One of the most important strategies for encouraging your visitors to regularly return to your website is to post new quality content. For some business owners the task of content creation seems like a daunting prospect. Luckily, there are lots of free tools and tips that make your job easier!
1. Your Competitors
If you are in the business of providing products or services, your first port of call is to check what your competitors have been doing. You can use their ideas as a springboard for your own and chances are you’ll be able to improve on their efforts. Look for the latest news updates on their website to see what is new.
2. Search Engine Trends
These days, people use search engines on a daily basis; it’s often the fastest way to get news, the weather, and to find information on products they might be interested in buying. Tools like keywordtool.io provide access to the keywords people searching for in Google search. Alternatively, you can see what is current by looking at what is trending directly: https://google.com/trends/ and www.bing.com/trends.
3. Social Media Trends
The growth of social communities has been phenomenal in recent years. Even if you are a private person who prefers not to spend time using these services, it is a good idea to have accounts and log in from time to time just to see what has gone viral. There isn’t much searching required here; just logging in will give you the latest updates. Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit are good communities to start with.
4. Multimedia Trends
YouTube remains the undisputed king of online video. As with the previous sites, you probably want to jump in with what is “hot” by checking out trends.
5. App Stores
Hand-in-hand with the growth of social networking has been the growth of mobile devices. People have developed apps for almost every conceivable idea and there is still room for innovation. They are also a portal for ebooks, music, movies, and TV shows. If you want inspiration look no further than the app stores for Android, Apple, and Microsoft.
6. quora.com
This tool differs from the others because it is based around people asking questions. Other members of the community can then offer answers and suggestions. By knowing what questions people are asking you can easily see what solutions you can provide within your industry.
7. delicious.com
This is another social community but this time it is based around the sharing and promotion of links. People can up-vote or down-vote content so you can see what is popular amongst members.
8. Idea Generators
Our last group of tools are great for when you don’t have time to browse social media networks or trending content. Perhaps you already have a good idea about what you want to write about, but you can’t think of a suitable title. Some of the suggestions can be quite humorous but they’re worth checking out.
With this tool you can enter a single keyword and it will return related keywords suitable for making your own title;
This tool takes it a step further by actually suggesting possible titles based on the keyword you have provided;
This one is similar to the previous one except that it allows up to three keywords. The results can be a bit hit-and-miss but it’s still work experimenting with;
The developers of this idea generator have gone to a great deal of effort to provide an attractive, professional tool. You can enter one or more keywords but it only returns one suggested title at a time so keep pressing the refresh button to get more! Hopefully you can see that content creation doesn’t have to be burdensome. The more you use some of the tools and tricks above, the more you will find content creation to be a creative, stimulating task that reaps rewards.
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