Market Related Forums

Busy forums related to your target market are an absolute gem of a place to find information to write articles on for 2 reasons.

Before I tell you why I must point out the word BUSY, you should be gathering a list of popular forums within your niche anyway because they are useful for so many reasons. Don't waste your time with forums that aren't regularly posted to, I would say a free public forum should be updated hourly at the most any longer than that don't bother.

Back to the 2 reasons, first a popular forum will be full of posts asking How do I .....? or Does anyone know how to....? type questions this tells you what your market wants to know about. Second knowledgable people in your market will make helpful posts and from the feedback/ replies of the other users in the forum you will be able to see what are the hot topics.

If you can't get article/ post ideas from the popular forums in your market then there is seriously something wrong.

Other Blogs

As I mentioned in the forums section above you should be gathering a list of the top blogs targeting your market. Not just for competitive reasons but also for ideas on what works in your niche.

Other blogs can give you an indication of what is hot in your market. This is especially useful if the niche you're in, is something you're not personally interested in, which by the way is something I would advise against for your first blog.

Article Directories

Article directories are another golden source of information for ideas. The thing you should be looking for here is what articles are being read the most. The top directories like ezinearticles.com will tell you the most read and downloaded articles in your category.

This will tell you what topics are hot in your market and they can help you learn how to write a good and informative article.

Google Alerts

Google being the smartest search engine in the world from a marketing/ webmaster point of view has a utility called Google Alerts.

If you're not taking advantage of this great little tool or worse haven't even heard of it I suggest you get yourself over to (URL) after reading this article and find out more.

Google alerts will send you an email with links to stories for keywords you specify on a hourly or daily basis, this is so useful because the quicker you react to big news in your market by publishing a post on your blog the more likely your traffic will increase and your visitors will come to you because you're "in the know" giving you expert status (priceless).

PLR Content

Last we have PLR content or Private Label Rights content. I love PLR because I am not a natural writer, actually I hate writing which can be a big disadvantage on the internet.

PLR is great because you can have pre written articles or ebooks that you can put in your own voice. Granted a lot of PLR is questionable quality BUT I would rather have something to start with rather than a blank notepad file.

You can then put in your own voice and do your research to better the quality which to me is fantastic.

I hope these tips have helped you see how you can get an endless supply of ideas for updating your blog consistenly with quality content your visitors will find both useful and helpful.

Thanks for reading

Copyright (c) 2009 Pete Moore