How to Get Blog Content Ideas from Social Sites

Writing is the fun part. Coming up with topics to write about is the part that makes you want to slam your head against a wall. Repeatedly.

Sometimes, the muse strikes and you have a fresh new topic you can’t wait to expound upon. When inspiration pays a call on you less frequently than you wish, you need to go looking for it. But where to start?

While social media and social sites are useful tools to help spread the word about your blog, they can also be mined for content ideas. Even if your blog caters to a very specific niche — like yarn-and-felt-based crafts,TV shows, heavy metal bands, or some combination of all three! — you can use social sites to find current hot topics and apply it to your blog’s focus.

Here are a few places that can help you generate topics for your next blog posts.

Quora

Quora is a beacon for anyone and everyone looking for knowledge of the non-Wikipedia variety. The site crowd-sources information from everyday netizens. Visitors can ask their own questions or answer open questions from others in the Quora forum. The answers to questions range from sharp to poignant, shocking to witty, and sometimes, surprisingly heartwarming.

Browsing through the site’s Top Stories and Questions & Answers feeds can help you whip up a couple new ideas for your blog. Or, if you really want to get topic specific, you can type in a few keywords and see what comes up.

For instance, typing in the specific term “felt and yarn crafts” yields very few results… But they’re good ones!

Using these two Quora questions as an example, you might be tempted to write a post about video games that have a “hand-crafted feel.” Or you can write another post that gives your readers your spin on what made you a rabid crafter and how to inspire the next generation of crafters. (Duh! By making adorable TV character-themed plush dolls and heavy metal-themed throw pillows for your living room, of course!)

Twitter

Simple, yet effective, you can a look at Twitter’s “Trending Topics” module to get ideas for some timely blog ideas.

Well, would ya look at that?! Looks like “Boardwalk Empire” is trending! Perhaps now would be the time to start polishing up a post on crafting a Snuggly Nucky plush doll (with adorable Buscemi button eyes) to watch “Boardwalk Empire”’s final season with you!.

Topsy

Maybe you don’t want to limit yourself to just Twitter. Maybe you want to see what’s popular on a whole bunch of social media websites at the same time. That’s where Topsy comes in. Simply type in, for example, the subject of your blog and Topsy will show you results from Twitter, Google+, and various news sites from around the web.

Typing in the term “heavy metal” turned up some interesting results about an 11-year-old guitarist challenging the band Steel Panther to a guitar solo throw-down:

Voila! Instant inspiration for a post on how to create a Cuddly “Critter” for all of your metal-loving blog readers and Fanthers!

Reddit

Reddit, a site that bills itself as “the front page of the Internet,” aggregates hot news stories from around the web, submitted and curated by its fan base known as “Redditors.” In addition to a more general batch of topics on Reddit’s main page, there are also a seemingly infinite number of “sub-Reddits” that speak to different categories including fashion, music, and gaming. Redditors can vote stories they find interesting “up” to boost the best of the web to the top of each sub-Reddit.

Typing in the term “heavy metal” takes you to the (cleverly-titled) subdirectory, Shreddit.

Looking no further than the first 15 Shreddit results, you already have 2 new ideas for some blog posts with a little bit of research already done for you! Rock on!

These are just a few sites you can use to help you come up with ideas for your latest and greatest blog post. Do you have any favorite sites you use for this purpose? Let us know in the comments! (And if you do, by any chance, make TV- or music-related handycrafts, please share the link to your blog here, too!)