How to Use Social Media to Discover Blog Topics Your Audience will Love

By April 27, 2016 Content Marketing

When you start your blog, you are literally overflowing with ideas. You are on a creative high and everything is good in the world.

Fast forward, a few months or years in some special cases, and you feel your creative mojo deserting you. You are in a strange place where you need to keep your blog audience entertained and informed, but you literally have nothing left to say.

Whether you are a blogger or an influencer, it is natural to have this problem once in a while. However, thanks to social media, we can remedy the situation quickly before it turns into a perpetual writer’s block.

In this article, you will find some actionable tips and examples of how you can derive ideas from a few great social media platforms. So let’s not waste time on hors d’oeuvre and jump straight to the main course.

Reddit

I love Reddit.

I have been pining to tell this to all those who would care to listen. My love for Reddit goes far beyond other regular redditors, far beyond upvoting, downvoting and commenting.

I love Reddit because it gives me food for thought, ideas for my next topic and authority to speak on any topic in all kinds of parties.
There was this time when I had to blog about startups; I headed over to Reddit for inspiration. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say I walked into a goldmine.

Only a book’s title inspired me to research about budget marketing ideas for self-funded startups and blog about them. The report on Estonia inspired me to find about startup hubs all around the world and make a detailed comparison for the same.

Reddit report on Estonia

This biotech startup’s idea drove me to think of all the possibilities wherein companies can help solve world problems. It is another matter if actually sit down to blog about it.

Reddit report on biotech startup

Reddit is the first place where I start and would recommend that even you start when you are running out of ideas. It is a hub for great conversations and you will never run out of ideas. You can even narrow down results and look for a subreddit to get niche ideas for your blog.

Reddit blog results

Twitter

Apart from the Trends list on the left-hand side, it is always a good idea to keep an eye on tweets from your industry peers. As I scroll down my Twitter feed, I come across various blogs, which fill me with ideas for my next topic.Juntae DeLane Tweet about millennials expections with chart

Now every single brand mentioned in the survey, from Apple to Victoria’s Secret through to the numbers in the survey can make for awesome blog posts. I mean people just gobble up everything about Apple and Steve Jobs and who doesn’t like to know more about Victoria’s Secret?
Thus, when it comes to getting up-to-minute ideas, Twitter is usually my preferred choice.

Quora

I have a love-hate relation with Quora; on one hand, I have seen some ridiculous and ignorant Q&As, and on the other, I have seen some incredible discussions, so I am not going to be a judge here.

A lot of times when I Google certain questions, I get results from Quora. It’s only then I turn to Quora. For example, when I was Googling about employee perks and Mark Zuckerburg’s paternity leave, I clicked on Quora and was directed to these discussions on Quora and they gave me some really insightful, authentic and authoritative material for my next blog.

Quora results from employee perks and paternity leave

Medium

Alright, so Medium. This is a new kid on the block (okay, not that new, but certainly newer than the other platforms discussed here) that everyone is talking about and so, in the capacity of a blogger, I decided to check it out. I was able to get an idea or two but I feel the kid is too young to decide what it’s going to grow up to be.

Instead of Trends, Medium has Featured Tags, which, according to the people at Medium, “are currently trending topics on Medium that have been promoted by Medium staff to the front page for broader exposure and discussion.”

Search results on Medium

While topical, none of these Featured Tags lit up any bulbs in my head. So I decided to do some searching on my own.

Search results on Medium

The results, as I had imagined, were not satisfactory either. However, a few months into Medium I saw some good topics showing up in my feed as Top Stories. It took Medium some time, but it finally nailed what kind of information I wanted to see in my feed.

Top Stories: Results from Medium

Over to You

So these are the social media platforms which I have been using lately to create blogs that my audience simply laps up. Ideas and inspirations are everywhere, you just need to tweak them according to your brand and budget and you are sorted.

I am sure you too will stumble upon some awesome ideas no matter which industry or what topics you are looking for. Just get the basics about these platforms right and use them intelligently to get awesome ideas and insights on blog topics.

 

Source: Business

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