8 places to find ideas for your next article

[00:00:00] Hey bloggers, I'm excited to talk to you today about finding keywords, specifically if you want to expand on an existing persona or maybe start a new one. And I'm hoping that the mic is sounding better today than it did in the last episode. Sorry about that. Still a really good episode. So I hope that you'll listen, even though The sound was a little wacky.

[00:00:28] So I got a question recently. Somebody who has a blog was looking at what their personas should be. And after they did some research, they realized that there was a persona that they only had one article for, but it was a really viable persona for them. And they wanted to expand on it. And the question was.

[00:00:50] How do, what do, where do I find keywords? And so I've got eight areas or places you can look to find ideas for those blog posts for a new persona or expanding an existing one. So the first one, which quite frankly, one and two used to be the only thing that I did. But the world is different now with Google but I still want to mention them.

[00:01:16] The first one is to use. a keyword research tool. So you put the topic in, it's sometimes called a topic, it's sometimes called a seed keyword, sometimes called a parent keyword. But you'll put that into your tool and then it will give you a list of things that it's that, that keyword is a parent keyword for.

[00:01:39] It'll give you a whole bunch of different ideas. And you can look through those and see which ones float your boat. And that's a great way to go about it because you know those are things that people are looking for. But it's, you know, unless you are a huge forum or one of the, you know, large 16 dominating publications, usually, most of them owned by Meredith then it's a lot harder for us independent publishers To show up on page one, and I don't think SEO is dead, but it's just so difficult.

[00:02:16] So these other ideas might be things that you can use to write articles that can be found on Pinterest, that you can use in your newsletters, that you can use for syndication that you can use a support post for one of your You know, larger keyword ranking posts. So here's the other ideas.

[00:02:39] The second one actually utilizes a keyword research tool also, but you're reverse engineering a post. So what you might do is do the keyword research yourself on that persona. See what types of articles are coming up. You're probably going to find that most of them are huge. You know, major publication houses.

[00:03:02] But take the URL, put it into your keyword research tool, and see what keywords they're ranking for. Usually they're going to rank for a lot. I mean, we have some posts that rank for, you know, two or three thousand keywords, and, from one post. And what that That does, even if they're not ranking, you're not, you don't care if they're ranking one or ranking 99.

[00:03:25] The idea here is that all of those things that they're ranking for probably are topic related and would be different points of view or different questions people would have about that topic. So that's reverse engineering. Number three is using HubSpot. Now, I don't use HubSpot for my CRM or any of that, but they do have a tool and it's free, and it's called blog topic generator.

[00:03:59] So you, you have to have an account, but of course it's free. You, it asks you what the blog post is that you want to write about, what you know, what the topic is, and then it uses their. own GPT to come up with some ideas. So I put in multi generational traffic, sorry, multi generational travel to kind of see what ideas it came up with.

[00:04:26] And it came up with. The ultimate multi gen travel guide. So that's kind of maybe a pillar post. Mastering the art of planning multi gen travel. Best destinations for multi gen travel. What are the benefits of multi gen travel? Essential tips for multi gen travel. So those are really high level articles if you're writing about multi gen.

[00:04:48] So you might want to narrow it down a little bit. And of course, be specific to your persona, but it's a good way to maybe jog your creativity. The other one I want to mention is Answer the Public. Now here's the weird thing about Answer the Public. It used to be a lot better than it is today. And Neil Patel bought it, and maybe the pro version is better or as good as it used to be, but it's a hundred dollars a month.

[00:05:25] I think you can get the individual one for like 10 a month, but I, I can't imagine that it's worth 10 a month. I'm just going to be honest. So you are able to get a limited amount of information from it. For three searches a day for nothing. So it's, it is worth like, you know, if you're really, especially if you're really hurting for, for angles, it's worth going in there and taking a look.

[00:05:52] Now I put that same multi generational travel idea in here and said, you know, tell me what you got and it. It really didn't give me very much. It just kept saying, you need to go to pro in order to get more information. But at the very bottom, it did say the benefits of multi gen travel. What are the trends?

[00:06:16] What are some ideas? And what does it mean? What does multi generational travel mean? And strangely I had multi generational space travel. So I don't know if you're doing that, let me know, because I want to hear all about it. So that's answer the public. I'm not saying don't use it, but it's probably only on my list if I'm hurting for other ideas.

