Finding content ideas
You never have to invent a topic. The Article Writer suggests them for your niche, so the shortest route to your next article is to open it and pick one. This guide is for when you want a topic nobody else would have thought of.
The Google auto-suggest trick
Start typing a phrase about your niche into Google and it will finish the sentence for you with what other people are searching for. That list is a content plan, and it takes about five minutes to collect.
Say your niche is kitesurfing. Type "is kitesurfing" and you will see that most people want to know whether it is hard, dangerous or expensive. Now work through the openings:
- Why is kitesurfing / why do people
- What is kitesurfing / what do you need for
- How do you / how much does
- Can you / could you
- Best kitesurfing / cheapest / funniest
- Will / does / has
Each suggestion is either a whole article ("Is kitesurfing dangerous?") or one question inside a bigger one ("Common kitesurfing questions"). Substitute a product name for the niche name and you get the same list for the products you sell, which is exactly what to put in a product review.
Where your audience is already talking
Every niche has communities. Half an hour reading one tells you what people want:
- Facebook Groups. Search your niche, join the biggest groups, and look at the most popular posts.
- Reddit. There is a subreddit for almost everything. Sort by most popular to find the discussions that matter.
- Quora. A forum built entirely out of questions, on almost any topic.
- X. Harder to search, but a few keywords will find the accounts and threads discussing your niche.
- Dedicated forums. Specialist forums are still alive in many niches. Search Google for "your niche forum" and see what comes up.
Look at newer posts rather than old ones, and look for two things: the questions people keep asking, and the arguments they keep having. In kitesurfing forums, whether to use a board leash is a hotly contested topic. That is a perfect article.
Four more places to look
- Amazon reviews and questions. Every customer question on a product in your niche is a potential article.
- Google's "People Also Ask" box. Search a topic and open the box. Each answer opens more questions.
- Google Trends and Google News. See what is rising in your niche at trends.google.com, and what has just happened at news.google.com.
- Your competitors. Look at what other stores in your niche have written, then ask whether you can do it better, deeper or more honestly.
Ideas that work in any niche
- Frequently asked questions, answered properly
- "X things you didn't know about..."
- The history of the thing, and the famous stories around it
- Common mistakes beginners make
- What to buy first, and what to skip
- How the niche shows up in films, events, or places worth travelling to
Keep a running list somewhere. Ideas arrive when you are not writing, and twenty topics on a list is a year of one article a week already decided. Hand one to the Article Writer, then make it yours: