Imagine your online community is a group of hungry people who walk up to a table where you have a spread of finger foods and appetizers. That’s your online content.

By watching which items disappear quickly, you learn what your audience truly wants. That’s the content that satisfies their hunger. And that’s what you need to give them.

In this article I’ll show you 8 ways to discover what topics satisfy the hunger in your online community.

#1: Ask your community

Most businesses assume that they know what their online community wants to hear from them. There’s nothing like doing a reality check by asking your community directly. What you learn might surprise you.

Start by creating a list of 10 topics you believe your audience wants to hear. Use your list to create a survey and collect their opinions using one of these strategies:

• Ask them to say “yes” or “no” for each topic.
• Ask them to rank the topics in order of interest.
• Ask them to pick their 3 favorite topics.

Always include an option for “other” so they can fill in any topics that you didn’t include in your list. Pay careful attention to these topics. If someone goes to the trouble to write in a topic, it’s very important to him or her.

There are several popular services that allow you to create a free survey including SurveyMonkey, Free Online Surveys, Zoomerang and Bzoink.

You can easily create smart professional surveys.

You can add your survey to your website, highlight it in your email newsletter and promote it on Twitter and Facebook.

#2: Check your blog comments

Which blog posts get the most comments?

Most bloggers will tell you that their most popular blog posts often surprise them. It’s usually not the post that they like the best.

When you write a post that gets many comments, you know you have struck gold. Review the comments to see what about this post inspires your community.

• Are people interested in this topic? Write more blog posts about it. You might even create a new category for these posts to make them more visible to your visitors.
• Did people like the post format? Did you make a list? Did you review an article or a tool? If the format was a hit, then consider starting a series of similar posts. You can even make this a recurring feature on your blog.

Tip: If most of the comments on a blog post are questions, it means that your audience is looking for more information on this topic. You can become their go-to source by providing detailed answers to their questions.

#3: Check your retweets

You post things on Twitter that you believe are useful and interesting. However, value is always in the eyes of the reader. When your Twitter community loves the information in your tweet, they retweet it to their communities. Check for your most-loved tweets and turn them into important conversation topics.

The new Twitter makes it easy to find your retweeted items and how many people retweeted each one.

1. Open Twitter.com and log in (if necessary).
2. Click Home in the top menu (if necessary).
3. Click the Retweets tab (in the left pane). Twitter displays the retweets menu.
   

   The Twitter Retweets menu options.

4. Select Your Tweets, retweeted. Twitter displays a list of your tweets that other people have retweeted in chronological order.
5. Hover the pointer over the first tweet, and click the flyout button to see the retweet details.
   

   Click the flyout button to see the details about this tweet in the right pane.

   Twitter displays the retweet details in the flyout (right pane).

6. Locate the retweeter list for this tweet.
   

   Twitter tells you how many people retweeted this tweet and displays their profile pictures.

To analyze your retweets:

1. Write down the number of retweets for each individual tweet in a month.
2. Group together tweets into topics or categories.
3. Add the individual retweet numbers to get a topic or category retweet total.
4. List the 3 most popular topics based on retweets. Plan to talk more about these topics in the next month.

#4: Check your URL click-throughs

When you share a link on Twitter, you probably use a web address (URL) shortener to save space. Most of these services provide statistics about each shortened link. You can use these numbers to see which links people clicked most often. These are the topics that captured their interest.

The popular URL shortener services include Bit.ly, Goo.gl, Tiny URL, Cli.gs and Is.gd:

You can collect, organize, shorten and share links.

HootSuite, the popular Twitter client (software that lets you use Twitter with additional features), provides two URL shorteners with statistics and detailed reports.

Users can now choose between two flavors of links—one with a social bar and one without.

The statistics on these services show you the number of times someone clicked through each link. Use this information to determine the most popular links. Group your links into topics or categories and get a total number of click-throughs by topic.

An example of Bit.ly statistics for a blog post about Cherry Street Coffee House.

