How to use forums to find topics for online content
Source: Keyword research: the definitive guide.
Today I will show how to use online forums to find topics for your content.
Suppose we have a website about bathroom renovation. Let’s find topics in this field that we will use in our articles or videos.
What concepts people usually associate with bathroom renovation?
Robots won’t help us
There are online tools for getting keyword ideas.
Here are the keyword suggestions that Google Keyword Planner gives for bathroom renovation:
- Renovation ideas
- Sydney bathroom
- Brisbane bathroom
- Perth bathroom
- Cost bathroom
Firstly, those keywords sound artificial and boring. Secondly, the competition for those keywords is very high because everybody uses those online tools.
Marvel of association
Human brain can associate different concepts in the way that no computer program can emulate today.
Our goal is to find interests, problems and goals of real people within ‘bathroom renovation’ domain. One easy way to do that is to read what people actually discuss on forums.
Forum research technique
- Search “renovation forum” in Google.
- Read ‘bathroom’ sections on those forums and make a list of popular threads.
Here are some popular topics I found on renovateforum.com:
- Ceramalite or laminex panels for shower walls?
- Caesarstone
- Average price of a new kitchen/bathroom?
- Alternative splashbacks to glass and tile
- DIY Frameless shower screens - thoughts?
- Stainless steel splash back
- Installing new toilet
Sounds a bit more interesting and human than the keywords Google suggested, doesn’t it?
Mission accomplished. Now what?
We can now be sure that people will be interested in what we are going to write about. Our next task is to chose one of the topics and create a very specific content about it.
