Content creation is the most important factor for how online businesses and brands attract people to their sites, improve rankings in search engine results and, most importantly, portray their messages and convince site visitors to take action. In short, content is king!

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With such deep focus on content, it might be tough for some brands to continually pump out enough unique and engaging articles to keep their sites updated on a daily basis, while also keeping the attention and interest of their visitors – especially if they are focusing on a specific international audience. As digital publishers, it’s even more important to create high-quality content, as so many sites within the industry rehash the same content, and this is something for which you don’t want to be known.

For times like these, we can utilize some of the best tools and resources the Internet has to offer for coming up with new content ideas, discovering what other industry competitors are talking about and also what’s currently trending on major social networks across the world.

What’s also great about these tools is you can apply their information and resources internationally. It doesn’t matter where you’re located – these tools are fully functional for all demographics, markets and locations worldwide.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts automatically notifies you every time a keyword or search phrase appears within Google’s search results. This tool is perfect for seeing when and where people mention your personal or brand name, but it’s also great for coming up with content ideas. Simply visit Google Alerts, set up a notification alert for keywords and topics that you usually write content around. Once set up, you will start receiving daily updates on news and mentions to help inspire new content ideas for your site.

While Google Alerts is a great tool, it can seem somewhat outdated in comparison to the rest of the tools available today. Inc Magazine goes into detail on methods advanced digital publishers can use to find topic and brand mentions as it appears online.

Twitter Trends

With over 200 million users on Twitter, it’s usually one of the first places to find breaking news that quickly trends around the world in just minutes. Through Twitter Trends, at any given time you can see the most active topics. Not only will these trends give you potential ideas for content, but since the topics are “trending,” if you quickly create and publish related content or status updates, you can expect to get more visitors.

Another useful tool for checking Twitter trends is Trendsmap, which gives you an interactive map of the world. You can scan through different areas to see the top trending topics as they continually change with time and the region on which you’re focusing.

Quora

Quora is one of the largest question-and-answer sites on the Internet. It’s also a great way to come up with new ideas for content around your existing audience and topics. A great way to use Quora is to look through their site’s content or ask a question that someone might ask when visiting your site. This will expand into a ton of different questions and articles, giving you an amazing amount of information that can develop into new content ideas for your site.

Alltop

If you want to create great content that grabs your audience’s attention, you need to know what your competition is writing about and which of their articles are getting the most shares. A great way to do this is to visit Alltop, a directory of top blogs based on industry. Not only will this give you ideas for new content, but it will allow you to improve upon existing content. In short, look at what your competition is doing, and do it better.

Alltop is a great resource for those living all around the world, thanks to their Geos category, which allows you to select your location (or targeted preference) and see all of the top blogs for that region.

Facebook Ads

Once you’ve taken the time to research your industry and have created content based on what’s trending, you can work on content marketing and outreach. Through Facebook Ads, you can build targeted ad campaigns that will be seen only by the demographic of your choice. This is perfect for anyone who has a wide range of traffic to their site, but might only want to focus on expanding their reach to France, Germany or Italy, for example.

Content Creation and Promotion Are Key

When it comes to creating content, it’s important to not focus on “just creating content” – instead you want to create amazing content that will provide value and continue to bring new traffic, social shares and incoming links to your site for months and even years to come.

In addition to creating your content, it’s important to actively promote it. As a digital publisher, you already know the importance of sharing content with your social following, sending updates to your mailing list and also leaving comments on other industry blogs and media outlets – now it’s simply a matter of putting those methods into action!

What other tools or resources have helped you? Where is the industry lacking? Will ‘content be king’ forever? What kind of content do you find the most engaging?