Tip: Twitter.com uses its own shortening service, http://t.co, which doesn’t provide any statistics. You can use another service to shorten URLs before you paste them into Twitter if you want to get click statistics.

#5: Check your Facebook engagement

Facebook Insights provides details for page administrators about how users interact with their business page. It’s easy to see which status updates received the most feedback and interaction.

To display the interaction details for the previous month:

1. Display your Facebook business page.
2. Click View Insights (right column).
   

   Click View Insights to display the page administrator's statistics.

3. Locate the Interactions graph in the bottom half of the page.
4. Click See Details.
   

   Click See Details to get information about individual status updates.

Facebook displays the interaction details for the previous month.

The chart provides detailed information about your status updates and how your community interacted with each one.

Use the detailed information to find the popularity of each status update.

• The top graph provides the total count of likes and comments for each day of the month.
• The middle chart provides details about individual posts. Click on the column headings to sort the data by column.

Group your status updates into topics or categories. Talk more about the topics that get the most likes and comments.

#6: Ask Facebook questions

The Facebook Questions feature makes it easy for you to ask questions to anyone in your online community.

Before you start, write out your question with multiple-choice answers. Each community member must choose one answer to your question.

1. Display your Facebook business page.
2. Click Question.
   

   Click Question to start creating your Facebook Question post.

3. Facebook displays a blank question form.
   

   The Facebook Question form before you type any information.

4. Type your question.
5. Click Add Poll Options.
   

   The Facebook Question form before you add the poll options.

   Facebook adds blank poll options to the question form.

6. Type each multiple-choice option to answer your question. Facebook automatically adds blank options as you type.
   

   Complete the question options and click Ask Question.

   Tip: Leave the check for “Allow anyone to add options” so your community can add options you did not consider.

7. Click Ask Question. Facebook posts your question on your wall and distributes it to the news feed of people who like your page.
   

   An example Facebook question on a business page wall.

#7: Check Twitter favorites

Twitter’s Favorites feature lets you mark a tweet in your timeline that you like or want to be able to find again.

You can use Favstar to find which of your tweets people have marked as favorites. This gives you insight into which topics resonate with the people who follow you.

To review your tweets marked as favorites by other people:

1. Display Favstar.fm.
2. Click Sign In With Twitter.
   

   The Favstar front page before you sign in.

   Favstar displays the Twitter sign-in page.

3. Click Sign in Now.
   

   Twitter requires you to sign in and authorize Favstar before Favstar can find your tweets marked as favorites.

   Favstar takes you to Twitter.com.

4. Click Authorize app.
   

   Twitter explains what Favstar can and cannot do after you authorize it for your account.

   Twitter authorizes Favstar to look for people who marked your tweets as favorites and displays your customized Favstar page.

5. Click My Tweets.
   

   Click on the My Tweets button here.

   

   Favstar displays your tweets marked as favorites with the most recent on top.

Scroll through your most recent tweets. Group them into topics or categories. Calculate a total favorite count for each category. Talk more about the topics that get the most favorites.

#8: Check your email newsletter click-throughs

If your business has an email newsletter, it’s another great resource for tapping into what people really want to hear from you.

There are many useful email services such as AWeber, Constant Contact and Mail Chimp. While they offer slightly different services, they all let you track the clicks from your newsletter to your website or blog.

An example report from AWeber showing the links clicked in an email newsletter.

Reviewing the most clicked-through links gives you insight into what people found the most interesting in your newsletter. Talk more about the topics represented by your most popular links.

It’s Your Turn

What do you think? What strategies does your business use to get inside the head of your community members? Has your research provided you with surprising results? Share your experience in the comments box below.

A great blog post respects the needs of three distinct entities. It educates and informs your audience (your subscribers and visitors), optimizes for the search engines and sufficiently energizes you so that you do a good job creating it.

Every blog post should address the following five components to ensure it hits the mark for your audience, the search engines and you.

