I've removed some of the basics about Reddit from this article for obvious reasons.

Note: There are screenshots that accompany this content but I can't post them here. Anyway, you know Reddit well already so you'll know what the pictures will be like.

Coming up with new blog post ideas for your blog can be difficult and time-consuming. We’ve all been there. Sitting at our computers trying to work out what we should write about next.

Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are good for building up a following, and sharing posts but aren’t always that useful for generating new ideas for what you should write about. 

One of the best sites to turn to for generating blog post ideas is Reddit. Yes, Reddit – if done right it’s an amazing traffic generator for your blog and for coming up with new blog post ideas.

Reddit has a bit of a reputation for being the home of web geeks, video gamers and the like – but if used properly by bloggers it can be an amazing marketing tool. Reddit is full of useful content that can be mined for blog post ideas, you just need to know how to find them!

Why is Reddit good for generating blog post ideas?

Constantly generating new blog post ideas is hard for marketers of all levels of experience. Reddit is the 5th most visited website in the world and has highly engaged users. According to MediaKix the average Redditor uses the site for 16 minutes per day and visits an average of 10.1 pages per session. With over 300 million users visiting the site per month there is a trove of valuable information for marketers to mine for blog post ideas.

One of the best ways to find ideas for blog posts is to find out what your readers/ customers want to talk about and find out what problems they have. You can search Reddit for content that is generating a lot of upvotes and is been read a lot by the community in your niche, and then rewrite these discussions into a blog post. The fact it is popular on Reddit will make it more likely that it will also be popular on your blog.

Reddit also allows you to ask questions and get answers back from a very knowledgeable group of users in your niche. It’s certainly a lot quicker than having to reach out to industry insiders by email to get their views on topics of interest.

Reddit users can remain anonymous, so they are much more likely to give frank and honest answers to people’s questions. The karma points systems reward people for giving the best answers as well.

So how can you use Reddit to generate great blog post ideas?

1. Start by finding subreddits that are related to your niche:

The easiest way to find subreddits is to search for them on the Reddit.com homepage. For example, let’s say your company offers a tool for bloggers, simply search for blogging and you’ll find reddit.com/r/blogging as the top subreddit, as well as hundreds of more subreddits like r/entrepreneur, r/blogs, r/blogsnark, and r/wordpress…

You can then ‘join’ all the subreddits related to your niche, which will allow you to participate in them by asking questions, responding to questions, and posting other media into them like pictures, videos, and links to your blog posts. It’s a good idea to join a range of subreddits so you can get the most out of the site and get a wider range of views. The problems faced by bloggers writing for their companies will be a lot different from the problems faced by bloggers who write a personal blog.

2. Find out what problems people are having, and what topics are being discussed:

Once you have found a subreddit to explore, search for problems people are having, this will allow you to generate blog posts ideas that help people solve these problems. The easiest way is to filter posts by ‘question’ – which you can do in the right-hand column….

Once we have a list of questions asked by users in the subreddit we can then filter them out by selecting ‘Top Posts’. This will give you the following information:

Straight away you’ve got some great ideas for blog posts, such as:

• Where can I find experts in my niche?
• Should I use a free or paid blogging platform?
• Do blog posts need to be lengthy to make a blog profitable?
• How many images should I have in a blog post?
• Should I embed YouTube videos into my blog posts?

You can then go deeper into a specific question… 

If we look at the question “Do blog posts need to be lengthy to make a blog profitable and a success?” …

We can then find the top answers, such as this one….

And then use this information to help shape the structure, and topic of your blog post. Make sure you read through the replies to learn the best answers. A deep dive into the answers will allow you to see what other problems Redditors have had and what solutions have worked for them.

It’s important to also pay attention to the specific phrases people are using to describe their problems, and solutions. Tracking these keywords and then using them in your own writing can be very effective when it comes to search engine optimization. A great tool to use to automate keyword research is called Keyworddit, which can be used to find the most used phrases within a specific subreddit. Go to Keyworddit and enter your subreddit, in our case ‘blogging’:

And the website will then show all the top phrases within the subreddit…

As you can see from the results, phrases such as ‘creative commons images’, ‘make extra money’ and ‘social media platforms’ rank very high as phrases used within subreddits a lot. This could be used to create blog posts around where to source the best creative commons compliant pictures from, the best ways to monetize your blog, and the best social media platforms to use to promote your blog.

Another good way to get content ideas is to post questions yourself. Reddit is a great tool for crowdsourcing research. You can post your questions the relevant subreddits, inviting followers of that subreddit to give you their best answers. For example, you could ask “what websites do you use to find photos for your blog posts?”. You could use the best answers to write a blog post about the best websites on the internet to source pictures for blog posts.

Reddit has a subreddit called ‘AskReddit’ too. Bloggers can use this tool to search for questions people have asked the Reddit community within their niche/ industry. It will show you questions asked across several different subreddits. For example, if you search for blogging questions you get the following:

You could also run an AMA or ‘Ask Me Anything’. These are crowdsourced question and answer sessions that you can run. One idea would be to get your company CEO or a Chief Product Officer to run them, and then mine the questions and answers for blog post ideas. The same can be done for industry professionals’ AMA’s that are related to your niche.

Here is an AMA run by a successful blogger…

Look at top questions and answers like this one…

Throughout this thread, there is an amazing trove of information for generating blog post ideas. In the example above you could do a post about the best ways to monetize your blog using the information from this AMA (or a collection of them). You could even do a post that essentially just reports on what the AMA was about, and the best information from it. This would be especially good if the person doing it is well-known in your industry and is offering great insights.

3. Create and share your content

The final step is to create your new blog post. Using all that you have learned you will be able to write a much more informative article for your readers. You could also turn what you have learned into a series of posts, that could dive much deeper into the topic over several blog posts. This is especially useful if it is a large topic with a lot to cover. You could also use the information you have learned to create informative videos and do a podcast – even inviting top Reddit users to be on the podcast with you!

If you’ve followed the steps above you should have plenty of questions, answers, and suggestions to incorporate into a new blog post. The best posts will not just repeat what you have discovered on Reddit, they will interpret and present the information gained into a completing and informative post. If you include quotes from a Redditor in your blog post don’t forget to link to their Reddit post and then send them a message letting them know you have mentioned them. You should also go back to the Reddit threads you used above and share your blog post with the whole community. You can even private message the original forum poster and tell them about your blog post that answers their question. If you answer the question well, then your content will be viewed in the future as well by future users looking at the forum. 

You should also share your blog post to your followers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, as well as to your email subscribers.

I hope by now you know how effectively Reddit can be used to generate great content ideas for your next blog post. Here’s a recap:

• Firstly, you need to find the best subreddits to join. This will allow you to interact with users in your specific niche.
• Then you can use look for questions people in the group have asked to do with your niche, run an AMA, look at the top questions and answers in other people’s AMA’s, do keyword research, and ask your own questions to the group.
• The last step is to use the information gleaned and turn it into useful blog posts (taking into account keyword research) for your readers, and a wider group of readers that are searching for information to solve their problems to do with your niche.

To get the most out of Reddit you need to use the site and become engaged with your relevant subreddit communities. This will help you stay up to date with industry trends and get ahead of your competitors, as well as generate great blog post ideas. Good luck!

This article first appeared on Writing Studio.

Have you guys ever found success generating blog post ideas from Reddit? Why do you think it's crap? Or why do you think it's good as part of your strategy. Would be keen to hear your 2 cents.