You’ve probably heard the advice to use content discovery tools to create content for your blog, when you ask someone “I don’t know what to write next?”
That’s the great advice, especially for bloggers who love writing terrific blog posts on daily basis.
Today, I will show you six free content research tools that you can use to create engaging content.
But first…
What is content discovery?
Content discovery is the process to find trendy and relevant topics in your niche that your audience loves to read and share.
Having a great content is important when you want attract more audience, build trust and authority. Using content discovery tools you can do content research fast.
What is a content discovery tool?
A content discovery tool is software that recommends brilliant and personalized content ideas to the users for their query.
There are many free content discovery tools available online that people are using for news articles, academic journal articles to television.
Why should you use content discovery tools?
People who succeed with blogging do two things better than others:
First, they learn the important blogging skills that get them results.
Second, they create grammatical error free content that attract readers and convert.
I know what you’re thinking…
How do I write a blog post that goes viral and increases audience engagement?
Well, my friend, I am going to make it easy for you.
Let’s get started.
#1. Hunt the viral content topics at Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo probably one of the best content discovery tools available online.
It is content marketers’ favorite content marketing tool.
However, you can use Buzzsumo’s basic features for free. But if you want to use its other amazing features, you have to upgrade your free account.
Let me show you how to use BuzzSumo to find brilliant content ideas.
For example – you have a fitness blog. You probably want search keywords six pack abs, flat abs, burn fat, etc.
Right?
First, I head over to Buzzsumo and enter a keyword “sixpack abs” and selected six months to know how articles related to six pack abs have performed in last six months.
It will give me the idea if I have chosen the right keyword or not.
After that, I look for the content that has lots of social shares.
As you can see, I have some out of the box keywords that I can use to write my next blog post.
Let’s borrow some titles from the Buzzfeed’s articles which have lots of comments.
See what I found:
Another one…
Now, I can use these titles for my blog.
Original Titles:
- 17 Secretly Gross Things Every Girl Has Done
- 22 Jokes That Are Just Really Fucking Clever
Modified Titles with keywords found from Buzzsumo:
- 9 Healthy Fitness Training Pro Fitness Experts Do
- 11 Healthy Fitness Training Secrets Everyone Should Know
- 22 Straight Up Abs That Just Really Fucking Awesome
- 11 Five Minutes Workout You Can Do to Build Straight Up Abs
By now you might have understood how to use Buzzsumo to find amazing blog post ideas.
Now it’s time to move on other next content discovery software…
#2. Find trendy topics on Content Studio
No one likes outdated information. That’s why you need to create content that is in the trend.
This is where Content Studio comes.
It is the one of the best Buzzsumo alternatives and demanding content discovery tool available online.
Content Studio is designed to make data-driven blogging more insightful, relevant and entertaining.
Let me show you how to use Content Studio:
First, head over to the Content Studio and search for the keyword you want to create content around.
Here is the result it provided to me.
These are the top performing articles under mobile SEO in the past 30 days.
By using this tool, you can understand what types of content are in the trend, and how you can write a better article than them.
Content Studio not only helps you find the trending topic for blogs or social media sharing but also allows you to publish blog on Content Studio.
You can even find interesting articles, videos, images, GIFs, and quotes in any industry or niche for sharing.
#3. Dig on Reddit for out of the box blog topics
Reddit is a powerful and very popular social media site, even though its general design is very boring.
It is the first website that runs by its users.
You can create your own group (that is called subreddit) in it and invite others to join.
It’s enough about Reddit.
Now, let’s see how to use Reddit for traffic generating content ideas?
To use it, I head over to its homepage and write the keyword ‘Blogging’ in the search box and enter.
It offered me popular subreddits related to blogging.
I clicked on the first subreddit because it has 10,805 subscribers and it is eight years old.
It means here I can find some good topics for my next blog post.
Here are the blog posts that are doing good on this particular subreddit because people have upvoted on these articles.
You see all the posts people have liked are the case studies.
It means, if I write a case study on my blog and share that on Reddit chances are that article will get some quality traffic and up votes.
#4. Use Right Relevance to see what influencers are sharing
Right Relevance is one of the popular content discovery tools to help you with content discovery.
If you are looking for a free Buzzsumo alternative then this is your tool.
It shows the latest article posted on the web as well as shows how many influencers have shared that post.
So, you can easily understand the quality of the article. And write about on the similar topics on your blog.
