Using Social Media to Generate Blog Ideas
There are thousands upon thousands of blog owners online. As such, it can often be quite difficult for any one blog owner to stand out from their competitors. But if you want to get your head above the rest, you should begin by looking at your content.
The Importance of Unique Content
Fresh content will set you apart from your competition in two important ways. Firstly, it will interest and entertain your readers. Secondly, it will help to identify you as a thought leader in a particular field. Both of these things will drive traffic to your blog and ensure that your audience comes back for more.
Generating content ideas, however, can be tricky. This goes double if you are trying to generate unique ideas. So it’s important to utilise the resources you have on hand to help you come up with great topics for your blog. And of all the available online resources, social media is perhaps the best. So here are some ideas for how to generate content by using the two biggest social networks around.
Generating Content from Facebook
Facebook can be a great place to start collecting unique ideas for your blog. Millions of conversations happen every day on Facebook, and any number of these could contain interesting ideas that you could expand upon.
The key here is expansion. It’s no use to write a blog post that is simply about what people are saying on Facebook. The trick is to uncover why they are saying it, to whom, and why it is important. If the subject concerns a brand or current news story, even better. Tools such as Bottlenose can help us to widen our Facebook search, to determine the most popular conversations at any one time. And if you’re feeling stuck, you could even ask your Facebook friends to suggest ideas of their own.
Twitter Trends and Brands
Twitter trends can be of enormous value for bloggers, especially if the trend at hand is controversial. Bloggers who can spot trends before they happen are the best placed to capitalise upon them, by blogging about them in real time as the trend takes hold, then tweeting links back to the blog post which also include the trend key phrase or hashtag.
Twitter, like Facebook, is also a great place where a blogger can interact with brands. Upcoming products, giveaways or brand news can all be utilised by social media-savvy bloggers to generate content that will be of interest, not only to their own following, but to the brand’s following as well.
Consistency vs. Quality
Whilst it’s important to have consistent blog content, it’s also important that your blog posts be consistent. Unless you blog regularly, visitors won’t know when to check your site for new content. Ultimately, this will cause a decrease in your readership and less flow to your website, if you are also a web owner.
Posting consistent content which is also high in quality is a daunting challenge for even the most experienced of blog owners. It can often feel like a full time job simply to stay on top of your content production. But there are resources which make this task much easier. Using a content calendar, for example, will help you to plan content well in advance of its publish date, and will also provide a space in which you can collect and organize creative ideas as they come to you.
Guest Post
Lisa Angelettie
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Lisa,
I find all of your articles useful. Blogging is a part of my real estate business so I will be putting your practical tips to use immediately. Keep those emails coming. Thanks!
Thank you so much for reading Maurice. Much success with your biz this year!
Ths is definitely a heads up…it’s just like getting ideas of what to write on via Google Trend….Lovely concept, and to think of it this is really an eye opener.
Why? because you can easily read feeds from your social account and check what people are actually posting about and write a captivating blog about it…that will sell on social media sites. eg if you want to write to appeal to social facebook users then go their and check what is fed on your wall by your friends and groups, you will definitely come up with some stunning topics to write about.
Like I said I make use of Google Trend to write my topics and tweak the keywords for search engine visibility without sacrificing content quality for readers as well.
Thanks for this hint angele! really it is an eye opener (something thst should have crossed my mind but didn’t)
Thanks for the post! I agree with using consumer interactions as a platform for blog post ideas. It almost guarantees that you will be writing a blog that your readers will want to read.