Have you ever been stuck on coming up with writing ideas for your blog, niche site, or a client? Twitter can be a very valuable tool when it comes to generating writing ideas, if you know how to use it. Here are some ways to come up with content topics using Twitter.
Follow People in Your Niche
Twellow Directory Search Results
One of the best ways to find out what is important now on a particular subject matter is to follow the top people in your niche. The authorities on any given topic (most likely the users with a high amount of followers) are going to be writing or at least sharing the latest articles and news on your topic.
Keep in mind, I am not suggesting you rip off anyone else’s articles or ideas. But if you read an article and feel like you have a different perspective or insight into alternative ideas that the original author might have left out, you could reference the original article in yours and then share how it inspired you to share additional information.
For example, an article about ways to do something could inspire you to write more ways to do it, or an article about reasons someone likes something could inspire reasons you dislike it. If you feel an original article about ways to do something is too technical for most users, you can write an article to simplify the process walk beginning users through the steps. Be creative in ways you can make your article even more valuable than others.
So how do you find the experts in a niche on Twitter? Check out Twitter directories such as Twellow and WeFollow. Simply search for a particular tag, and you get a list of users with their profile bio, sorted by their number of followers. You can take the top five, ten, or however many users you choose, follow them and / or add them to a Twitter list, and monitor their activity.
Check Out Current Trends
Trending Topics on What the Trend
Keeping an eye on current trends on Twitter can help you not only find out when your niche is the talk of the town and what people are talking about, but if you write your article based on whatever the trend is quickly enough, you can give it exposure beyond your followers by adding the trending #hashtag.
To find out what is currently trending, you can look at your right hand column in Twitter underneath your searches and lists and see the Worldwide trends or select trends for a particular city / country. You can also check out sites like What the Trend, Trendistic, and Hashtags to see more than just the current top 10 trending topics, recent trending topics, and more information about them.
Setup Searches
Saved Searches in HootSuite
Monitoring conversations daily on a topic is likely to generate great ideas. It will help you keep an eye out for any trends, as well as see if lots of people are particularly interested in something or have specific questions. Depending on how quickly you research and write, you may be able to get in and answer people’s questions with your article. Assuming it is a direct answer to questions, you can even @reply the users who asked the questions.
You can save your searches in Twitter to show up in the right hand column, or as columns in applications such as HootSuite and TweetDeck.
Use the Advanced Search
Twitter Advanced Search Results
If searching a particular topic is not specific enough, you can always do an advanced Twitter search. The advanced search allows you to add in particular parameters such as choosing a particular keyword without other words, searching within conversations for Twitter users in a particular region, checking if the conversation includes a question, specifying a date range, and more.
Advanced search results can be saved as an RSS feed in your feed aggregator, or you can bookmark the search results page. I’m not sure if they can be added to HootSuite or TweetDeck – at the time of testing, the Twitter API was running super slow and never processed the results in either platform.
Twitter Topic Generation
Have you used Twitter to come up with writing ideas? Are there more ways you can think of to utilize Twitter for topic brainstorming?
This post brought to you by Kristi Hines
Kristi Hines is creator of Kikolani which focuses on blogging tips and social networking. Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Kristi has written 310 awesome article(s) for Kikolani.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice post. I was thinking damn I would have to wait for Friday
Glad your getting some mid week posts in 
I was actually testing a link I was making to your site to make sure it works 
Anyway I don’t want to distract from the post but I never use anyone’s lead tip suggestions on what to write hence the reason my blog is so whacked LOL 
Wow You have to have more then 257 articles on this site 
Have a great day
Just stopping by and I will say that this is great info on some leads and topic tips but I try to specialize in writing things that people aren’t thinking about, Think it but don’t want to say it and also a big factor is if I think people will like it ir not ? That is where I need to work on
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Well, this could work for you… if you see a lot of people talking about one thing, but not something else that you think is more important, you could ask all those people on a trending topic why they haven’t thought of the more important topic!
I spent part of this day thinking about how dumb my comment sounded
LOL
my bad
Kristi-
Haha, did this post come about because of my comments on Twitter?
I found this particularly informative and will enjoy becoming a Twitter-Pro with it.
New from zach@Mid Mo Mortgage Feb 4 – Senate to Vote on Job-Creation Legislation Next Week
Actually, it came from a conversation I was having at work about how I come up with things to write about.
