How to research and write a blog post

Researching your content topic before writing a blog post is going to make sure that you are only publishing content that people are interested in.

Have you thought to yourself, I don’t know what to write on my blog? Or I don’t know what to write in my first blog post? You are not alone. This guide will show you how to research and write blog posts and choose and find blog topics to write about.

Researching topics for your blog

To research content for your blog post – First, you want to start by brainstorming all the topics you know your audience is likely to share an interest in. Topic examples could be S.E.O, marketing, social media etc. Blog topics should be related to your niche.

Search forums for blog post ideas  

Use forums to search for popular topic ideas. If you’re a social media virtual assistant, then going to a social media forum and seeing what the most popular questions are will also help you to see what information your target audience is interested in.

Use the Google keyword planner tool to search for popular keywords and to see how many times it has been searched within Google. If the search term produces a low search result, it is not a popular subject.

The more people search up a phrase, the more popular the topic is. This could also mean you will face more competition.

Use Google Search to find keywords and topics for blog posts.

Do a Google search in the search bar and look out for autocomplete suggestions.

Begin by typing a question. Google will automatically show you autocomplete suggestions that you can search for and create content around as you begin typing.

There are also Google suggestions to look out for at the bottom of the search results page. This will give you other ideas as well to use as blog topics. To determine the search volume enter the keywords into the Google keyword planner tool.

You should also lookout for the paid ads at the top of the Google search results page. If someone has paid for an advert, it is usually a good indication that they have researched the keyword. There will usually be a strong marketing reason that influenced them to pay to advertise those keywords.

But don’t bank on it being profitable. You can always perform keyword research for yourself to confirm.

Use a blog post idea generator to get new ideas 

There are some tools out there that can help you generate ideas for new blog posts to write. You can choose to go with the generated ideas after doing some keyword research on the topic.

I tried seopressor.com. I was really impressed with the results. With this tool, there is definitely no excuse to run out of new blog post ideas.

Competitor blog research

You can check on other blog posts with similar content to yours to see what the most popular posts are. Sometimes you can tell what is popular as some bloggers allow comments underneath a post. A blog post with a lot of comments means there is a lot of engagement on the post, which usually means there’s a lot of interest in the topic.

SEMrush allows you to scrape your competitor’s keywords, use this when doing your competitor research.

SpyFu also allows you to scrape your competitor’s keywords, both of these have a free trial so you can test before you buy. If the keywords can work for your competitors, then the chances are that they can work for you if written and optimised correctly. 

News, trends and popular stories

Social media

Sites like Buzzsumo show you the content which is getting shared the most on social media. Use this information to create content that is more likely to get shared.

Search #Hastags on Twitter 

Go to Twitter

In the search bar, perform a search for #Hashtags.

A hashtag is keywords with this (#) symbol added before.

Example – #virtualassistant

Do a search to see which hashtags are popular. This can help to determine which areas to create content around as you know it is likely to get shared a lot due to it being a popular subject.

Google Alerts 

Set up Google Alerts for all the popular trends within your industry. You will receive email notifications when there is a new update to that keyword on the web.

Google Trends 

Google Trends will show you accurate results so you can see what topics are trending. You can perform a search, and you can also see how trends change over time. Don’t forget to adjust the settings to search the countries you require.

News Topics 

You can look at general news topics and use that to gain more attention for your business. If there is a popular person or story in the news that you can relate to your business, then you can create a blog post about that.

This can work well as long as a strategy is in place and the audience is still within your target market.

Example – 

A major chain of business is closing down. There is a story circulating that includes statistics about the reasons for the closure, and one of them happens to be the inability to afford permanent staff.

As a virtual assistant, this is one of the main selling points.  Business owners do not have to pay for training, sick days, etc. they can use a virtual assistant to complete their tasks as and when they please.

You could create a blog post discussing the consequences of not outsourcing when your business needs to –  in relation to the current popular news story about the company’s closure.

We also see this working in other industries.

Example – 

You are a hairdresser, and there is a lot of buzz and interest about a celebrity’s new haircut. You can write a story about that celebrity’s hairstyle and how you would go about recreating it for yourself. You can include your own images to showcase the recreation.

