3 Innovative New Tools to Discover Promising Blog Topics by @mike_allton

What will your next blog post be about?

Do you know what your audience is actually interested in?

Addressing these questions is what sets the successful blogger apart. She’s done her homework and understands who her audience is and what they want to learn about. She’s researched the niche and identified the specific topics and questions that need to be covered in blog articles, and she has mapped out a publishing calendar for herself.

Sadly, that’s not me.

I tend to blog about whatever comes to mind. Whatever topics I think my audience might be interested in.

Sometimes that works really well, particularly if I’m capturing a timely bit of news and sharing that with my audience.

Other times, not so much.

And while I’ve delivered hits more often than misses, those misses still bug me. I think about the articles I spent time drafting, polishing and publishing, yet which received no attention, and wonder what I might have accomplished had I used that time differently.

Had I written about something else entirely.

As it just so happens, there are three new tools that have just come out that strive to help bloggers like me and you avoid those kinds of issues. These tools can help us be more like that successful blogger who has her stuff together.

These tools give us deep insights into the topics and questions that our target audience is interested in today, which means now, almost miraculously, we no longer have to guess whether anyone else will be interested in a topic before we write about it!

The tools are actually features of existing tools you may already be familiar with:

  • BuzzSumo
  • SEMrush
  • Scoop.it

Question Analyzer by BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo offers a tremendously valuable resource for understanding what pieces of content are popular and why. With the Question Analyzer tool, the attention is turned toward surfacing questions that are being asked regarding particular topics. These questions often represent topics that we should be answering ourselves within our own content.

Punch in any of your main topics and watch as Question Analyzer compares your query against Quora, Reddit, forums and more.

An initial keyword query.

As you can see, a simple keyword search returned over 43,000 questions sorted into 362 topics. Those topics are presented visually in a word cloud, and then sequentially below.

In this example, the topic “Bloggers” returned the most results (1278 questions), followed by WordPress and Blog Post. You can click on the topic in the word cloud to get to that topic’s section on the page, or just scroll down.

As you review the various topics and corresponding questions, you can watch for good questions to answer, as well as those that come up repeatedly.

A sample of questions for a particular topic.

For instance, the “blogging platform” topic is a popular one with 368 questions. The question of “What blogging platform should I use?” is one that would make sense to answer in an article. And four of the top six questions were all variations on a theme.

There’s a magnifying glass to the right which will show you all of the questions associated with that topic. And of course each question can be clicked to open that particular question in a new window so you can see if it was answered, and how.

Simply take note of the questions you’re interested in writing about and start filling up your content calendar.

Question Analyzer is included with the Pro plan and up with Buzzsumo, which starts at $179/month. There is a 14-day free trial you can take advantage of to give the tool a test drive!

Topic Research by SEMrush

Another tool that you can use to surface writing topics is Topic Research by SEMrush. This tool has just come out of alpha and is currently in beta, so this is an exclusive first-look.

Unlike Buzzsumo’s approach, SEMrush utilizes the entire web, focusing on quality pieces of content. In fact, Maria Belkina, SEMrush Product Owner for Topic Research, considers their algorithm her favorite aspect of the tool.

“Our algorithm for finding relevant subtopics, that, we believe, most qualitatively on the market removes irrelevant, duplicated and trash subtopics. We spent a lot of time on refining it, went through three iterations of its modification, and are going to further improve it.”

Getting started is easy. Again, just type in a topic you want to research and then wait for the results.

Enter your target keyword to get content ideas.

After a few moments, Topic Research will present you with a number of subtopics arranged as cards, sorted by volume.

See all of the recommended subtopics and top articles at a glance.

You can also prioritize by Difficulty or Volume/Difficulty, as well as take advantage of the fact that the tool is in beta and ask for other options.

When you click on a subtopic, the card expands to reveal the top ten headlines, five relevant questions, and a number of related searches to help you refine your results if you aren’t quite there yet.

When I was getting ready to publish a recent article on starting a blog, I actually used this tool to help me narrow down my title.

Expanded topic card.

It seemed like “How To Start A Blog” was a popular query and topic, so that’s what I went with.

One of the features I particularly appreciated was that, once you enlarge a particular topic, that topic remains expanded even as you change the prioritization and sort.

