10 Best Content Generation Tools for Creating Article Ideas

If you dig a little deeper into the concept and details of inbound marketing strategy, you will find that great content is a fundamental first step for generating organic traffic from the correct user type - this brings us to the notion of content marketing which, as Content Marketing Institute correctly states, is “… a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” This is the reason why it is essential to provide your audience with the best article topics.

But then a lazy day comes along; your creativity and motivation to create awesome content have gone. These are the days when you’ve tried every trick in the book (summarized neatly in this infographic) and are still grappling for ideas. Inspiration is scarce, and therefore it must mean that the time to use a content idea generation tool has come.

What Is a Content Idea Generator?

A content idea generator is the ultimate writing companion for when you are running out of ideas. Such tools are intended to provide professional writers with inspiration for their topics, producing ideas based on the keywords the user introduces to the application and corresponding algorithms.

We’ve taken the liberty to single out 10 of the best idea generation tools out on the net - the list is not exhaustive, but they are all excellent places to start if what you’re looking for is an idea to get going on.

The 10 Best Idea Creator Tools

Portent will find you creative and funny titles for your article. The way this free tool works is easy - all you have to do is list your keywords in the blank space and hit enter. A title will appear at the top of the web page, along with some bubbles containing suggestions. If this headline is not what you are looking for, simply refresh again and again, and you will have lots of potential titles for your newspaper articles.

In the end, you could end up being inspired by one of the given headlines but not using it as-is; you don’t necessarily have to take the title exactly as it comes, but tools like these certainly help get those creative juices flowing.

Soolve is also a free and very accessible idea generator. You just have to type in your keywords, and it will provide you with the most popular search topics (related to that keyword) on the web. It will also simplify the process of going through different sources of information, providing results from various search platforms including Google, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo!, Amazon, Wikipedia and Answers. If you decide to look further into a particular suggestion, you will also be able to find out what other people have done with that same topic.

Of course, while this is not quite something you ought to copy and paste, it should allow you the opportunity of presenting an innovative view on an existing topic or engaging in a heated conversation. Simply seeing what others have done with the same keyword can help open your mind and land you with new and creative ideas for your articles.

As with the options mentioned above, Hubspot’s blog topic generator is easy to use, and free. It is also based on your keywords. The program asks you to type in three words (preferably nouns) and then gets back to you with five article headlines.

If you don’t like the ideas that have been suggested, you can “try again” until you have a great idea to write about in your newspaper.

Autocomplete (or Google suggest) is probably the most popular tool for creating ideas. This tool would give you the most realistic and relevant ideas for your article in relation to what other writers and researchers such as yourself are doing, because it is based on real searches. It has the potential of giving you ideas in the right regional and linguistic context. Don’t forget that the suggestions are not ranked - the topmost result in Google autocomplete doesn’t indicate the most popular keyword or phrase. Also keep in mind that the results might be biased according to your past searches. If you want to carry out your research outside of this algorithm, it’s best to open a private or incognito window, depending on your favourite internet browser.

Answer the public is an idea generator which will provide you with a large amount of potential headlines for your article, as well as the option of these being categorised by questions, by prepositions, or alphabetically. It also provides you with the flexibility of choosing the country within the context of which you are searching. This generator is based on Google and Bing results.

The moment you have chosen the country and submitted the keyword, the program will give you it’s suggestions in the form of a visually-appealing word map. You would be able to download this information to review and process at a later stage.

Inbound now is truly an inspirational tool - the way in which this generator works contrasts quite sharply with all of the others that we’ve mentioned so far.

Simply click to generate generic headlines and the kind of words you could complete them with. If you don’t like the idea for your article headline you can generate a new one and, if even that is not enough, then you can perform a Google search right from the platform itself, using the keyword you think is most relevant.

Ubersuggest is a free idea generator. This tool suggests keywords related to the main word that you introduce into the blank space.

This content creator will let you place a filter on the answers (web, images, shopping, YouTube or news). You can also choose the language, which comes in handy if you would like to write in a language other than English. Finally, you can browse through loads of resulting keywords, organized alphabetically. If you are especially interested in some of them, you can perform a search in Google or Google trends, and download the results.

Impact Blog Title Generator - BlogAbout is a writers’ idea generator tool based on the technique of brainstorming. The platform has two ways of providing writers inspiration - singular words to draw inspiration from, or headlines with blank spaces to fill with keywords.

The first option provides you with the most popular words that you can write about in your newspaper article but, if this is not what you want, you can just click “next”. What the platform does then is provide you with headlines that you must complete with your keywords. It will give you the option of sending your final list of favourite titles straight to your inbox, which is great if you’ve found a bit more than you need just now, but would like to save it for a rainy day.

Linkbait Title Generator is a free and web-based idea generation tool. It works by simply providing useful titles that could be of inspiration to you. The platform first asks you to provide a subject. Then, on clicking “get linkbait”, you would obtain a list with lots of possible headlines.

The good thing about this tool is that the titles it generates are really relevant, unlike other content generator tools that just place your keyword in random places. As the titles already suggest, the ‘linkbait’ structure is meant to get people to click on your headline; this is especially ideal for some viral piece of content to be shared on Facebook and other social media.

Fat Joe is an easy-to-use, web-based title idea generator where you can also contract writing content. All you have to do is submit your topic and click to generate ideas. The tool will give you ten different title ideas - some great, and some not so great. If you don’t like the first options, you can always ask for it to generate ten more. If there is one that you like, you can either use it yourself and write an article from it, or contract it to Fat Joe, who would take care of the writing for you.

Conclusion

Everybody needs inspiration - it really doesn’t matter whether you are the best writer in the world or a complete beginner. These tools exist because of the needs of other writers before you, proving that everybody, at some point or another, will need external inspiration to beat the infamous writer’s block. Don’t forget that all these tools work with algorithms - always apply the best of your human judgement and ensure that whatever you’re writing is original, and not a copy of something from another source.

One last thing before you head off to start generating headlines and ideas. Make sure you’ve done your in-depth keyword research before getting started. The right keywords could be the perfect lead to getting significantly more search engine traffic - more on this can be found in our post about the best methods of keyword research.