As long as the topic is something that your target audience is interested in and you can show your expertise and provide a solution, you can use popular subjects and incorporate your value/ skills.

Incorporating these types of blog posts gives you access to a broader range of your target market, which you may not have had access to before.

Market Research 

Carry out your own research and see what people are interested in. If you have an audience already, then survey them and then react to their response. Running a survey on topics of interest to your existing customers is one of the best moves you can make. It will tell you directly what they want to learn more about.

If a large number all respond with the same or similar topics, then you know already when you publish a new blog post on the subject, there will be a high level of interest.

Reports

You can create your own or use other people’s research. Are there some stats that are relevant to your audience that you can create a blog post about?

People love information as long as it is relevant to them and will improve their life. Do a google search and look for reports, data or facts. Another smart way of doing this is by checking on your competitor’s blog and developing content around data and information that has already been researched. 

Quora 

A website where people ask questions about anything and everything but a lot about business-related issues. This is a perfect place to research. You can make yourself even more useful by answering questions as well.

For example, there is a question that is quite popular on Quora or another question-answer site or forum. Perform keyword research to see if it is often searched for on Google. You may find it is quite popular and could be the blog post you need to write that will attract lots of customers.

You can even see on Quora if a question has been asked numerous times by different people. You can start by answering a question if you already know the answer, then you can mention that you will be creating a blog post about this soon.

When they click on your profile, they can access your blog. This is great because this means that everyone else who searches this question and picks the Quora search result will see your answer and comment and may also click-through to your blog to get more information.

Books + Ebooks 

Books are a great way to get inspiration and ideas for your next blog post. Regular reading of books in your niche is recommended and should give you some ideas for topics. E-books are another great way.

Most people use an ebook to attract people into signing up to their email subscriber list. Next time you are on a website within your niche that has a lot of subscribers, and they are offering an ebook on, e.g. how to grow your consulting business. Then this may be a popular subject that your audience has an interest in. Check using the keyword planner tool.

Test and Learn

Check to see what your most popular blog posts have been.

If you have blog posts you have written in the past, take the top five most popular posts and analyse them, you may begin to notice a pattern.

There was some research done that states the types of blog posts that get the most views, they are as follows;

• The influential people round-up post
• The over-the-top generous free resource post
• The (almost) too good to be true post
• The soul-baring post
• The ultimate overview post

Do any of these describe your most popular posts?

If not, then creating one of these types of posts may attract more of your target audience.

To find out more about the five extraordinary blog post types, click here.

Content creation – Layout

I find it easier to write my content directly into WordPress and save it as a draft rather than on another document first.

Spell check your work. Grammarly is really useful. Not only does it help with spelling, but it also corrects punctuation.

Leaving enough white space and breaking up content into subheadings will help you to structure your content clearly.

Images 

Including related images will make the content easier for readers to digest. Reading on the computer is not generally as comfortable as reading from a book, so having images to break up all of the text is recommended especially when creating longer blog posts.

Get suitable images for your content. You can find free images at websites such as pexels.com and pixabay.com.

One of my favourite sites for premium professional images is Shutterstock. Bigstock is a slightly cheaper alternative that still offers premium images.

What I like to do is to copy and paste the image with the watermark onto my blog post. This way, I get to see what it looks like, then I purchase the images only after I am sure it compliments the post.

Publish 

Just before you publish your content, check that the blog post is in line with its purpose and that you have clearly conveyed the message you want your target audience to know.

Then publish your content and begin to share through social media, email etc.

If you have a marketing plan, make sure you follow that. If you don’t have one already, you can find out how to create one here. A marketing plan that you stick to and set targets for always produces more results than having no plan at all.

What is so great about the suggested method is Data from Google Trends and keyword data from the Google planner Tool are already available.

However, the more research you do, the better results you can get.

Working through the ideas and building a list of blog topic ideas will ensure you will not come up stuck on how to pick a blog topic that your target audience wants to read.    

Keep a list of blog ideas and every time you think of a new idea just add it to the list. Usually, just from writing one blog post it will give you an idea for at least 2 more.