After blogging for 11 years, among the top challenges for me some days is figuring out what to write. Yes, I do keep a list of things to write and there are dozens of half finished drafts on my blog. So why do I still run into this problem?

Most times it’s simply because I’m uninspired by my list of topics. Sometimes, I don’t necessarily want to write from my list but write about topics that are hot right now. Today, This week. Current hot topics may not be evergreen but they have their place. So warm up your bookmark folder because you’ll want to refer to these sites.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a fantastic tool for finding what content is being shared the most and who are the top influencers. You can only do a limited number of free searches so make sure you know exactly what you want to search for before you try. The down side: It can be pricey.

I Am On Demand

Love I Am On Demand and completely free to boot. Naturally, you can’t expect it to have the same type of data as a paid tool, but definitely one tool you want to pull out every time.

Topsy

Topsy is also free. I find the results a little difficult to read and often mixed with highly irrelevant items. So make sure you use phrases enclosed with quotes for a more accurate search. The other nice thing about this is you can drill down by language. Very handy for those who create content for local audiences. Also, check out the advanced search feature.

Medium (Top Stories)

Medium’s posts seem to get a lot of traction on social media. At least to me it does because the only time I come across posts from Medium are through Facebook and more often than not, by then, they have been shared – a lot. While it may not show you nice analytics in specific categories, it’s work a peek to see if anything strikes your fancy.

News.me

News.me will send you a digest of what your friends have shared on social media. Pretty neat, but it relies on your network’s data. I imagine if your social network is vastly different from your audience, you may get some skewed results. Still be interesting to see.

Twitter

There’s actually two ways to use Twitter for this. The first is to take a quick look at what’s trending. The second is to actually do a search for your keyword phrase. After you search, you’ll get the opportunity to drill down by Top Tweets, Live Tweets, Accounts, Photos and Videos.

Oh and don’t forget, you can also search by hashtag.

Facebook

Like Twitter, Facebook has a trending feature that’s worth taking a peek at. You can also search for a lot of different things on Facebook. Among my favorite is hashtag search (which is another reason to use hashtags but that’s another story).

EpicBeat

EpicBeat is a very promising tool. Love the charts that give you a general overview of your keyword phrase’s popularity across various social networks. Of particular interest to me is the chart showing the phrase’s best days to publish and how many Tweets a day are ideal for this phrase. Some very interesting data here.

Right Relevance

Right Relevance is still in beta. Pretty interesting. I do like you can see the conversations around your keyword phrase.

Google Trends

The good old standby, that’s Google Trends. While it doesn’t give you hard stats especially where it relates to social media but it’s a great tool to gauge the general interest of a particular topic.

News Whip

News Whip ranks content from around the world based on “Velocity” which is how quickly a story gains popularity through social media. Very interesting results. You can search for your term of choice, but you can drill down by country and by broad topic.

Reddit

While you may not find nice charts and stuff, but when you need a hot topic to write right now, try checking the hot and trending lists on Reddit. Drill down to Subreddits because that’s where you’re going to find the most relevant questions and content types your audience is interested in.