[00:06:37] Now the one that I really like is Google Trends. I know, none of us like Google right now. But if you go to trends. google. com, then you can see some of the, like, they'll usually have, like, what were, if this is 2024, they'll have, what were the, Most search terms of 2023, and they'll put them in different categories, but then you, you can go to explore.

[00:07:05] And so I was just looking for myself earlier today, and I just put in Atlanta and I can see the ones, the, the kind of keywords that are trending for Atlanta, both those that are using the exact topic or related topics. And if I want to, I can filter so I can see all the categories or I can filter by category.

[00:07:27] So just for kicks, I filtered on food and drink and I see Woody's Cheese Steaks is this really amazing cheesesteak place that is trending. Searches for black owned businesses are up 850%. So that's crazy. Awesome. And then They're under related queries, there was, this one killed me, this search is up four thousand percent, but it's called 48 Oysters Atlanta, and I'm like, what?

[00:07:57] That's not the name of a restaurant. So what is that? So I went and looked it up and it's this TikTok video that went viral about this lady who, this guy kept asking her out and finally she relented. She didn't really want to go out with them, but she was just like, I'm just going to go. And so she went to this place that has really good oysters.

[00:08:18] And she ordered 48 oysters as an appetizer. I had to watch the TikTok video. She actually, that was her appetizer. She ended up ordering more. But the crazy thing was, is that the guy said he had to go to the restroom and then he bailed on her. So she, she had to buy it all, which I don't know. I don't know how you feel about that.

[00:08:38] I kind of feel like that was a little tacky. But what was crazy is that TikTok video went viral and then tons of places picked up that story. Even Rolling Stone did an article on that story. So if if I wanted to piggyback on that, I could write a like a, a story about that, link out to the TikTok video, and then I can say like, if you're looking for where to have, you know, 48 oysters, here are the best oyster restaurants in Atlanta. So you're kind of you could, obviously I could make it an article about the TikTok video, but to be more in line with the personas and the type of content we have, I would use this trending query in order to.

[00:09:22] You know, share places in Atlanta where you can get oysters. So that's just cool kind of, you know, tool. I, I really like this tool a lot. If I filter, I have it up right now while I'm talking to you. So I could filter on travel. And interestingly, one of the cool things is that the Atlanta Zoo pandas, the search for that is.

[00:09:48] up 450 percent over normal. So that makes me go, okay, well, like, why is that happening? That there's, there wasn't a new baby panda born or anything. And then Atlanta Safari Park is up 300%. So listen to this friends. There is no Atlanta Safari Park, but there is a new Safari Park coming to I don't know that it's considered the Metro.

[00:10:10] It's a little bit outside the Metro. It's Madison, which is, if you're familiar with Georgia, it's more close to Athens and it's going to be fantastic. I mean, they, they've started booking and everything, but what's interesting is that which I wouldn't have known if I was just looking at it.

[00:10:26] searching for the Madison Safari Park is that people are associating it with Atlanta, not Madison. So I can write about the Atlanta Safari Park and then set people's expectations within the article. So I really like the way that that that this tool gives you an opportunity to look at things in a new and, and different kind of way.

[00:10:54] And then if I'm just going to go to the all categories, and so these are going to be really broad things, but I can see that there's this thing called a breakout. So the Balloon Museum in Atlanta Is is something that is trending like in a major major way. So, for example the Atlanta United, the soccer team their inter Miami versus Atlanta United search was up a lot.

[00:11:24] Over 3, 700%, but the Bloom Museum was well over that, so that's why they call it a breakout, so that's something really useful to know, especially if you've got an affiliate for something like that. So don't skip the all section either, and you might even look through all the sections even if they're not necessarily in your topic or your area of expertise because there might be something going on in the world that would coincide with what you write about, like, for example, that oysters thing.

[00:12:01] And then, by the way, if you focus on social media, these are fantastic things to put in there. to do your social media posts on because they are so timely. So I'm looking at, you know, what's going on in the past 12 months, but I can also look and see, okay, well, what's trending in the last day. And the thing that's trending in the last day, let's see, I'm doing this real time folks is the American Hotel in Atlanta and Shake Shack opening up at the Atlanta restaurants.

[00:12:37] I'm sorry, at the Atlanta airport. So those are things that might be really good for my social media account because that's what's happening right now that people are interested in. So, you know, go take a look at trends. google. com. I really, really love that. The other thing you can do is look at Pinterest.

[00:12:56] Now, when you do a search in Pinterest usually it does two things that there's two areas you can look at. It's much like Google. When you start typing in the search box, then a list of things come down. So look at all of those before you finish typing the whole thing. And then sometimes when you do a search, then right under the search bar, you can see additional suggested keywords.

[00:13:22] or categories that coincide with the keyword that you typed in the search bar. That can give you special ideas. And then what I also like is that in the search bar, the drop down as you're typing doesn't just include other keywords, but it Also includes other accounts and other boards that relate to that term.

[00:13:45] So for example, what I did, the multi generational thing that we just talked about earlier, multi generational travel, and there was this suggestion for this company called elite travel journeys. I don't know if she's a blogger. I don't know anything about this person, but She had a board for multi generational family travel and one of her articles was ensuring everyone's interests are met on family vacations.

[00:14:12] So or time travel time management for scattered families. So, I'm not, I'm, if I'm going to write that, I'm probably not going to open up her article and look at it. I don't want to steal her content, but it does bring up the idea of like, Oh, how do you serve everybody if you're taking a trip with people who are, you know, everywhere from two months old to 80 years old?

[00:14:38] And so that might be an angle that I want to tackle from my blog. And I would, of course, give it its own unique title and my own unique perspective on doing that. But I love the idea of just looking through some of these pins in order to get ideas about where I might want to write an article.

[00:15:00] The next one, I know you're not gonna like it, I hate it too, but the truth is that Quora and Reddit are really good places to go for ideas. Now I'm not suggesting that you do a Google search and then you look at all the answers on page one that they give you from Reddit, which is annoying as heck but I am suggesting that you go and look for a subreddit.

[00:15:22] That aligns with your topic and maybe you visit it once every week or once every other week and Look at the questions that people are asking and to take note of those that you could answer With a blog post or maybe there's a group of them that you can answer. So it may be In this case, I could say You know, the top 15 questions people are asking about multi generational travel and I can get those questions from what people are asking.

[00:15:54] In, I don't know if there is one, but in the multi gen travel subreddit. So, yeah, I know. Reddit's annoying now, but it, A, it's not Reddit's fault necessarily. It's Google's. But B, I would have said this even before Googlegate it's still a good tool to go out there and see what people, real people, are, are, are talking about, asking about what their perspective is, that sort of thing.

[00:16:21] And then finally, Chad, or ChadGPT, if you're new to me, you know I call him Chad. So what I typed in to Chad is, I said, My blog is about travel in the southeast, mainly for people who live in the Atlanta metro. I write about day trips, weekend getaways, events in the city. And if you've got 4. 0, like I do, then you can say, like, here's my blog.

[00:16:45] And so that it can actually go out and read it. And then I said give me 10 new blog post ideas for multi generational travel. And it did a pretty good job. I mean, some of them are, I'm like, eh, but it gave me a lot of good ideas. So one of them was, savannah's historical adventures for multi gen family travel.

[00:17:04] How to explore the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway with, with with family, but it suggests that you're doing it with all ages. One of them was the best multi generational festivals in the Southeast. Another one was a guide to multi generational dining in Atlanta. So, you know, maybe these work and maybe they don't, but they, The point is here and everywhere you're looking, really, is it might not be the exact topic that you're looking for or the exact article idea you're going for, but it's going to get your creative juices flowing.

[00:17:39] I mean, it could be that it is a great article idea like the, like the oysters one but it could also be that it just can't be. about something about your topic in a new, fresh, different kind of way. And don't forget to go back and forth with Chad. I, I you know, don't take what they give you at face value.

[00:17:57] First of all, don't, please don't use it to write your content. Please don't use it to outline your content and please don't trust anything that it says. But I really do like it for idea generation and you might, you know, so I might come back and say you To this answer, not all, some of these things that gave me were for families and not multi gen, so I might say to it like look, you didn't give me stuff for multi gen families, you gave me some stuff for families, which could be just, you know, two dads and one kid so give, I really want more and, you know, I can say I need, if, if I have a persona, I could say Especially for the parent who's planning the adventure or specifically for a Disney trip or a beach trip or a plane trip or something like that.

[00:18:45] So don't forget to banter back and forth with Chad because likely you're not going to get the best answer at the end. First, it's going to come with some arguing with him and it's a really great thing to argue with because they, they don't really talk back and they don't get mad at you while you're arguing, even if you use an ugly voice.

[00:19:06] Okay, so that's eight ideas for finding keyword or keywords or idea article ideas to add to your personas or to create a brand new persona that's right for your blog.