Unlocking The Secrets Of How To Research For A Blog

Doing research for blog content might be time consuming and you will find numerous details from various sources as you begin. It gets even worse if you have no idea of how to research for a blog especially since the requirements are not well spelled out for you. Consequently, you will end up with information that is either close to or irrelevant as far as the blog topic or niche is concerned.

 

There are many aspects you can consider, that will point you in the right direction when conducting such a research and this is as outlined below;

 

Make your idea valid

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Part of the etiquette of any kind of blog is that the reader that comes across it should be able to connect with it. This is drawing from the fact that sentiments are connected to the topic of discussion should be well captured in the blog post and its contents are actually relevant.

For example it does not good to write blog about dogs if your blog is about building a house. To help you validate your idea you can look for the following;

• Content by others that is popular – this will help you see if other people have interacted with the content, those who have back links to it, and other content related to it that has been published as well as other things.

Insert your search term of what you are looking for in the search function of BuzzSumo and you will be able to obtain all these details.

• Conversations that are closely related to the content – this relates to what other people are saying about the topic in question. If you lack such details on what you had opted for, you might want to switch your topic but as you do so, ensure that useful details retrieved are retained for future use in a blog post. This allows you to solve someone’s problem.  If you can do that then you will more easily connect with your audience.

You can obtain these details from industry forums, Yahoo Answers, Twitter advanced search and Google+ Communities.

• Blogs by competitors that are related to the topic – you can check out whether your competitors have written something on the topic you have opted to use through tools such as SEMRush. If they have then it can be useful in helping you improve on the content that already exists out there. That’s right your competition, is a great place to look.

Come up with a recording system

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Evernote, Word ,or Excel all work well with this and the system will feature such aspects as related keywords, title of the content, backlinks to the content, content link, engagements which include things like comments or social shares as well as interesting points and keyword phrases. This kind of a recording system will provide the structure required in a research.  It also makes sure you don’t forget something you ran across.

 

Search for all details available about the topic

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Since there may be other content that is similar to the topic you are writing on, you should even go the extra mile by making the content much more detailed. This will entail such inclusions as;

• Presentations from Prezi or SlideShare.
• Podcasts and webinars from Google search or webinar and podcast directories.
• Resource downloads, tools and widgets from Apple iTunes or Google app store, Google search or WordPress plugin directory.
• Infographics and images from Instagram, Infographic directories, Google image search and Pinterest.
• Videos from TED talks, YouTube, 99U and Vimeo.
• Or even think about making your own video.

Keywords selection

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For the research process to be termed a success and for you to experience ease in conducting it, keywords are an essential ingredient that will come in handy in promoting this. They act as a guiding light throughout the research period and will also be included in the article for the content to remain relevant.

Let’s not forget that it is what the search engines look for in order to see if our information is relevant to the people who are searching for our terms I have written a lot here about it so I will not rehash all of that.  I do want to mention that you don’t want to overdo it with keywords when you actually sit down and write.  Pick one keyword per article and use it in the beginning of the blog and the end, then write naturally.

You can find such keywords and others related to these on Google search, HubSpot keyword tool as well as KWFinder.com, and of course my favorite, Jaaxy.

At times you might want the results you obtain during the research process to be specific. To achieve this, you will need to type the keyword phrase in addition to the name of the content on the search engine. An example could be ‘flight carriers + template’ or ‘healthy diets + stats’ and so on and so forth.

The key to achieving quality content is to dig a bit for your research and this is what will help you gain access to the hearts of various readers out there. The process discussed herein, cuts out a probability that you will just copy content but instead will be used as a guide for you on how to research for a blog.  You can find out this and more from my top recommendation or you can read about all my recommendations here.

As always please leave any comments or questions below.  Also please let me know how you do your research and what works for you.