When any industry gives you a chance to help people solve problems and to earn an income, you probably won’t truly consider it boring. At the same time, most content marketers have struggled to find newsworthy or engaging angles for certain topics. After approaching the same subject multiple times, even the most exciting new solutions can lose their edge.
Trust me, if you’re not excited about your niche, you’ll have a tough time generating enthusiasm in other people. When you’re stuck for a new angle, blog title, set of tested search terms, or even a second wind, you should turn to some invigorating online apps that will help light your creative fire.
Three Apps to Energize Your Tedious, Repetitive, or Uneventful Niche
Lucky for content developers, no genius coders have yet managed to write software that can replace creativity. Also lucky, some very smart developers have created online apps that can ignite the creative process to help generate new ideas for ways to approach even the most boring or repetitive niche.
Today’s marketing technology, often called MarTech, won’t just help you think of new approaches to the same, old thing; it will also teach you tactics used by the most effective marketers in your industry. You can start with these three popular apps right away:
1. BuzzSumo
Do you want to see a list of the most current and engaging posts on the internet for your topic? Simply enter a phrase on the home page of BuzzSumo to get started. For instance, I entered “hairspray” in the box. I used hairspray because I tried to think of something most people would find sort of mundane and boring.
Consider some examples of what I found:
- I saw that intriguing and helpful articles with alternate uses for hairspray, including removing pet fur from clothes, generated plenty of social activity.
- I also clicked through to read an article that promised me that hairspray can improve my life and learned that I can use this product to preserve flowers or chalk art on the sidewalk.
- I learned which angles did best on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest and which ones generated backlinks.
- I saw who the top influencers were for the topic of hairspray.
After checking BuzzSumo, I found hairspray a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. I also spent longer than I anticipated browsing the listed content. If these excellent marketers can engage me with these beauty content insights, imagine what they can inspire you to do for your business.
2. SpyFu
Do you work in a competitive niche and find it hard to generate intent-driven search terms that attract an audience and drive sales? If so, SpyFu might offer you the kind of competitive intelligence that you need to come up with the perfect list to incorporate into your content.
Sure, Google offers anybody with an account their free Keyword Planner. At the same time, Google limits the usefulness of their product because they can’t give away too much of their other customers’ data. Also, Google focuses upon supporting their own bottom line and not necessarily yours.
Google wants to sell traffic; however, SpyFu exists to sell you information through their MarTech app. Enter your topics on this Keyword Planner alternative to generate lists of related search terms that your competitors already invest in. You can use these terms for paid search campaigns or send them off to your freelance writer to inspire their content.
3. HubSpot
Generating ideas for blog topics does not get any simpler than the HubSpot Blog Idea Generator. You just need to come up with three terms for your topic and let the app do the heavy lifting. Still on the subject of hairspray, I entered beauty, hairspray, and women in the text boxes.
The idea generator instantly offered me five potential blog titles. Some ideas were silly and others could use a bit of human editing. Still, blog title ideas like “The Ultimate Cheat Sheet on Hairspray” and “10 Signs You Should Invest in Hairspray” had potential.
You Don’t Have to Run Out of Ideas
I’m not typically a beauty writer or even very interested in these kinds of products. After spending a few minutes with some of the top MarTech apps, I felt engaged enough to want to read more about hairspray and maybe even write about it.
In a few hours, I’m sure I could have devised a viable content strategy. I could use these tools to research search terms, find influencers and authority websites, and of course, develop engaging ideas for blog posts and other content. I would also know which social networks or other sites had the best potential to attract an audience, so I could create a content distribution plan.
Best of all, I started getting excited about a topic I didn’t even think I cared about. When content producers get enthusiastic about their niche, they can generate that same feeling in their audience. Instead of staring at a blank screen feeling like you have run out of ideas, you can turn to technology for inspiration.
Marilyn K writes about technology, insurance, finance, business, and marketing a lot more often than she writes about hairspray. Still, she’s ready to uncover the right angle for all kinds of industries.