#1: Has an Engaging Title

The title is arguably the most important element of any post. Engaging titles that spark curiosity are more likely to be clicked. When this is combined with strategic keywords that affirm the topic of the post, you have a winner.

Tim Ferris recently wrote a post on the art and science of headlines to increase the click-through rate. The idea is simply to generate curiosity, such as Why Are You Single? Perhaps It’s the Choice Effect. You’re wondering what the Choice Effect is all about, aren’t you?

Many of us don’t have Tim’s fan base, so we need to develop a catchy title that also includes keywords that will get indexed by Google. Brian Clark with Copyblogger does an excellent job of this. One of his generally accepted SEO copywriting tips is to place these keywords near the front of the title.

You should occasionally test your titles to determine what resonates most with your audience. I’ve personally found that titles that respond to a specific need, such as How Often Should I Blog?, will result in higher traffic with my targeted readers than those that are deep and thought-provoking.

#2: Offers Easy to Consume Content

When you organize your content so that it’s easily consumed, you tap into a secret of blogging. The more readily your content is assimilated in the minds of your readers, the more favorably it’s received—and remembered.

Here are some ways to accomplish this.

• Blog for Your Audience: As you develop your blogging style, always consider the needs of your audience. My audience is the same as that of Social Media Examiner—business professionals and marketers. They expect me to get to the point quickly and avoid technical jargon.
• Learn to Write in AP Style: If you scan any news source, you’ll notice the paragraphs are short—only a few sentences. This is one of the hallmarks of Associated Press (AP) style of writing, which many journalists consider to be the standard. These guidelines will give your posts a professional appearance and make them easier to consume.
• Use Subheadings: This helps both you and the reader. I tend to write my first draft quickly for flow and readability. Then I go back and organize with subheadings, while also reorganizing and eliminating entire paragraphs so that my readers don’t have to.
• Create Lists: Lists are the ultimate organizing tool, which is why they’re frequently retweeted—thereby attracting valuable links back to your blog.
• Use Italics and Bold Text for Emphasis: If someone reads your blog post word for word, it’s usually after skimming it first. Help readers do both by emphasizing key points with italics, bold text and, with care, all caps.

#3: Mixes Content Types

Delivering great content requires a mix of qualities that keeps your readers coming back for more. The key isn’t always the quality of the message, but how it’s delivered. Improve how you do this by employing these 5 practices.

• Offer Your Opinions: If you’re an expert in your field, then your opinion is relevant. Who do you respect more, the waiter who says everything on the menu is excellent, or the one who looks you in the eye and recommends her favorites (or suggests avoiding some dishes)?
• Use Multimedia: Make it a point to use images, screenshots and video to communicate your message with more punch.

These contextual forms of communication enhance your message while also breaking up the text to improve the appearance of your post.

• Link to Your Research: Data has greater credibility when it comes from a reputable source, such as the Pew Research Center. A link to that source raises your credibility by showing you’ve done your homework.

Data from respected sources such as the Pew Research Center will validate your perspective.

• Provide Practical Examples: Examples of situations where you’ve had direct experience are powerful, although it’s important to provide details such as names and places to validate that credibility. Just be sure you get the proper permissions first.
• Take Out the Trash: Make the effort to edit out anything that doesn’t support your title or enhance your post. Include details to create a mental picture, but leave out anything else that detracts from your story.

#4: Is Search Engine Optimized

Learning search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessary aspect of blogging if you expect to build a sustainable reader base. While SEO can get complicated, you can be very effective by simply tuning into your audience and writing for them. Trust your gut and write for people and SEO will take care of itself.

These are the key elements of SEO that deserve your attention.

• Excerpts: The excerpt of your post is the brief description included with the return of search results. A well-chosen description encourages click-throughs. If you don’t build an excerpt, the first couple of sentences of your post will be used as a default. Get in the habit of summarizing your post in the first couple of sentences.
• Keywords: Learn the common words and phrases being used by your audience. For example, do they use the term entrepreneur or small business? It’s a distinction that has to be made so that you can be found when they’re searching for your expertise.
• Links: The SEO pros universally agree that inbound links to your blog are vital for achieving a high ranking. How do you get these links? The most reliable way is to write amazing content that people want to link to.

One tip is to link to the keywords (known as anchor text) in your post that are aligned with the words you expect to be used by someone searching for your expertise. The classic mistake is linking to click here instead of more relevant keywords such as small business marketing, or whatever relates to your expertise.

Additionally, you naturally want to link back to your previous posts to encourage your readers to hang around longer. This increases the likelihood they’ll respond to a call to action, such as subscribing to your blog or newsletter.

• Tags: Tags are handled differently in every blogging platform. Just be sure to use tags that are relevant to the post you’re creating, as well as the audience you’re blogging for. Darren Rowse of Problogger suggests no more than a dozen tags for each post to avoid undermining their effectiveness through dilution.
• Categories: Categories obviously help your blog visitors go deeper into the subject matter or topic that interests them most. Google also indexes your categories for the same reason, so choose your categories carefully. You’ll note the categories here at Social Media Examiner were intentionally limited to just eight to be relevant now and in the future.

#5: Encourages Interaction and Action

While blogging is indeed a platform for broadcasting, the ultimate objective is to encourage engagement and interaction, namely in the form of comments. Just as an engaged audience gives a speaker feedback on his live presentation, the comments to your blog will do the same.

You can and should learn from every single visitor to your blog by responding and seeking to better understand his/her point of view. The reason for this is that every commenter represents the perspective of many others. The more you learn, the easier it is to focus your efforts on what’s most relevant to your audience.

Why else do you want comments? Because comments are social proof that your blog is a happening place. And this encourages more traffic and subscribers to your blog.

To encourage more comments, you may not only have to remind your audience to do so, but show them as well. Write a post on commenting and use your blog as an example.

Show your readers exactly how to comment, and even go a step further to describe how to share your post by retweeting or using the Facebook Like button.

As you begin to engage your audience, you’ll want to move them closer to helping you accomplish your blogging objectives. For example, you may ultimately want to sell your ebooks. A preliminary step toward that is to encourage more subscribers to your list. Then when the time is right you can reach out to your list to provide higher-value content that monetizes your blogging efforts.

There is no such thing as a perfect blog post. However, if you follow these recommendations, you’ll be sure to enhance your blog for you and your audience, as well as the search engines that work on everyone’s behalf.

What do you think? What else makes for a great blog post? Leave your comments in the box below.

This article will provide you unique ideas that will help you keep pumping out great content.

The following 13 content ideas are designed to help save you time and stimulate some new ideas.

By the way, if you’re following the blogging basics outlined here, you’re well on your way to creating and maintaining the kind of content that will keep readers coming back for more.

And if you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you know that when you don’t post on your blog for a few days, your traffic takes a nosedive.

Here’s ideas to get you going.

1. Set up Google Alerts

With Google Alerts, you can set up alerts for topics and subtopics in your niche to see what’s making news and what’s being said by others. Monitoring online news and conversations can inspire ideas and introduce you to new content sources.

2. Search Blog Directories

In the context of blog outreach, I mentioned Technorati and Alltop in my article on The Secret to Growing Your Blog Following. Both sites are also great sources for finding what other bloggers are posting about your topic. When you’re stuck, do a keyword search on Technorati. Set up a channel on Alltop with blogs in your industry to scan what’s new at a glance.

3. Subscribe to blogs

Monitor blogs in your field by subscribing to influential blogs by email or subscribe to blog feeds with your preferred feed reader.

You want to find out what your competitors and other experts in your field are discussing. Not only will you get inspiration for your own writing, but you’ll stay on the cutting edge of your field.

4. Share from other blogs

Other bloggers’ posts are often useful jumping-off points for writing your own. Some bloggers simply report on somebody’s post, link to it, and that’s it. A more strategic way to do this is to either agree with the blogger you’re citing, disagree, or add your own perspective.

