1. Understand Your Target Audience

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1. Understand Your Target Audience
The first part of my blog post topic brainstorming session involves identifying what my target audience wants and needs.

Here are a few ways you can learn more about your target audience:

Explore social media platforms: Social media posts are one of the top ways to Colombia Phone Number Library about current trends and interests in your niche. You can search hashtags, users, groups, and followers in your niche to learn more about your target audience.
Check out Quora and discussion forums in your niche: Quora and online discussion forums are great sources of relevant information about your target audience’s interests.
Watch YouTube and Listen to Podcasts: Videos and podcasts are another area that can reveal trends in your niche.
See what your competition is up to: Learn what your competition is already delivering. Are they missing important content in your niche? Can you improve on what is already out there? What are people asking for in the comment section of your competitor’s blog posts?
For a more thorough analysis of understanding the needs of your audience, I’ve written a guide that includes 11 smart ways to find your target audience.

2. Perform Keyword Research
Keyword research is another way to determine which topics to write about on your blog. Keyword research allows you to map your reader’s needs to actual keywords they’re searching for to get the answers they’re seeking. You’ll need to use an effective keyword research tool, too.

Doing Keyword Research to Make Sure You're Writing Smart Blog Content

Once you’ve determined what topics they may be interested in, you can also learn what keywords they’re most likely to use when searching for answers on Google and other search engines.

For a free keyword research tool, you can use my keyword tool, Google’s Keyword Planner, or Twinword Ideas. Today, I use a combination of my own keyword tool and the more premium-priced SEO tool, Ahrefs, to do my keyword planning, but it’s not an essential expense when you’re still in the earlier days of blogging. That being said, Ahrefs is extremely powerful for determining which keywords to focus your content on once you have a budget for pricy tools. So if you have a friend or two who’d be interested in splitting the cost, Ahrefs is a great investment.

When you’re doing keyword research, there are two main factors under consideration:

Keyword search volume
Keyword difficulty
Keyword search volume is the number of people that search for a given word or phrase in a month. I’ll use Google’s keyword planner to show you an example of keyword search volume.

Below, I typed in the term “best travel destinations” to see if this is something that people search for on Google: