Revised January 10, 2024
Revised March 1, 2023
Revised May 29, 2020
Revised February 13, 2019
Revised January 7, 2017
Great content—the kind that resonates with your audience—starts with great topic ideas. Often, the best ideas come from talking with your customers, or with customer-facing employees in your organization, like people in sales or customer service. Sometimes they magically come to you while you’re out for a morning run or enjoying an evening glass of wine on the deck. At other times, the best ideas may come from research: discovering what are your customers, competitors, and industry influencers talking about online.
What are the best tools for finding great content ideas? The best apps for capturing, organizing and prioritizing ideas? Here are almost two dozen of the best content ideation tools for finding and capturing bursts of inspiration.
Again, as for all posts in this series, tools will be shown with the number of results returned by Google on a search for reviews of that tool (not necessarily the actual number of reviews) and example showcase reviews. Links to all showcase reviews are included near the end of this post.
1) Google+ Communities
Google Review Count: 466
This was a great place to search for topic ideas across the vast number of “Communities” on Google+. But since Google+ shut down in April 2019, there was no longer any point to this tool.
Sample review: “Join some relevant Google+ Communities to get some content ideas from the discussions taking place.” — Online Marketing Institute
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Online Marketing Institute
2) Popurls
Google Review Count: 341
Popurls is a mashup of the web’s most visited social news sites and portals that captures headlines from its sources in near-realtime. Stories are sorted by source rather than topic, but are searchable.
Sample review: “Popurls is a dashboard for the latest Web buzz.” — PR Daily
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: PR Daily
3) Wunderlist
Google Review Count: 283
Wunderlist was a great tool to organize and share your to-do, work, grocery, movies and household lists, as well as to set reminders and collaborate with team members. Microsoft swallowed it up and closed it down in May 2020. For those who miss it, here’s a great list of alternatives to Wunderlist.
Sample review: “Wunderlist is a powerful list-platform that allows marketers to organize beautiful and powerful lists for content strategy and editorial calendar use.” — Express Writers
Pricing: free to contact the vendor
Showcase reviews: Katie Lance, B2B PR Sense Blog, Express Writers
4) Evernote
Google Review Count: 263
A simple yet highly effective app for capturing ideas, to-do lists, and photos that are searchable and instantly available on all your devices. Notes can also be shared for group collaboration.
Sample review: “It’s a one-stop for gathering all of your thoughts, all of those articles you want to save for later, and so, so much more…The Evernote webclipper plugin allows you to save online articles and info to a notebook of your choice. It even allows you to move emails to a notebook! The formatting is simple and easy to use.” — B2B PR Sense Blog
Pricing: free to $50 per year
Showcase reviews: Online Marketing Institute, Anders Orsander, Shift Communications, BuzzBlogger, Perception, Katie Lance, B2B PR Sense Blog, Cent Muruganandam, Quick Sprout, Marketing Insider Group (Strategy), Blogging Wizard, SmartBug Media, Express Writers, Social Media Examiner, Robbie Richards
5) Xmind
Google Review Count: 250
Open-source mind-mapping tool to gather ideas and structure them in logical way. Useful for individual brainstorming or team collaboration.
Sample review: “Organize your thoughts, brainstorm new ideas, and visualize complex relationships with this mind mapping tool.” — Wrike
Pricing: free to $79 per year, plus multi-user corporate plans
Showcase reviews: Wrike
6) Quora
Google Review Count: 198
The ultimate Q&A website. Ask a question and see the most popular answers, answer current questions, or search to find questions and answers on specific topics.
Sample review: “The great thing about Quora is that you can search by keywords and find questions that are being posed related to your niche and the answers that have been given. Now you will have both hot topics for your business and some great answers from which to create your content.” — Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Online Marketing Institute, PR Daily, BuzzBlogger, Perception System, Cent Muruganandam, StoreYa Blog, Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
7) Scoop.it
Google Review Count: 191
A content curation tool to help discover, curate and publish content to increase online visibility online and support thought leadership, content marketing, and social media marketing efforts.
