How do you come up with content ideas?

Okay, so the broad question you are looking for is how to do keyword research. Basically finding the terms people are searching for and then writing content that addresses them. It can be an answer to a question, a how-to guide, a list or any useful resource.

Any of the following tools will help you do keyword research:

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• KWFinder

They have free trials but here's some free methods you can use to come up with content ideas:

1. QUORA
   Go to Google and use this search operator:
   site:quora.com "KEYWORD"
   This will show you questions people are asking on Quora that Google has indexed (just change 'keyword' for whatever topic you are looking for ideas on.)

2. REDDIT
   You can also do the same method above for reddit to find interesting content. There's also this free tool for extracting keywords from subreddits:

https://www.highervisibility.com/free-seo-tools/keyworddit/

3. QuestionDB
   This free tool helps you find questions people ask (so you can answer them with blog posts)

https://questiondb.io/

4. AlsoAsked
   Another free tool that mines the People Also Ask boxes from Google:

https://alsoasked.com/

5. Answer the Public
   Another tool for finding questions people ask:

https://answerthepublic.com/

6. Google Search Console
   Make sure you have Google Search Console setup for your site. It has a report which shows you the keywords people are using to find your website. That can give you a lot of ideas for the type of content you should write

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There are loads of different ways to come up with content marketing ideas and hopefully the above free tools help you generate some ideas.

Do you mean like blog posts? Write down general topics you are thinking about on google, that could help to give you some specific ideas. For example, for me I write Finance fundamentals, open a couple of articles, then write about financial ratios. Afterwards, you need to check the topic you want to write about on google keyword planner. The lower competition score the better ofcourse, for me sometimes I know a topic really well and I know I can write about it in an hour or less, although it has a high competition score, but I ignore that and just write about it just because I feel like it :)

I have no formal process. I just think broadly about the project or problem domain and, in time, my brain does the rest in background. The main tool I use is a note taking app, Google Keep, to record any ideas or relevant thoughts as soon as I get them.