Having a hard time coming up with new blog post ideas to feed your content calendar?
You sit down and are all ready to write but then 45 minutes have passed, you’re still staring at the blank new Google Doc you created. You’re stuck.
Having months' worth of blog post ideas at your disposal is your wildest dream right now (instead of struggling with what to blog about six days before it needs to go live).
You’re in luck!
We sorted through thousands of Sumo customer’s most popular articles and found out content ideas (categorized into blog post types) that get noticed based on 175,000,000 visits.
Ready to see what we found?
Hate running out of ideas on what to blog about? Get the 60 Blog Post Ideas in a spreadsheet so you can refer to it anywhere anytime.
The top 200+ blog posts on Sumo’s content-creating customer’s sites revealed that these are the top 10 pieces of content you need to create.
They were responsible for 147,000,000 hits (83% of the top 175 Million hits were on these 10 types of content).
I’ve even included quick-start guide on how to generate foolproof blog post ideas based on each category.Ready?
The “How To” post outperformed all other article types by a longshot, responsible for nearly 23% of the traffic to the most popular articles.
This is the cornerstone, evergreen content that teaches readers how to do something specific related to your niche. These articles can overlap with the Ultimate Guide (the #10 most popular type of content).
Check out how Herb.co uses how-to guides to teach a specific process:
And how Bulletproof uses them for content marketing on their blog, too:
It’s not surprising that “How To” content garnishes so much attention. Who hasn’t Googled how to do something recently?
This is good news for search engine traffic to your “How To” content, but since you’re educating your readers, it’s also extremely shareable.
Not sure what to teach your customers how to do?
Find some inspiration with Quora. Type your topic or keywords into the Quora search bar (let’s say your niche is homeschooling):
Check out the recently asked questions. In this case, you could write a blog post on:
You could also perform a Quora search to find more blog post ideas related to your topic.
Not only are list posts in the top two for traffic, they’re also #2 on the top most shared article types.
Whether this will work for you depends on your niche and the size of your site. Sumo wouldn’t do very well with simple list posts, but Success.com does:
59% of people will share an article without even reading it, and since list posts are easy to scan and instantly gratifying (even when you just see the headline!) these bad boys are shared constantly, contributing to the traffic.
Not sure what type of list post to create?
Find a content analysis tool like BuzzSumo (nope, we’re not brothers) and type in a popular blog in your niche’s URL. Let’s say you were in the travel niche:
You can then filter the results by published year and sort by total shares. (You need a paid plan to do this.)
These are proven topics in your niche for garnishing attention, shares, and likely traffic.
Don’t copy them, but use them as inspiration for your list post. Here are some prompts:
Apply those prompts to each topic (in this case, solo travel, travel credit cards, travel deals, travel hacking) for dozens of list post ideas.
The explanatory post is #3 on the top 10 types of blog posts to create, driving over 20,000,000 hits over the 27 top sites we analyzed.
In this blog post idea, break something complex down and explain it so your readers can understand.
For example, this article on Big Think uses the explanatory post to go into the science of a surprisingly common question:
Another great example is an explanatory article on Dean’s blog:[*]
In these blog posts, you’re educating your audience and setting yourself apart as an authority in your niche.
These explanatory posts are linkable assets (meaning other bloggers and resources in your niche are likely to link to you as value-adds for their readers) which also happen to be evergreen, cornerstone content.
Trying to figure out what to explain but coming up short? I’ve got you.
Pull up a subreddit in your niche. Let’s say you’re in the weight loss niche. I’ll use /r/loseit as an example.
The Quick Way: Type “why does” and “how do” in the search bar (keep the quotes so it filters just for those exact match terms).
Start scrolling through the results to find the top questions people have in the niche:
In this case, you might create an explanatory post answering the following questions:
The Better Way: Scroll through the subreddit and open the threads. Read through the questions and struggles the redditors are experiencing.
Pro Tip: For bigger, well-established subreddits, check out the sidebar to find resources like FAQ.
The Silver Platter Technique: Type in your niche/keyword on /r/explainlikeimfive.
