Reminder: The Freelance Writing Pros blog will launch this coming Monday on September 2nd. You can follow me on Twitter @FWPros in the meantime.

If you've ever taken on freelance blogging work, chances are good you were tasked with coming up with blog post ideas for your clients. 

If you specialize in a niche (rather than blogging as a project type), this might be easy. You're intimately familiar with the subject matter.

But what about working with clients in niches or industries that are newer to you? Today I'll share a fun tool you can use to come up with blog post ideas around any topic.

Knowing What Readers Want

Any blog content you write for clients has to be tailored to their readers. That means understanding what their target readers want to know. What questions do they have that could be answered on your client's blog?

To find out, you can turn to keyword research -- literally helping you identify what people are searching for and want to know more about.

You can do this using more traditional tools like Google's keyword planner. Or you can use this cool keyword research and data visualization tool: AnswerThePublic.com.

How Answer the Public Works 

When you visit the site, you'll see a search box. Enter a term related to your client's business there. Then hit the "Get Questions" button. 

What you'll receive are several different keyword maps that can help you brainstorm blog post ideas to run by your client. 

For example, let's say you're managing the blog for an estate planning attorney. You could enter "estate planning" in the search box and your first keyword map will give you a series of common questions around that topic. 

It will look something like this:

Sometimes the questions themselves would make for great blog post ideas. For example:

• How much does estate planning cost?
• Can you deduct estate planning fees?
• What estate planning documents do I need?

Others may simply serve as inspiration. 

After this keyword map, you'll find two more:

First is the preposition-based keyword map which has suggestions like:

• Estate planning for business owners
• Estate planning in Canada
• Estate planning no heirs

Any of these would also make worthwhile blog posts. 

After that, you'll find a comparitive keyword map. In this case, it features ideas like:

• Estate planning CPA vs lawyer
• Estate planning and elder law
• Estate planning vs living trust

Again, you could run with those ideas or let them inspire narrower blog post topics. 

Then you'll see all the topics in a segmented alphabetical list if the maps aren't your thing. And you can download any map, or download the data in a CSV file. 

Finally, you'll find one more map -- one giving you suggested keyword phrases like:

• Estate planning advice
• Estate planning trusts
• Estate planning attorney

These serve as your next step. Enter any of them into the search box to conduct a new search, and you'll get even more detailed suggestions. 

The free version is likely all you'll need. But it's usage is throttled, so you can only conduct limited searchs free each day. Choose wisely.

After you've put together a list of blog post ideas using Answer The Public, you can then run those ideas through the Google Keyword Planner linked above to identify those with the highest search volume. 

How This Can Help You as a Freelance Writer

You might wonder why an experienced freelance blogger like you would need a tool like this to mass-generate post ideas. 

If you only write an occasional post for each client, you might not. But what this does is:

A) It makes you more valuable to regular blogging clients because you can quickly take some of the post planning pressure off them.

B) It gives you enough ideas that you can narrow it down to the ones you're more comfortable writing before pitching the ideas (allowing you to prioritize topics you can cover quickest, increasing your hourly return). 

C) It opens the door to taking regular freelance blogging clients and turning them into content strategy clients. This is a great way to add onto existing contracts with clients whose businesses you already know well. And it'll simplify the process of coming up with larger quantities of blog post ideas to fill an editorial calendar.

I hope you enjoy playing with this tool as much as I do. 

See you Monday on the new blog at FreelanceWritingPros.com! 

Jenn

You're receiving this email because you subscribed to the newsletter and blog updates from FreelanceWritingPros.com. 

Mailing Address: 3 Beat Media  |  PO Box 390  |  Oley, PA 19547

If you no longer wish to receive updates and subscribers-only newsletter content from Freelance Writing Pros, you can unsubscribe at any time.