Getting ideas for new topics.

[Sam1]

Hopefully this is going to be a short article on: Getting ideas for new topics. You may have seen me on WebGurubb posting say 10 topics in a row. You are probably wondering - how on earth does he do it? Hasn't everything already been discussed on WebGurubb? As a forum becomes larger, new members are supposed to bring unique topics onto a board which keep the forum going. These are specific problems that members can help solve. Sometimes this doesn't happen and you are needing to jumpstart a forum with a bunch of new content. Here is what I do to create these new topics:

• Look for old topics. There are only a few active members on here that were on WebGurubb in the beginning. Other people are going to have important things to add to the topic and they weren't able to originally. I've also seen topics which, I thought, were good topics but had no replies in them. Those can be bumped or a new topic made.

• Seasonal topics are always going to bring new content into a forum. This could be a Christmas or Holiday post or something niche specific such as the regular pagerank updates which occur (and are rather important in the webmaster world).

• News items are always hot topics. If you haven't already, you should follow blogs which post the latest news on your forums niche. When something new comes out, there are always aspects of that news which you can discuss and will spark topic ideas.

• Explore other areas. This will be a little vague- and thus depend on your creative mind- but you should explore other areas of interest. They may spark some ideas for your niche. For example: It's 2009 and you are one of the first people to discover an exciting game called Minecraft. On your webmaster based forum you may look at some of the business opportunities which exist within the game such as server hosting.

• Other forums in your niche. I never attempt to take hot topics which the forum is discussing at that point but I sometimes delve into the pages of topics which have been created a while back to see what ideas I can come up with. On occasion this does just involve a slight rewording of the topic and question but it could also mean approaching the topic from a new angle or subset.

• Google Analytics. This is a treasure trove for the forum owner. Look back at the search terms visitors have been using to get to your site. Often these topic titles will spark ideas. This is one of the best ways for the owner of an established forum to find new discussion topics.

Sam Hambling is the owner of www.holderhost.com among other sites.

 

[xpl0iter]

Nice article sam!
Thanke for posting it!

 

[JLogan]

Great article sam!

 

[Sam1]

Thank you very much guys! I wrote it pretty quickly so there are bound to be some errors...

 

[lludawg]

Just wanted to say that I think the Google Analytic site has changed. I really believe this is a good idea, is there still a way to find out how many people are searching up a certain keyword?

 

[Jordan]

Just wanted to say that I think the Google Analytic site has changed. I really believe this is a good idea, is there still a way to find out how many people are searching up a certain keyword?

I'm afraid very few keywords get logged now. Google has secured their site completely now from both logged in users and guests. Everything is now encrypted. So keywords being linked to your site will no longer be seen from Google Analytics.

That is of course only from organic search. Paid keywords still get provided statistics.