Twitter is a great medium to generate ideas but not only searching or seeing trends, also from the social media point of view. In other words: interacting with other bloggers/twitters.
Making questions, polls, answering to doubts someone can have is a good way to brainstorming.
All the best and keep up with your excellent articles!
Gera
New from Gera @ SweetsFoodsBlog Comment System, Award, Feedburner and Ten in 10 Event
Good point! Interaction can lead to brainstorming new writing ideas.
For me, this little tip is probably the most important one: “But if you read an article and feel like you have a different perspective or insight into alternative ideas” – it’s so simple, yet, I’ve never really thought of doing it, or at least getting ideas through Twitter, for it.
I’ll try to keep it in mind from now on!
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Great tips Kristi! I use many tactics to come up with ideas, Twitter is one, but comments on mine and other blogs are a great one too….
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I’ve screwed up my entire twitter following/follower items by playing with the twitter API a bit too much. I have no clue who I’m following aside from a few select people, so getting ideas from my own list is probably not going to happen.
I think I need to start all over with Twitter, and truly only follow those that I care about following. I sense a weekend of fun heading my way. I’m keeping this post close to me when I do take that dive.
Cheers Kristi!
New from Wayne John I just can’t keep my hands to myself
This is why you always have an extra account for testing
New from zach@Mid Mo Mortgage Feb 4 – Senate to Vote on Job-Creation Legislation Next Week
I hear ya. At one point I had about 30 accounts spinning, lol
New from Wayne John I just can’t keep my hands to myself
I find more news ideas from forums rather than Twitter. But I have to admit that sometimes a ground breaking news that I saw came first on Twitter than anywhere else
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I feel more comfortable with Twitter these days more than Facebook, it’s a great source for ideas and also for news, it’s not only the fastest way to know about what’s happening, but I love it because I can know “what’s going to happen”!
And this is great if we have enough daily time for Twitter, so for me I open a page on a side of my laptop to check it from time to time and see what people say!
By the way, I love the way you embedded images to this post, I will certainly snap it
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I think the big advantage over facebook, at least from what I can gather as a complete newbie, is that you can just see what is new with everyone. You don’t have to see every darn picture, video, spam application, and what have you.
Still has the spam, though. (I noticed some people just tweet current hot trends and then link to a spam website to get traffic!)
New from zach@Mid Mo Mortgage Feb 4 – Senate to Vote on Job-Creation Legislation Next Week
Twitter is on of my fave resources for information about topics that I’m interested in. Sometimes I get giddy when I follow conversations from “experts” in my industry who are batting around ideas on Twitter. I’ve even dived in on occasion to put in my “two cents” but I hadn’t even considered it as jumping off point for creating/writing blog posts. That makes so much sense. Brilliant!
These are great suggestions. I have occasionally gotten an idea from twitter, but never remember to actually use it as a regular tool for finding content. I really need to make a list of all the great suggestions I get from your blog and look at it daily.
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Brilliant idea! i think i’m going to try this soon
This is more like a spying activity with good intention
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I agree with everything you’ve said here. Twitter is like a forum where people ask questions, sometimes they get answers and sometimes they don’t. But, it’s a great way to scout for ideas. What I just usually do is to keep track of tweets. I will surely be applying what you said. Thanks for sharing.
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It stands to reason that Twitter would be awesome..it’s micro blogging and we all know (or should know) other blogs within your niche is one of if not the best source for topic ideas.
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Nice nice… I will look for Twitter when I run out of idea. Now have no time issue to post only.
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Twitter is one of the news source now, for real time and using twitter for finding ideas for blog articles is really brilliant. Writing about people talk this days will give our blog a big chance to get more exposure on the blogoshpere.
A friend said that we must maximize Twitter benefits and this is one of them, Thanks Kristi.
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I’ve never thought to use Twitter as a way to get ideas, but now that you’ve described it so well it makes a lot of sense.
Some of the ways that I have used though that worked quite well is listening to talk back radio. I’ve written a few articles on something that was hot at the time. Led to quite a few visitors from the search engines as well.
New from Sire@WassupBlog How Twitter Can Actually Earn You Some Cash
Great points I get stuck sometimes on a topic to write about for my blog. These tips will really come in handy for me Im gonna apply them next time Im logged onto twitter, thanks for the handy tips appreciate it!
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I agree twitter is a great resource but prefer to use Google alerts to keep up with current trends in any given niche.
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