Each of those questions is like a golden, viral nugget for your blog handed to you on a silver platter, giving you a chance to educate about your topic. Write about them.
In the fourth spot, the “Warning Post” drove 17 million hits to our sample sites, and this one makes sense:
Warnings are difficult to ignore.
In this post, you’ll “warn” readers of something that they probably didn’t know about. For example, David Wolfe warns readers that Google is recording them:
And Mind Body Green warns readers about a side effect of tattoos:
As an expert on your topic, it can be tough to think of what your readers might not know about, so to think of blog post ideas under this article type, use Google Scholar.
Type in “recent studies on [topic]” (for example, nutrition):
And filter for a recent date (Since 2015, 2018, or 2019).
Most people don’t know about the recent science in your field (probably not even you!) so this is an opportunity.
In this example, you might read some of the papers and write:
Another way to come up with Warning article topics is to think of a common misconception in your field, and warn people about the truth.
The Celebrity Revealed Post is an article that “reveals” something about somebody famous in your niche.[*]
This post type attracts readers who want to know some secret information on the celebrity.
To create this type of content, you don’t have to know the celebrity personally or even have insider information. But you should choose a celebrity who is popular in your niche right now.
Chris used this blog post type in his Tony Robbins article, the most shared article in 2017 on Sumo’s blog:
To create Celebrity Revealed posts, think of a top influencer in your niche.
If you’re out of the loop, bring up a top magazine-style publication in your niche (example: Entrepreneur.com for business) and visit their homepage. Let’s say you were in the beauty niche:
I didn’t have to go far to find Jennifer Lawrence (Vogue wouldn’t have put her as the main feature if she wasn’t big right now).
Then, type in “how does [celebrity name]” into Google for autocomplete:
![autocomplete results for "how does [celebrity name]" search](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/615b54e9eebdbb83d9457d5f/667e7ec584e21735f9cdb12e_image20-1.png)
You could write a Celebrity Revealed post about how Jennifer Lawrence styles her hair.
To write the article properly, you could quote some interviews she’s done with others, find hairstyles she’s worn in images, and link to tutorials (or create your own) on how to copy the hairstyle.
Pro Tip: Add a verb behind your search term for more results. “How does [celebrity name] do” came up with different results than just “how does [celebrity name]“:
![autocomplete results for "how does [celebrity name] do" search](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/615b54e9eebdbb83d9457d5f/667e7ec584e21735f9cdb117_image21-1.png)
If you have insider information or you could reveal something negative about a “villain” in your niche, use this as an opportunity as well.
This article type won’t be part of your regular rotation unless you’re a news or politics site, but the Breaking News post brought in over 12 million visits for our sample sites, and allow you to ride trending topics on social media, increasing your visibility.
One example is The Drive’s usage of the Breaking News post to share something relevant in their industry:
You don’t need exclusive information to report on breaking news, but you do have to be on top of your niche.
To set up a system so you don’t always have to be checking Google News for new info, set up a Google alert with some keywords in your industry:
You’ll get an email when those terms are mentioned.
To get the most benefit from a breaking news article, you should write about the news within 24 hours of it emerging.
Check on Twitter and Facebook’s Trend’s sections before you publish and make sure you’re using appropriate terms to take advantage of the trending topic.
Alright, so let’s say your niche doesn’t do well with the listicle. Because, you know, you’re not Buzzfeed.
But list posts are #2 on the list of the most popular types of content for traffic, and you don’t want to miss out on the magical unicorn effect they have.
Enter the Expanded List Post™: list posts that actually add value beyond mild entertainment to people’s lives!
In 20 Call-To-Action Examples, we not only list out the examples but provide actionable information on why they work:
These take the typical list post style article and expand on each of the points, providing more information and methods to take action on the points.
For the Expanded List Post, use the same method of finding topics for your basic list post, but expand on each of the points with more information.
Recall my example topics in the travel niche based on the list post research:
For the “When”, you might list out 5 of the cheapest months to travel, and under each point, include:
Expanded list posts tend to work in niches where traditional list posts don’t.