To the right of every headline is an Add To Favorites button so you can collect specific ideas and resources for future reference.

Topic Research is included in the Pro plan and up, starting at $99.95/month.

Hawkeye by Scoop.it

That brings us to our third and final tool, Hawkeye by Scoop.it.

Hawkeye is currently in a private invitation-only Beta, so let them know if you would be interested in giving the tool a test run. While it’s currently set up to be a stand-alone product, Guillaume Decugis, CEO of Scoop.it, believes that there will one day be package options with full integration.

When we spoke, Guillaume went on to describe his vision for Hawkeye:

“Our goal with Hawkeye is to provide data and actionable insights that make content marketing more predictable. Nobody creates content in a vaccum: our content will always struggle for attention with many other pieces. The problem is that it’s really hard to look at what each competing website or influencer does on a a number of topics – let alone measure it. There’s just too much to do. By leveraging artificial intelligence, Hawkeye monitors, analyzes and understands content from all over the web to help marketers create better content and measure its impact.”

One interesting difference between the various tools is their source of data. While Buzzsumo scans forums and Q&A sites, SEMrush tends to index the web at large. Hawkeye’s approach is to utilize the tremendous volume of content that Scoop.it users are clipping daily as a starting point for determining worthwhile content.

All of that content is indexed and analyzed so that reports can be generated on whatever query you want to run.

It starts as easily as the others; just enter an initial keyword:

Analyze Topics using Hawkeye by Scoop.it.

I’m still interested in how the “How To Start A Blog” topic looks, and am particularly keen to find ancillary articles to write within the topic, so I punched that in.

A deep analysis of the best content within the target keyword.

I know there’s a lot there so I’ll break it down.

First, the default query looks within article Titles for your keyword phrase, but you can adjust the filters to adhere to whatever requirements you have.

  • You can search within Title, Content, Author or Domain
  • You can select Contains, Contains Exactly, or Does Not Contain
  • You can additional keywords via OR
  • You can add another filter as an AND statement
  • You can select Past Week, Month, Year or All Time
  • You can select a different language
  • You can sort by relevance, popularity or freshness

Using the various options and boolean operators, it’s possible to construct very complex and exacting queries. And of course you can save them at any time.

Second, there’s a scatter chart that indicates the relationship between Word Count and Shares for the content fitting your query. As you can see in my example, there was one outlier blog post that achieved 144k shares and skewed the report. Mousing over the dot reveals that post’s information.

Mouseover data points to reveal details.

I could check out that post and see if it really warranted that level of social activity, or if there was something else going on. And if I wanted to, I could add a filter to my query to exclude that domain and bring the overall graph back in line.

Using boolean logic and constructed queries, data can be included or excluded as needed.

There are still a couple of outliers I might exclude if I was trying to gain some insights about the average articles in this topic, but I can still see that most of the articles are under 3000 words and tended to accrue under a thousand shares each. I can also see that, for this topic at least, word count does not seem to have an impact on social shares.

Clicking on the gear icon for this chart allows you to change the data from Word Count to Readability or Image Count or Quality Score. Reviewing each will help you understand what the existing articles in that topic are like.

The next chart is simply called Topics and helps you see what the overall intended topic for each resulting piece of content in your query is.

For instance, out of the 324 articles the query returned, 16 have to do with “Money Blogging” (not surprisingly).

This list may indicate some interesting subtopics for you to pursue.

Below that are charts for Websites and Authors, which will help you determine who the players are currently for that particular topic. These might represents blogs to guest post for, or influencers to reach out to.

Finally, all of the articles returned by the query are shown in a sorted teaser list so you can review some of the best performing articles for comparison or ideas!

As I scroll through the list, I find articles I might want to check out, as well as recurring themes that I could feature in a blog post of my own.

So between the Topics breakdown, and the individual list of performing content, you will be able to understand what’s out there already for a given topic, and get ideas on what else you might write about.

Hawkeye is by invitation only, as we mentioned, and has not yet determined a pricing model while they’re still iterating features. If you’re interested in trying the tool and are willing to offer feedback, you can request an invitation here.

Final Thoughts

Virtually any content creator can benefit from these tools and wield them to create killer content.

Rather than spend countless hours analyzing datapoints and building complex spreadsheets that have to be updated manually, these tools can provide that kind of information at a glance.

