Writer’s block is a household term and we’ve seriously all experienced it at one point or another. It might be as minute as an email or as massive as the start of a novel, but no matter how you spin it, creative work can be really tough. Crafting the written word out of thin air is no small feat. Luckily for us, there are a few really useful topic generation tools available to help.
Here are our five favorites.
Google Keyword Planner
The Google AdWords platform features a tool called Keyword Planner that’s perfect for research. Keyword Planner lets you search for new keywords using queries based on phrases, websites, and categories, giving you the chance to explore topics and spaces that may have not previously crossed your radar.
Keyword Planner will help you generate blog topic ideas by exploring the other trends that surround your area of expertise.
HubSpot Blog Topic Generator
HubSpot is more than a golden resource for the latest in digital marketing trends and news analysis. Their Blog Topic Generator is fantastically simple with a major payoff. All you’ve got to do is enter three nouns to help guide the tool and you’ll be left with a range of suggestions that will more than likely be a precise match. They’re known for their marketing technology so it’s no surprise what they have built is one of the best topic generation tools on our list.
BuzzSumo
What hasn’t been said about BuzzSumo? The platform was recently acquired by Brandwatch, another industry leader. This change will surely only strengthen both of their products.
BuzzSumo is a web application that catalogs details about the most popular content across the web, maintaining up-to-date information about social shares and interaction. It’s a Who’s Who of the viral and trending parts of the internet. The platform’s tools will help you come up with ideas for new coverage while providing insights into your competitors and their daily churn.
Starting at $79 per month, BuzzSumo’s services might be too costly for some. Still, they’ve proven ultimately useful for us, as they save our staff plenty of time by making research quicker and easier than ever.
(The internet is pretty large, after all.)
Übersuggest
Übersuggest touts itself as a service that will help you “quickly find new keywords not available in the Google Keyword Planner.” Simply enter a keyword and ask the site to suggest more. You’ll be given an alphabetized list of the most popular keywords that stem from your original query.
For example, an event planner in Chicago might search “Chicago nightlife,” yielding interesting results such as “Chicago nightlife over 50.” Surely enough, there is interest in that topic. Übersuggest provides you with clickthroughs to perform Google searches. You’ll usually end up with more information than you may have expected.
BuildYourOwnBlog.net’s Idea Generator
This tool is hosted on BuildYourOwnBlog.net and we’ve found it useful when our fingers freeze up on the keyboard. The Blog Post Ideas Generator focuses less on keywords and more on broad concepts. Just click a button and read the suggestion that pops up.
Click another time (or 12) until you’ve found something useful, such as “Are You Doing ____ The Right Way?” and “7 Reasons Your ____ Is ____.” Three cheers for keeping things simple!
What Topic Generation Tools Do You Use?
Which topic suggestion tools do you use? Leave your thoughts about the ones listed above or any that you’ve found to be helpful for your brand or agency in the comments below!