Adding to the conversation makes your blog more valuable. Although you can read a lot of good stuff in the blogosphere, it hasn’t all been said. Use the good stuff as inspiration and ask yourself, what can I add to that? The blogosphere loves controversy and a good argument. How can you stir things up and encourage your readers to interact and comment?

5. Post a poll

This is a great tool that can boost readership and encourage people to come back to vote and share with friends. Set up a poll as a blog post or in the sidebar, and ask readers to vote on their biggest challenge, their worst nightmare—you name it—as long as it’s relevant to your topic. What do you want to know from your readers? Ask them.

There are many free polling services that enable you to add polls to your blog: Polldaddy and Vizu are two I frequently use.

Use poll results as fodder for writing additional follow-up blog posts, an article, or a media release.

6. Toot your own horn

Announce your own live events, speaking appearances, products, and services. Any time you have something new going on, let your readers know about it by writing a post for your blog. If you’re writing press releases for your business, post those on your blog as well.

7. Share information

Share information and tips you think might interest readers. Do it in a way that provokes a conversation, rather than reporting on topics as a journalist. This is also an opportunity to ask your readers for their perspective. Remember, an important reason to blog for your business is not just to disseminate information, but also to engage in a conversation with your readers.

8. Make smart use of categories

Take a few minutes to make a list of the main topics you’re blogging about, and then make a list of three or four subtopics. If you think about it, when you’re focused on your reader and your expertise, most of what you’re going to be blogging about falls under five to seven main topics.

Once you’ve got the list, set up a simple editorial calendar. Each day, you can write about a particular subtopic. On Monday, you write about subtopic A. On Wednesday, you write about subtopic B. On Friday you write about subtopic C. This gives you focus for each day of the week, so when that day comes around, you don’t find yourself wondering what to write about.

9. Ask your community

Similar to doing a poll, throw a question out to your communities on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. You’ll probably get an immediate response.

On Twitter:

On Facebook:

10. Invite guest authors

When you don’t have time to write, you can write posts in advance and postdate them so they’re published on the days you’re away. But if you’re really pressed for time, a great way to avoid a gap in blog posts is to ask someone who writes on a similar subject to be a guest author.

This is a win-win-win. 1) The guest blogger writes a few posts while you’re away, giving you content. 2) The guest blogger gets links back to his or her website or blog, as well as exposure to your readers. 3) Your readers get new perspectives on your subject.

11. Grow blog antennae

It sounds funny, but this happens. After you’ve been blogging for a while, you develop blog antennae. You’ll find yourself continually scanning the web, newspapers, magazines, email, and even your own personal experiences for interesting items to blog about.

Expect this to happen after you’ve been blogging for a couple of months. Even the slightest life challenge or mistake can become fodder for great blog posts. But to make that happen, you have to keep your ears and eyes open and receptive. The good news here is that just about any event can make an interesting blog post. Make sure to jot down your ideas and keep a running list. About 90% of my blog ideas never get posted but they serve as great inspiration when I feel at a loss.

12. Write a top-10 list

Here’s a great tip for creating content and building readership and getting links back to your blog: Make a list of your top 10 favorite blogs in your industry.

Generally the people on that list will be excited because they made the list. More than likely, they will write on their blog about you and your list because they’re going to be tooting their own horn: “I just made so-and-so’s list of favorite blogs.” It’s a great way to get known and build readership.

13. Refer to the classics

When writing about nearly anything, your content can be more valuable and unique when you can refer effectively to the classics, history, or authoritative books written about the topic being discussed. Many people in the blogosphere treat content superficially.  How can you place your product or service in historical context? A great example is a post on Copyblogger called 5 Essential Blogging Tips from the Father of Chinese Philosophy.

By adding depth, you add value to your blog. This helps position you as a thought leader and a credible expert in your field.

Now it’s your turn! I would love to add more ideas to my list. Where do you find inspiration for your blog posts? Please share your tips and resources in the comments.