Sample review: “Turns your content creation into a magazine, while it can also be embedded on WordPress sites too.” — Maximize Social Business
Pricing: free to $67 per year
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Maximize Social Business, Catherine Pham/SlideShare, Express Writers, Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
8) Blog Topic Generator
Google Review Count: 191
Enter any three terms (preferably nouns) and HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator will display multiple headline options.
Sample review: “This is a fun little tool which, while useful, shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It’s great for those moments when you’re completely out of ideas. Just be sure to treat the topics it generates with a big pinch of salt.” — Marketing Insider Group (Marketing)
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Buffer Social, Social Media Today, Perception System, BuzzBlogger, Marketing Insider Group (Content)
9) TrendSpottr
Google Review Count: 179
Discover emerging trends, viral content, and key influencers on any topic, across the web, in real time. Valuable not only for content marketing but also crisis management, influencer outreach, advertising allocations, and market research.
Sample review: “TrendSpottr is one of the popular tools that help to show what’s trending. Using this tool, you can…generate new ideas, search keywords to see the trendiest content. A real-time trend intelligence platform is offered by TrendSpottr that allows predicting emerging contents, sentiment for any topic, influencers ” and more. — Perception System
Pricing: contact vendor
Showcase reviews: Online Marketing Institute, Perception System
10) FaqFox
Google Review Count: 176
A free online market research tool. Enter a topic or keyword phrase, then either enter websites to scrape or choose from a selection of popular content areas (e.g., business, health, tech…) and get a list of results showing what types of answers your prospective audience is searching for.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards
11) SimpleMind
Google Review Count: 175
SimpleMind does for mind-mapping what Evernote does for notes. It allows you to organize ideas and visualize connections while adding notes and images, collaborating with team members, and accessing all of your content across devices.
Sample review: “SimpleMind for iOS is a Mind Mapping tool that turns your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch into a brainstorming, idea collection and thought structuring device.” — THINKing
Pricing: multiple price levels from free up to about $900 (purchase; no recurring fees)
Showcase reviews: THINKing
12) AllTop
Google Review Count: 171
The online “magazine rack” highlights the most popular online content across a huge number of topics, from Acupuncture and Advertising to Zombies and Zoology.
Sample review: “Aggregates the best of the web. Here you can find all of the top blogs on any given topic. Simply select a category and you’ll be taken to a one-page dashboard with the best blogs in that industry AND their 5 latest blog posts. An endless number of content ideas all on one page.” — BuzzBlogger
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Cent Muruganandam
13) Bottlenose
Google Review Count: 170
A “smart data discovery” tool that makes it easy to get real-time insights about the trends that impact your business. Track consumer and audience intelligence. product and customer intelligence, risks and threats, and competitors.
Sample review: “Bottlenose provides social media listening and analytics for marketers, including a free search tool for tracking trending news and topics.” — Online Marketing Institute
Pricing: contact the vendor
Showcase reviews: Online Marketing Institute, Lilach Bullock
14) Google News Search
Google Review Count: 158
Search the top news stories on Google—world, national or local, plus business, technology, entertainment, sports, technology, and health news.
Sample review: “Google not only gives you a broad view of the news, but it also gives you a way to identify the most recent stories from media and reporters.” — PR Daily
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: PR Daily
15) Content Idea Generator
Google Review Count: 157
A simple tool to generate headline ideas. Enter any topic or keyword phrase and see the tool displays back. Sometimes useful, always fun.
Sample review: “This helps you figure out content ideas. I love this tool to help get my creativity flowing. Check it out.” — Entrepreneur
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Buffer Social, BuzzBlogger, Perception System, Entrepreneur
16) BigDig
Google Review Count: 151
BigDig is a “sandboxful” of thought-starting recommendations collected from great thinkers and writers. Click to dig up an idea. Don’t like it? Dig again.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: THINKing
17) Jump Start
Google Review Count: 130
An online brainstorming tool that helps develop ideas based on challenges, related adjectives, and insights.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: THINKing
18) Techmeme
Google Review Count: 124
Source for the top real-time news stories about the tech industry. A thoughtful combination of both algorithmic and human editing offers the best means for curating in a space as broad as technology.
