Content Creation Tools

Content is the foundation of any SEO or search marketing campaign. Content is the food that feeds the hungry search beast, and high-quality, relevant content is the best way to both attract and convert visitors. Sounds easy: just make great content! Here are a few tools that will help you generate ideas and find topics of interest to your audience.

Quora. Quora has been favorably reviewed by the media, and by its users. It is a high-tech Q&A forum for those wondering how the restroom in the international space station works or “what would be the best place to live if the polar ice caps melt.” It is also a great forum for those looking for content ideas. Use the search feature to look at topics and subtopics. You can find unanswered questions to create content around. Then, you can answer, link back to your blog or site, and enjoy the adoration of all your new fans!

You can also find quotes from experts on answered questions (don’t use the term “expert” loosely either; look for authoritative people in particular fields), and reach out to those experts. Perhaps they might be willing to speak about the issue at hand in a post. This is a good shot because they, too, are on Quora to interact – a link from your blog to their site might be just what they are looking for.

InboxQ. This is another site that allows you to find questions and demonstrate your authority, brilliance, and winning personality in answering them. InboxQ gives you a real-time stream of questions that relate to your business, industry, or interests. The questions come from Twitter, and answers can help not only develop content ideas but engage potential customers.

LinkedIn. LinkedIn is also a great potential source of content ideas. To use LinkedIn optimally, it is a great idea to join – and start – groups. Again, you can look for unanswered questions within your group or those to which you belong, answer them, and then link back to your blog.

By extension, you could really use any form of social media as a content idea generator, from Pinterest to Facebook to Twitter.

Touch Graph.  This is a fun tool: you simply enter in a topic, and Touch Graph produces related search phrases and domains. The results are visual, and you can keep digging for information; you can also find information and topics that are tangentially related – that is, they are related enough to be relevant and interesting, but perhaps not something you’ve explored before in your content.

These tools – and many, many more – can help you generate ideas to create high-quality content. Ideas will come fast and furious – and hopefully, your content developers can keep up!