How to Find Content Ideas for Your Blog

May 7, 2009 by Shivendu Madhava

It is true — fresh, timely and informative content is a great way to entice visitors to come back and visit your website time and time again.Making a blog is easy, but writting good content is not so easy.After some time many bloggers fail to write good and unique content as they don’t get ideas for the content.So today I want to talk a bit about why fresh content is so important, and where and how to find it.You need to get some ideas from somewhere else. Note that you are not stealing anybody’s content – just learning about the subject and getting ideas for topics that you can write about in your own way.

1. Social Bokmarking Websites - Yes you can use social bookmarking websites to get content ideas as there persons bookmark best content from the web which they like most.This is the best way to find good content ideas for your blog of any niche.Here you will get category wise listing, you can find more appropriate content ideas similar to your nich using tag or keyword search.Below is the list of ten social bookmarking websites:

• del.icio.us
• Digg.com
• Reddit
• Furl
• Clipmarks
• StumbleUpon
• Newsvine
• Mixx
• Diigo
• Propeller

2. Subscribe to top blogs or websites in our niche - This will surely help you to get top and fresh content ideas in every niche as top blogs or websites of evey niche has best content and these never stops.The next thing is that how to find top blogs or websites in any niche, you can find bes blogs and websites in every niche on Technorati.Com

3. Blog Search - Blog search is a great way to find killer content ideas for your blog.Just you have to type your keyword, tag or topic in google blog search and that will show you the top blog posts related to yur niche or topic.Blog search is updated everytime for recent blog posts.Below is the list of few Blog Search websites:

• http://blogsearch.google.com/
• http://www.blogsearchengine.com/
• http://www.blog-search.com/
• http://www.ysearchblog.com/

4. Book Reading - Book reading really helps you to get great and unique content ideas for your blog.All above mentioned sources will give you ideas which are already on the internet but reading books related to your niche will give you ideas which are unique for your readers.You can also read online books there are so many sources on the internet which gives you access to millions of books online.

5. Google Alerts - Log in to Google Alerts using your Google Account and set up your alerts using the list of search terms and competitor names you just made depending on the options you’ve selected, you’ll get emails with links to newly-indexed blog posts, press releases, news and opinion articles and more, all related to your chosen topics.

Note: Yahoo offers a similar service — Yahoo! News Alerts. You’ll need to sign in to your Yahoo! account to set up Alerts there. Select the “keyword news” option, enter your desired words to include and to exclude, decide on your delivery option(s) that’s it.

6. News Search - Not all niches will turn up news items and if a niche is well covered by blogs then they tend to pick up the news items and blog about them.It may be useful for those who blogs on news analysis and latest stuff in any niche.Below is the list of news search websites:

• http://news.google.com/
• http://news.yahoo.com/
• http://www.excite.co.uk/search/news

Try these above tricks to find ideas for your blog content. I’m sure there are many more, I’d love to hear of other places where you go to get content ideas.