How to use Google Alerts to find blog topic ideas

Sometimes as a blogger it is difficult to keep coming up with new and exciting ideas about what you can write about to keep the interest of your readers.

I use Google Alerts to help me come up with ideas and today I decided to create a mini tutorial to show you how to set them up and how to use them.

You will need a Google account do to this.

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts where you will see this box:

In the Search Terms box, type in a keyword related to your niche. For example, if your niche is dog training, then type in dog training (with or without inverted commas (").

Leave the Type as Comprehensive.

I usually change How often to once a day.

And I always get it to Deliver to my email address (just use the drop down box, although it usually automatically defaults to your email address).

Once this is set up, you will receive a daily email which lists various website and blog posts about your chosen topic.

Go into any of these that interest you and look at what they are talking about. Could this be something you could talk about on your blog? You could even talk about the blog you came across, when writing your post, and give your opinion of what you think about what the other blogger was saying.

There are so many things you can do with these, so this is really just to give you a starting point in using Google Alerts but as you can see, it is one very useful tool!

You can go back in to Google Alerts and add as many more search terms as you like, however remember there is only so much one person can do, so be careful not to overdo the alerts thing!