#5. Find relevant and updated content with Content Gems
They call it is one of the best content discovery tools.
It scans thousands of articles every day on the search engine and provides you the best results relevant to your search term.
However, to use ContentGems, you have to sign up.
It is a paid tool. But still, you can use it for free.
Here is the pricing plan of Content Gems:
As you can see here are last seven days relevant and popular articles in your niche.
#6. Get the most popular article in your niche by using Alltop
Alltop is a site that aggregates all the top stories from popular sites across the Internet.
This is my favorite site to read some high-quality posts about blogging, WordPress, SEO, and content marketing, etc.
Let me show you, how you can use Alltop for content discovery?
First, head over to Alltop and enter a keyword.
In my case, I entered “blogging” in the search box and hit enter. It brought me all popular categories.
I want to check out blog posts under blogging.
Therefore, I clicked on blogging, and it redirects to another sub-domain.
Here you can see the most popular stories.
Check out those articles one by one and see which suits best to you for your next article.
#7. Use Feedly to feed the fresh content to your audience
Great content ideas come from various sources.
Sometimes you may not go to all the sources to find the content ideas you need someone who does this job for you.
Who can do this job better than Feedly?
Feedly, known as a “news aggregator,” collects, organize, and personalize relevant content from all over the web at a single location that you can share and access simply.
Moreover, it is one of the most recommended free content discovery tools.
Feedly fetches the best content based on your interest and date relevancy.
The good news is you can use Feedly app on your mobile devices to do content discovery.
#8. Social Animal
Social Animal is the new player of content marketing tools team but more advanced than others.
It not only provides you the most relevant content but also tells you when should you post that to get the maximum response.
Following are some features of Social Animal:
- Top domains — It shows the top sites which are generating content similar to your target keyword
- Top authors — Who are writing similar to your relevant keyword
- Top influencers — See the influencers who have shared similar content as you so you can follow them
- Find in the past — You can see top articles of the previous date
- Internal/External Links — It shows how many internal and external links article has
Social Animal brings you the best content for your keyword as well as show the content length along with social counts.
#9. Flipboard (Build your online magazine)
Flipboard is one of best content discovery platform that most people often overlooked.
In other words, it’s an online magazine that organizes world’s best content for you.
Some people say Flipboard is one of the best blogging apps for mobile devices. You can create your own online magazine for free.
How to create a magazine on Flipboard:
First, you have to create an account on Flipboard.
Once you logged in second step is to click on “Create Magazine” and give it a niche name. Make sure you use a meaningful name as per your niche requirement and keep green button on.
You can create any number of magazines on your Flipboard account.
#10. Scoop it – Find the great content
Scoop.it is a popular content curation tool that publishes content from all around in almost every niche.
Using this tool you can research and publish the best content for your readers.
How does Scoop.it works?
Scoop.it is an advanced content research tool that find and curate relevant third-party content that you can you use for share on social media, create content or save for further read.
It is one of demanding content research tools trusted by 4+ millions professionals and marketers.
Final Thoughts!
Knowing SEO is awesome.
But, writing great content on the right topic is great.
When you mix both, your blogging will reach on the cloud nine.
By using these content discovery tools, you can be able to write some viral blog post as well as curate content.
A successful blogger should be a good content curator.
Now is your turn which content curation tools you are going to use to create amazing content for your blog?
27 thoughts on “10 Free Content Discovery Tools to Skyrocket Your Blogging Efforts”
Great tips, thank you. Will definitely be checking out some of these places.
You found awesome tools, Umesh! I especially liked EpicBeat which I have never heard about before.
Hi Michael,
I am glad to see you here. I recently found Epic Beat while I was searching researching for this content. It is an awesome content discovery tool.
Hi Michael,
I am sure you’ve heard about the closing down of Epictions(EpicBeat).
I thought maybe you should check out its alternative (https://contentstudio.io/epicbeat-alternative)
Hey Umesh,
Content is major pole with the power to influence the search engine and the readers. The tools you have mentioned are really helpful.
Finding the ideas about the new article would be great to go through the redit. BuzzSumo and all other tools are helpful.
Thanks for sharing with us.
~Ravi
Thanks Ravi, I think we should keep close eye on the trend that how we can step ahead in the blogging. These tools are awesome if we utilize them properly.
Hey Umesh,
Those are not only powerful but good tools.
