10 techniques for finding a subject for your blog

To make your blog successful, besides writing well, you will need to address issues that are relevant to your audience and help them solve problems. The equation is simple: The more value you offer your visitor, the more likely they are to engage with your content and recommend you to other people.

At this point, you are probably asking yourself, “But how will I find the topics that interest my visitors the most?”

With the development of the internet and its tools, it has become increasingly easier to find out what kind of information users are seeking when they come to your page and from that become more assertive in your production of content.

Check out our list of 10 strategies to find the most relevant subject for your blog!  

1.Use the Google/YouTube search bar

When you start typing in search bars of search engines such as Google and YouTube, the tool will complete the phrase with users’ most searched terms, as shown in the example below.

Google search bar

In the case of Google, these word suggestions also appear at the bottom of the results page in the related searches field.

These terms are already a good starting point for your text production, but if you want to go further in your analysis, study the volume of searches in Google Keyword Planner and use tools like Moz or SemRush to find the degree of ranking difficulty for that term. This way you identify if you have enough resources to compete for that keyword.

It should be noted that the volume of searches should not be the only factor to be considered when writing content. More important than that, is whether the term is relevant to your business. For example, a blogger who talks about traveling isn’t the best person to talk about makeup, since there are other bloggers who specialize in this subject.

2.Visit Google Trends

Google Trends lists the most popular topics at the moment. The tool delivers a chart with a volume of searches during the period determined by you, countries where that subject was searched the most, in addition to the main related terms.

You can also filter the results by category (“arts and entertainment”, for example) or by country, to get even more specific results.

This information is important because if the volume of searches is growing, it means that a lot of people are searching the subject, meaning it is worth investing time creating unpublished content about it.  

To exemplify, we have searched the volume of searches for “pastry” over the last three months in the US.  

Google Trends

An important tip when searching is to search for longer periods of time (over 90 days), because that way you avoid writing about a subject that was sought after a lot during the previous week, but that will have no relevance within a month.

Prefer perennial content, which can continue to generate value for your readers, regardless of how much time has lapsed.

3. Analyze your blog’s performance

If you’ve had a blog for a while, analyzing page performance will help you discover the most accessed content and visitor behavior.

But why is this important? Knowing the content that is accessed the most, you can produce more materials focused on the subject and answer other questions from your users.  

There are two fundamental tools for this task; one of them is Google Analytics. In order to access Analytics, you must have a Google account, since all services are linked. (See the step-by-step process for setting up Analytics)

In the left menu, click Behavior> Content> All Pages. With this command, you’ll see the most accessed posts in your blog, the average time spent on the page and the bounce rate.    

The Google Search Console shows which words users have searched to find your blog. To find out what they are, select Search traffic> Search Analytics> Queries and that’s it: the tool delivers a list of the terms that bring most traffic to your site and the number of hits coming from each.

Also in the Search Console, in the Pages menu, you can find out which of your posts are ranked on Google and for which terms. This information is critical to measure the results of your SEO strategies.

4. Search in Facebook groups

Most people who are online also use the internet to socialize. As a result, groups in social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook have become places to share experiences, ask questions and express opinions about products and services.

To know the topics that users are commenting on, what their problems and questions are, it is important to be part of these discussion groups and, whenever possible, interact with people.

Many bloggers/entrepreneurs confuse participating groups with promoting themselves all the time and this is exactly what you should avoid.

Remember that you are there as a mere spectator, to discover the topics that interest your audience the most.  This means that you should not share links, and when you do so, you need to deliver value to the people who are participating in the discussion.

5. Analyze your competition

Monitoring your competition’s websites is good for two reasons:

• You can make a comparative analysis with your blog: quality of texts, type of language used, images, etc.
•  It is useful for identifying issues that are being neglected by your market and that may be interesting for your audience.

It is important that you understand that working as a blogger is much more about identifying problems and proposing solutions than creating something unheard of and never seen before. In this case, knowing what your competitors are doing is critical to proposing new approaches and creating original content, even if you are talking about a similar subject.

6. Consult Facebook Insights

Facebook Audience Insights is an analytical tool available to any entrepreneur who owns a Facebook page. Through it, you can obtain demographic and behavioral data from your followers, which can be useful for discovering the topics that matter most to those profiles.

7. Search foreign blogs on the subject

When writing, the more references you have, the better. So we suggest that, in addition to national competitors, you search for foreign blogs since they can give you ideas of what a subject to address, including with global data.

But you have to be careful. The audiences to which these blogs speak to are very different, so a subject that attracts a lot of attention in other countries might not have the same impact here. Once you’ve identified possible topics, you’ll need to search the volume for that keyword in your region of origin, as explained in the first topic of the text.

Needless to say, the content should be 100% original, since plagiarism is penalized and can seriously damage your credibility, okay?

8. Renew outdated content on the subject for your blog

For good content, you don’t always have to write texts from scratch. You can also renew old posts to add more relevant and current information. This is a good way to ensure that your material continues to deliver value to your audience, even years after publication.

But “re-using” content doesn’t mean you’ll have less work. First of all, you will need to find out which posts are attracting traffic, but are not yet in the top rankings of the searches (consider the second results page).

Then research the subject to find out if it has gone through any relevant changes since the post was published. It is also interesting to look at your competition’s posts to find new approaches to your text.

Finally, we have the step of rewriting the text. Since you are already more accustomed to the writing process, it is possible that this is the easiest part.

Don’t forget to follow the accesses after the update, to know if the changes have brought return in terms of traffic.

9. Conduct opinion polls

The simplest way to find out what people want is by asking them, and it’s no different in the case of a blog!

Contact your readers by email and ask them what kind of content they would like to read about on your page. This will not only help you find a subject for your blog, but it’s a way of nurturing your relationship with your base.  

There are a number of tools available that allow you to conduct free opinion polls, such as Google Forms. In other words, you don’t have to spend money to get to know your audience better, and in exchange for people’s participation in the poll, you can offer more assertive content.  

10. Create an editorial calendar

The last technique is not exactly finding a new subject for your blog, but rather a way to keep your content production organized.

The editorial calendar is a timeline of all of your business’ marketing strategies. You can include social media posts, blog posts, newsletters and all content that is essential to your brand.

With a predefined calendar, you have a macro view of your strategies and you can organize your time according to each demand and have more time to measure the results.

How to create an editorial calendar in 3 steps

1. Establish your goals

There are several goals to achieve with your blog, how to become an authority on a subject, increase traffic to your page, increase the conversion of texts, etc.

2. Define the best tool

Once you have chosen your goal, you must define the best tool for creating and managing the editorial calendar. Some options are: Google Calendar, Asana and Trello. To avoid deadline confusion, it is important that you group the tasks according to your channels: blog, social media or email marketing, and rank them in order of importance.

Thus, you can know which posts are priorities and which posts can be rescheduled.  Remembering that the calendar is merely a document to guide your content production, so don’t worry if you have to edit it to suit your audience’s demands.

3. Determine the frequency

The last step is to set the ideal posting frequency. This calculation should take into account the importance of demand and the number of tasks you can perform.

>> Check out more information about editorial calendar

In short: Whichever technique you choose, the most important thing is to place your audience’s interests first and create original content. Now, you already know how to choose a subject and organize your content production, check out our post containing 4 ideas on how to make money with a blog.