Controversy sells.
There’s no surprise there. So it’s also not surprising that this one made it into the top 10 traffic-driving blog post ideas.
But how do you come up with an idea of something controversial to write?
We’ll take it to Reddit again for this one.
Visit a subreddit related to your niche. (Example: Parenting). Many subreddits have a default “Controversial” tab, which displays the threads that are both upvoted and downvoted a lot. Filter for that tab:
Not every thread will truly be controversial without reading them, but many of the title’s of the threads give themselves away.
In the Parenting topic, some topics include:
Write a controversial piece arguing for the side you know your target audience stands by (which you’ll know from their psychographics).
Nervous to post something controversial? Don’t be. You’ll repel the people who were never going to follow you anyway, and become magnetic for your target audience.
The most shared content is long-form (3000 words and up).
But shares does not always equal traffic, and this short-form post idea proves that.
Coming in at #9 of the best types of content is the FAQ post. This is when you answer a question that’s frequently asked by your target audience.
These articles are not usually long or revolutionary, but they’re useful. They’re easily referenced in other content (for example, ultimate guides).
A huge benefit to the FAQ post is that the terms can drive tons of search engine traffic, as they have very high search volumes but very low competition.
To draw on another example from Herb.co, they used the FAQ post to get tons of search engine traffic:
Ranking #1 for a very high volume search term:
The SEO potential (medium keyword difficulty and relatively high search volume) for these FAQ posts undoubtedly contributes to how much traffic they drive.
Not sure where to start?
You can find plenty of topic ideas by using Answer the Public. Type in your keyword or topic in the search bar. For example, if you had a blog about budgeting:
And the tool drums up autocomplete data based on that keyword:
Displaying dozens of blog post ideas for FAQ posts.In this case, you could write about:
That’s enough blog post ideas to last you for years if you publish weekly.
Pro Tip: Also enter the plural and verb-tenses of the term for other FAQs. For example, when I searched “budgeting” instead of “budget”, I got different results:
The ultimate guide is the ultimate article idea.
It’s a cornerstone, evergreen type of content that covers everything you need to know about a specific topic.
Our guide guide on Instagram marketing is one of the most highly trafficked articles of 2016, but also drove almost 10,000 email signups and was #2 on the top sales-driving pieces of content published last year.
This is where you go in depth into a topic, covering pretty much everything the reader needs to know.
Ultimate guides can be step-by-step processes or comprehensive, informational guides. Because they go deep on one thing, choose a broader topic for your ultimate guide.
Done right, they are linkable assets and attract a lot of attention. So if you truly create the ultimate guide on your topic you can expect to rank decently for the term.
Start by using your favorite keyword research tool (we use Ahrefs) to plug in a search term related to your topic. Let’s say you’re in the baby sleep niche:
If your keyword difficulty is still in the green (ie it’s “easy”), write an ultimate guide on that search term -- ie “The Ultimate Guide to Baby Sleep Training”.
But if it’s more competitive, check under the “Keyword ideas by search volume” section:
These are ripe opportunities for ultimate guides. In our example, you could write:
You can also try a different headline formula (you can choose from these 51) because “ultimate guide” is overused.
To create your guide, though, it’s not as simple as just writing a 1500 word blog post on the topic.No, you have to create the ultimate guide on the topic.
So open the top search results:
Read through them, and create something better than all of them.
In addition to all of the details covered in the top existing guides, you would make sure you include frequently asked questions by doing some research on Reddit, Quora, and Answer The Public.
Writing an ultimate guide won’t be easy, if you want a more detailed guide on how to do that, check out this ultimate guide on writing an ultimate guide.
Pro Tip: Use this newly created linkable asset to link to your other articles for higher search engine visibility.
We just covered a lot of ground.
I gave you 60 blog post ideas that actually work, revealed the top 10 ideas that drove the most hits on popular websites, and showed you exactly how to generate hundreds of article ideas step-by-step using a simple, proven framework.
Now you never have to read another article on getting blog post ideas or stare at a blank screen ever again.
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