More importantly, by implementing a data-driven approach to generating blog post topics, you can rest assured that there will be a significant audience just waiting for your content.

The end result? You’ll save time, and keep your creative energies focused on publishing the best possible content for your blog & business. And note that each of the tools offers other features and uses beyond topic ideation, so pick the one that interests you the most and give it a try.

DISCLOSURE: Many of the links in the article above, and throughout this site, are affiliate links. While there’s no additional cost to you, any purchases made via those links may earn me a commission. Rest assured, only products and services which have been rigorously tried and tested are reviewed, and those reviews are always thorough and honest. If you benefited from my review and have a genuine interest in the linked product, your use of the affiliate link is appreciated and allows me to continue writing these kinds of helpful articles. Current examples include Agorapulse, Tailwind, Wishpond or SEMrush. Please also note that I am employed by SiteSell as their Chief Marketing Officer and am fully authorized to share product and company information from extensive personal experience.

Article reposted with permission from The Social Media Hat (original article).

Thanks, Mike!

rocket

Day 24 Giveaway

Mike is giving away a 2018 Blogging Planner, and one copy of each book, How to Start a Blog and How to Promote Your Blog.

Comment below to enter to win!

Mike Allton…

…is a Content Marketing Practitioner – a title he invented to represent his holistic approach to content marketing that leverages blogging, social media, email marketing and SEO to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert those leads into sales. He is an award-winning Blogger, Speaker, and Author at The Social Media Hat, and Brand Evangelist at Agorapulse (formerly CMO at SiteSell).

MikeAllton

Follow Mike on

Twitter: @Mike_Allton

As Brand Evangelist, Mike works directly with other social media educators, influencers, agencies and brands to explore and develop profitable relationships with Agorapulse.

9 Comments

  1. Jena on May 24, 2018 at 4:40 am

    Thanks for the tools! I’ll be checking them out

  2. Jennifer Gilmour on May 24, 2018 at 5:24 am

    Wow, I need to read over this, wealth of information. Thank you and I would of course love to grab a blogging planner- I don’t have one and didn’t know they existed 😮

  3. Dana Lemaster on May 24, 2018 at 7:57 am

    Rachel and Mike, thanks for a substantive article that I’m going to reread. It seems to me that these techniques might be more beneficial to people writing nonfiction, especially in the marketing arena. However, I realize no writer today can afford to ignore tools like the ones mentioned in the article. I appreciate having a detailed description of each to help in making a choice.

  4. Felicia Denise on May 24, 2018 at 9:36 am

    The tools do sound amazing, but wow! Out of the price range of the solitary blogger. I can dream though.

    • Rachel Thompson on May 24, 2018 at 10:34 am

      Thanks for the great feedback, Felicia. There are so many wonderful tools available that can be quite spendy — there are also so many that are super affordable. Take a look at Mike’s blog — he offers a ton of great advice. In fact, his blogging guide (offered as a free giveaway here today) is only $10 and on his blog, he goes into detail what it’s all about. He also discusses tons of free tools as well.

      Yesterday’s post by CoSchedule was also incredibly helpful (you can still comment to win their book). They offer 200+ FREE resources to help with blogging and marketing. The free and inexpensive yet effective tools ARE out there!

      My assistant covered several in a post last week in fact! Take a cruise through this month of daily #NaNoProMo posts — you’ll find a ton of info to help you. 🙂

  5. Lisa @ The Meaning of Me on May 24, 2018 at 9:40 am

    I’m definitely going back over this again. Wow, what great info! Love your giveaway – yes, please!

    • Rachel Thompson on May 24, 2018 at 10:29 am

      Lots of great info here, definitely Lisa. Even without buying these tools, it’s great to know what’s available and what the possibilities are. Mike is such a wealth of info, too. I learn so much from him.

  6. Kelly Wilson on May 25, 2018 at 9:22 am

    Thank you for this article. I have resisted using content generating tools like these in the past because I wanted to just write what I wanted whenever I wanted. I need a more focused approach than that now. I’ve got these tools bookmarked and ready to try.

  7. McKenna Dean on May 25, 2018 at 6:00 pm

    This was fascinating to read! Generally I love writing blog posts, but there are weeks when I feel as though I don’t have anything new or interesting to say. This would definitely help fill in those gaps!

Leave a Comment