In a client webinar earlier this week, my colleague, Adrian Lurssen, walked us through three sources of excellent, ongoing writing ideas. During his discussion of one such source - your readers (and by this, he explained, he really means: your analytics) - Adrian said something that stuck with me:

Seeing a report of your most popular content doesn’t mean you are done; it means you simply know what to do next.

As Adrian explained, unlike more anecdotal evidence of what’s on the minds of your readers, analytics show you exactly what’s on the minds of your readers - by the way people express their questions in keyword searches and by the measure of what they are reading. View counts leave no doubt, right?

Your list of most popular content tells you: this is what is on the minds of your readers right now. One article is seldom enough to garner the attention you deserve (it’s a busy, noisy online landscape out there, after all), so circle back and revisit these well-read topics. Don’t write the same article; write a new take, a new angle, a new perspective on the topic. Hit it again and again.

In other words, a report on Popular Reads is not only a good way to show the authors in your firm what is doing well, it’s also a terrific way to find next writing assignments for your authors - and, if the topic is a rich vein of writing ideas time and again, it may also be a good indication of what type of blog to start next…