Where to find your next blog idea in five minutes

Content is king. But planning, executing and analysing content is hard work.

Before you even think about starting to write a blog, there’s plenty of work that needs to be done. The worst thing you can do is just write a blog for the sake of writing a blog.

What is the purpose of the blog? Who is it going to help? What problem is it going to help solve? What search term are people going to use to find the blog? Are there any similar blogs already on the internet?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way you could find out the questions people are asking before they land on your website?

One place to start is speaking to your sales team and find out what your prospects are asking them. At the end of the day, if someone is asking your sales team the question, chances are there are plenty of people asking the same thing. But this also throws up another issue – what are the questions that potential customers have before they speak to your sales team? It’s a well-known fact that over 80% of buyers do online research before buying a product, and one key place of research for potential buyers in 2018 are online forums.

Online forums relevant to your industry, service and/or product are amazing places to find content ideas. In this blog, we’ll show you how to use Reddit, the largest online forum out there, to steal content ideas, and complete your content plan for 2018.

How to use Reddit to find your next content idea

First of all, go and view https://www.reddit.com/ - and the main message here is don’t be daunted! There’s quite a few things going on, from logins, to various different tabs and areas to get distracted. But first things first, have a think about what you want to search.

For this example, let’s assume that you’re an accounting software company looking to increase and improve on your content marketing efforts. On the right hand side of Reddit, you’ll see a search box, as shown by the red box and arrow below:

Start by typing in words and terms associated with your company. For this example, we searched the term ‘accounting software’ into the search results. You’ll see from the box below that Reddit automatically filters your search by ‘relevance’, which is great – however it also shows you the most relevant posts ‘ever’.

I’d suggest starting off your search looking at the posts within the last week, or month, as this gives the best possible chance that you find topics and posts that are up to date and relevant with current market trends.

You can change this setting as shown below:

Once you’ve edited this filter and changed the search time to either the last 24 hours, week or month, what you’ll see is a list of questions that people have been asking – you can click onto each of these to see responses and other comments that people have made. But as I go back to the previous statement, if people are using this forum to ask the questions, chances are that your potential customers and audience have similar questions that need answering.

So, how do I decide what to write based on the results?

Let’s take a look at the search results with the example provided. Below are four of the questions that people were asking on Reddit, and suggested some potential content ideas based off those questions in place:

1. "So, what accounting software are you using to track your business expenses? QuickBooks or....?"

The above person is looking for recommendations on accounting software, but specifically to tracking your business expenses. So how about creating a piece of content, perhaps a blog with images, or even better a video tutorial looking specifically at how you can easily track expenses via your accounting software?

For example:

• Your 2-minute demo of tracking business expenses via {insert business name}
• Tracking business expenses shouldn’t be hard – here’s how easy it can be! 

2. “What kind of Accounting software do I need exactly?”

The above question, similar to number one, is looking for the best accounting software in the market for their needs. As a business, you know who your main customers are, be it startup, SME or Enterprise businesses. Depending on who you are looking to target, you could create a great comparison and/or check list.

For example:

• What accountancy software is right for your business? We compare the top five in the market…
• 10 ways {insert business name} is perfect for startups in 2018 

3. “Finally understand my boss's complaints about our accounting software… (Quickbooks)”

This question is fantastic because it is directed specifically towards a relevant decision maker in an organisation. Any content directed towards specific seniority or job titles work well, as you can write that piece speaking specifically for them.

For example:

• A CEO’s guide to the perfect accounting software
• 10 ways to convince your boss to change accounting software

4. “Is there an easy accounting software to do incorporated business taxes?”

Lastly, this question is also great as it picks up on specific product features and identifies a pain point that someone might be facing in their job. This is a good opportunity to explain an issue or a problem incredibly clearly – imagine you’re describing the situation to a 14 year old, and you’ll educate an audience excellently.

For example:

• The complete guide to incorporating your business taxes into your accounting software
• Business Taxes in 2018 – how your accounting software can act as a finance employee

Overall, you’ll see above how a quick 5-minute search on Reddit has turned into eight blog topics. That didn’t take long to find, think and note down some potential pain points that people are feeling – which are based off actual questions that real people are asking – no guess work involved.