on may inspire you to create your own content on that same topic.
- Talk to People in Your Niche – If all else fails, you can always find people that are interested in your niche and talk to them directly. You can ask them what they want to learn about. You can ask them what problems they face relating to your niche. You can ask them what resources they have already found valuable. You can ask them what they would like to accomplish relating to your niche. Repeat this process as many times as you can and look for common themes in the feedback you receive, which will help you determine what topics are interesting to your audience as a whole.