Sample review: “Techmeme is a tech news curation site that will keep you up to date on breaking tech stories.” — PR Daily
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: PR Daily
19) NewsWhip Spike
Google Review Count: 119
Find important content, stories and influencers, in real-time. See what’s engaging your audience today. Spike detects news stories from a vast array of sources then uses social media interactions to identify the top trending stories in each topic area.
Pricing: $299 per month to “enterprise” (request a quote)
Showcase reviews: PR Daily
20) ContentIdeator
Google Review Count: 93
ContentIdeator WAS a site that helped you find good topics to write about and lets you generate content ideas that your audience reads and shares. Appears to now be dead.
Pricing: $79 per month
Showcase reviews: Quick Sprout
21) Tweak Your Biz Title Generator
Google Review Count: 75
Possibly the best title generator, this tool enables you to enter a topic or phrase and get back a huge number of title ideas.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger
22) ShortForm.tv
Google Review Count: 62
Per TechRadar, ShortForm.tv WAS a site that “scans an array of online video sources, identifying the latest viral hits on your behalf. And all you have to do is visit ShortForm.tv, choose a channel – ‘Facebook Hits,’ ‘HaHa Funny,’ ‘Animated Shorts’ and so on – then sit back and watch a continuous stream of video content – no more manual searching required.” Like ContentIdeator above, this site appears now to be dead.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: TechRadar
23) Inbound Now Blog Title Idea Generator
Google Review Count: 20
Scroll through common title formats you can insert your keyword(s) into, or use the search feature for additional ideas.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger
More Tools
Discover
Google Review Count: 135
Identify relevant content across a wide range of topics, use trend mining to discover popular topics and conversations, and collaborate by saving sharing ideas with teams.
Pricing: $25 per user per month
Juicer
Google Review Count: 64
Easily create a news feed for your site or blog based on social media accounts, hashtags, or topics. Customize the look of your feed, filter results, and moderate displayed posts.
Pricing: free, $19 or $99 per month
FATJOE Blog Post Title Headline Generator
Google Review Count: 50
Both fun and practical, this free tool lets you enter a topic and instantly generate a list of potential blog post titles (e.g., “Miley Cyrus and <topic>: 10 Surprising Things They Have in Common”). This page also provides helpful guidance on how to develop your own killer headlines for posts.
Pricing: free
LogicBalls Content Idea Generator
Google Review Count: 43
This free AI-powered content idea generator saves time and helps bloggers and content creators plan a steady stream of fresh and relevant content ideas for blog posts, social media, videos, podcasts, Instagram, YouTube, and more to engage the audience and boost online presence. Simply enter your subject or a few related keywords, click on the “Generate” button, and you’ll get a relevant list of ideas.
Showcase Review Links
Anders Orsander
B2B PR Sense Blog
Blogging Wizard
Buffer Social
BuzzBlogger
Catherine Pham/SlideShare
Cent Muruganandam
Lilach Bullock
Entrepreneur
Express Writers
HubSpot
Katie Lance
Marketing Insider Group (Marketing)
Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
Marketing Insider Group (Startup)
Maximize Social Business
Online Marketing Institute
Perception System
PR Daily
Quick Sprout
Robbie Richards
Shift Communications
SmartBug Media
Social Media Examiner
Social Media Today
StoreYa Blog
TechRadar
THINKing
Wrike
This was the fifth post in the Best Online Business Tools series.
#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today
#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools
#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools
#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
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I would like to add Discover to the list.
A data-powered content ideation toolkit.
https://unmetric.com/discover/
It comes with a 4 week free trial and costs less than $25.
Excellent suggestion Martin, Discover has been added!