Dear blogger,

Your boss just told you to design a content marketing strategy for the next six months for one of your client websites. You came up with three great headlines on your own and you’re feeling pretty sharp… that is until the ideas stop coming, you’ve run out of Starbucks, and it’s only 9:30 am. You feel completely blocked. Now you wonder why you ever chose this career path?!

Well relax, okay?  Blog topic generators to the rescue! There are so many tools on the web designed to inspire ideas and to help you to develop content. Of course, nothing is for free except for the free trials and a google search. So, try one out. Below are three examples of how online topic generators can help you build your content strategy.

1) Hubspot Blog Generator

If you're simply looking for headline ideas, Hubspot has a basic blog topic generator. You type in keywords related to your topic and it spits out 5 generic headlines. By submitting your personal information, you can receive up to 25 headlines. This is a very basic tool that may inspire a few ideas, but will not give you much more than that.

2) Google Search 

A google search is free. While, it's not designed to help you develop a six month content marketing strategy, you can gain a few more ideas. By referencing the Searches Related section at the bottom of your search page, you'll find more topics to consider.

3) SEMrush.com

If you're looking for something much more robust, you must consider SEMrush. SEMrush (in its own words) is “the world’s leading competitive research service for online marketing.”  The website provides a whole array of various tools for marketing specialists. If you need a list of subtopics based on your core topic, the first place to go is the content marketing toolkit. There you’ll find a topic research option.

Type in your core topic and watch the ideas quickly appear. What I love about this topic generator is the variety of formats presented in the results. It appeals to the different types of brains seeking information.

 Mind Map

Above is a mind map of different subtopics related to contract research, my search terms. If you click on a subtopic in the mind map, the headlines, questions, and related searches will change to reflect that subtopic.

Overview

By clicking the overview tab, you can find connected headlines and backlinks to find more

information on a topic.

Below these lists, the top subtopics are presented with data on their topic performance.

Let’s review. Not only do you get topic ideas, subtopic ideas, and questions to think about, you get links to sources and other articles!

But I’m not done yet. Get yourself a cup of herbal tea.

 Explorer

The Explorer tool gives you subtopics with a connected content idea including a link to an article or website. In addition, the tool provides the number of Facebook engagements the corresponding article/website achieved as well as backlinks.

Cards

The Cards tool is the fourth way a viewer can see the material organized with subtopics.

Again, if you click a link on one of the subtopic cards, the headlines and questions will change to reflect that subtopic.

I love how SEMrush created this entire tool kit with the user’s needs in mind. The topic generator is well-organized and provides an enormous amount of inspiring ideas and links to sources that can help you develop those ideas further.

Additional Topic Generators

There are a lot more tools out there. Check out popular sites, Ahrefs and Buzz Sumo, and you will find additional means to discover new content. In today's world, so many topics are already saturated with web content. Finding a new way to cover an old topic requires more research and ingenuity. By providing different metrics, these tools allow you to see what's currently trending, which topic keywords will get you noticed, and how to expand your topic with new ideas. Similar to SEMrush, these search tools are multilayered and very comprehensive.

Check them out for yourself to see which sites fit the budget and needs of your company. You will be relieved to see that you're not alone out there when it comes to generating ideas.

Good luck!