Because…
Brian Dean has always mentioned Buzzsumo. Neil also has mentioned Alltop and Reddit severally in his posts.
I trust those bloggers who’ve mentioned these tools in their blog posts.
I haven’t tried them before, but intend to any moment from now.
Epic Beat is new to me.
Thanks for sharing, Bro. Especially, introducing me to Epic Beat.
Francis
Hi Francis,
Thanks brother for comment. These content discovery tools are amazing if you use them right. Epicbeat is awesome tool, you should give it a try.
Hi Umesh,
Thanks for this wonderful list of contents discovery tools. Though I am using Reddit. But I have not used others. They appear very wonderful though. I will surely use them hereafter. Thanks
Regards
Hi Sherab, Thanks for the comment. You should try others too, especially Buzzsumo you will become fan of this tool.
Thanks
Umesh Singh
Hi Umesh Singh,
There you mention some content discovery tool which are very helpful for a blogger
I already tried some and after the reading of that post i will try other tool for content
search.
Thank to share your experience with us.
Regard:
Maqbool Azam
Hi Maqbool,
I am glad you found it useful. Please let other your friends know about these tools.
Hi, Umesh.
This’s an awesome article. Honestly.
Actually, I’m not always suck with lacking of topics, but need right topics for my readers.
You know? I love Reddit as it’s a brilliant platform for bloggers.
However, I never try Buzzumo, but heard many bloggers talked about it. Thought it’s the time to learn more about the tool. though.
Thanks for sharing…
Hi Kimsea,
Thanks for the comment Bro! Buzzsumo is a great tool you should give it a try. The result will outcome will amaze you.
What a nice post. I just love this post and your blog. Thank you so much for posting and I would like to appreciate your work. I wish if I could get some more useful post like this. Keep posting and keep growing.
Hey Umesh,
BuzzSumo is really an amazing tool that helps us to find the viral content. Mainly, content marketers prefer this tool, we can also get assistance in our social media marketing activities. A BuzzSumo topic search usually returns content in different categories currently articles, infographics, guest posts, giveaways, interviews and videos within the past year. Another way to get better conversions is to share our content in the right place. It really helps us to identify what does best on which platform, thanks to the ability to sort by the social site column headers.
Its features are really beneficial to fix such problem. You have represent great statistics against Buzzsumo. Nature of content are also significant to win heart of audience, it should be helpful for them. You have discussed about most of burning problem through this post, these tools will really helps to newbie blogger and many more blogger to achieve success in blogging. This sort of ideas really work on maximizing productivity and traffic to individual websites.
With best wishes,
Amar kumar
Fantastic post you have got there. I have never heard of EpicBeat. I’m happy to come across your site as I plan to use content marketing/blogging as the main traffic channel for my soon-to-launch Daily Deals portal.
Now I’m going to use the heck out of EpicBeat as it fits perfectly in my line of thought with regards to content curation. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Hi Pepe,
Thanks for visiting my blog. Epicbeat is an awesome content discovery tool I came across while searching data for this product. And, I am totally in love with it. Use it and I am sure you’ll love it too.
Have a great day ahead.
– Umesh Singh
Hi,
I guess when it comes to content marketing everyone wants to try tools to speedup the process. I never used any of these till now. But will certainly try them soon.
Thanks
Hi Rajkumar,
Content marketing becomes more easy when you put it on auto pilot with powerful content marketing tools.
The tools I have mentioned are awesome and if use it right you will increase your performance and result.
Thanks,
Umesh Singh
Awesome article the way you present everything is amazing. Keep it up thanx for sharing
Nice information. Keep post article related to content discovery tools and content marketing tools.
Hi Umesh,
A great post, I must say.
Although, I’d like to point out that you have mentioned EpicBeat as one of the content discovery tools in your list. Unfortunately, this tool is not operational anymore.
I have an alternative tool for you and your audience. You can check it out here (https://contentstudio.io/epicbeat-alternative). Have a great day! 🙂
Hi Fatima,
Thanks for let me know about Epicbeat. I have replaced that with Content Studio.
Yeah, that what I looking for – its time to use some content discovery tools, thx pal
Hey Umesh,
This is an awesome article, and I found it really useful and practical!! As an owner of a digital marketing agency, I find the content marketing is becoming more and more important to boost web traffic nowadays. Thanks for the article and please follow up with the good work!!!
Bests,
Marlon