Blogging. It is so much easier when you know what to write about.

Even so, writing is a resource intensive exercise.

Little wonder, we want to get the most bang for our efforts. If each post we write satisfies every reader deeply, wouldn’t that be grand?

While there will be hits and misses, here’s how you can learn to be a “topic radar”. Practice it enough, you’ll end up writing a lot more crowd-pleasing posts than not.

Let’s get started.

Find Out What People Are Asking

This is a great place to start. The way the Internet is, you’ll never find a shortage of places to find questions people are asking. Very often, you’ll find questions specific to your industry. Find questions at:

• Yahoo Answers
• StackExchange
• Quora
• Facebook groups about your industry
• Comments area of blogs you read
• Webinars you attend
• Offline seminars you attend
• Questions people ask you

Stop By The Magazines (and Tabloids)

Print publications are expensive to produce. You know they aren’t going to waste their time and money on some just any topic that comes by. They also have to keep advertisers happy by ensuring the magazines are bought and read. Piggy back off their research.

Trends

Figure out what the current trends are. Again, with the tools we have today this takes very little know-how. Go to places like:

• Google Trends
• Twitter
• And Facebook (you may not see this if it’s not enabled for your account)

Watch For Product Launches

In some industries (like tech), product launches can get talked about for days before and after the event. Though time sensitive in nature, write a good piece around it, you’ll be sure to catch some eyeballs. The nice thing about consumer tech launches – you can still write about it even if you don’t blog about tech.

Be Aware of What People Share

If you’re on Facebook (you’ll see it on other social networks too but it’s more apparent on Facebook), you’ll sometimes notice certain posts get shared over and over by friends. Some things keep cropping up because people talk about it and comment on it. Take a note of those!

These 5 suggestions should keep you plenty busy. If you want more, how about 30 Quick Blogging Ideas? It’s a free download and will definitely help you be a more efficient “topic radar”.

If you want ideas people have already thought up for you, be sure you are on the BlogEnergizer list. You can also get daily topics via the BlogEnergizer blog topic ideas app for Android, iPhone, iPad and iPod.