Are You Using Psychic Search Yet? 10 Seconds To Install And You Will Never Run Out Of Good Blogging Ideas Again
Why is it that I never run out of things to say on my blog, in my sales letters, in my reports, and in my daily auto responder emails, while so many other marketers are out of business or have simply stopped updating their blog?
You can't think of 100% of your ideas in a vacuum. You need a source of inspiration - and what better source of inspiration than the people who are already reading your blog? That way you can be sure that the things you are writing about are the things they want.
So How Do You Figure Out What People Want?
I am not very trusting about survey results because people will tell me the things they WANT to know, but not the things they need. Those can be two separate items.
I will give you an example. Many people say they want to know about article writing. But what they are really looking for is the end result of that: traffic. Therefore they might be searching through my blog about ways to get traffic, but if I asked them what they wanted, they would say, "Articles."
It would be a much better idea to write a blog post about articles, but position it in a way that they get more traffic with those articles.
I don't trust survey results because people lie or they just don't know what they want. It is a much better idea to monitor what they are doing. And that is exactly what the Psychic Search plugin does. To find it, just do a Google search for "Psychic Search."
This is a WordPress plugin that keeps a log of every search someone has looked through your site with. If somebody goes to that search box in your sidebar and types in the word, "Articles," Psychic Search is going to make a note of that. If ten people came to your site last month and searched for "Articles," It is going to make a note of that too.
That means it groups all the searches together and you can see what terms have been searched the most.
The next time you feel Writer's Block, go to that Psychic Search tab in your WordPress Admin Dashboard and look at that list to get ideas.
What's great about this plugin is if you took it one step further and also listed "Searches without any results." If someone typed in the word, "Articles" and found seven blog posts by you, then great - they have probably found the answer to their question. But if they typed it in and got zero results, wouldn't you like to know that?
Psychic Search will give you a second group of search results that were people who typed in one thing but got no blog posts.
That Way You Know What Holes To Plug With Your Training!
And the final feature of Psychic Search is that they will store the searches people typed into Yahoo, Google, and MSN in order to find your site. If somebody searched "Article marketing" in Google and clicked on a blog post from Google, the plugin makes a note of that and therefore gives you even more ideas about what to write.
If you find yourself getting fifty or one hundred page views per month from a specific search result, it is a good idea to write more about that subject because you will get ranked even higher in the search engines.
And that is why I like the FREE Psychic Search plugin - because I don't trust people's direct answers, I can see everything someone has typed into my search box on my blog, I can see which of those searches had no results AND I can see what searches comes from the search engines.
What is your best tip to overcoming Writer's Block and maintaining a fresh stockpile of blogging ideas so that you can always write something new?
Let me know in a comment below.
Filed in: Writing
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So when you find out a lot of people are searching for penis enlargement and Viagra, you’re going to write about that also? … 😉
All kidding aside. You’re quite right. It’s much the same at EzineArticles with their Title Suggestions tool based on search words you enter. It’s very inspiring, and so is reading other people’s blogs.
I don’t personally find writer’s block as such, because I prefer grabbing a cup of coffee (or tea), and just thinking about other things. That brings back ideas at some point but I never worry about it.
I think that worrying about writer’s block causes that block to remain, so my method works.
But no harm in having an extra plugin, so I might test it, just for curiosity’s sake.
Thanks for your inspiration during this month, and have a nice weekend everyone. 🙂
PS: Will you be announcing whoever remained faithful in commenting all articles during the month of June?
Of all the great tips, you’ve given, this is probably the best in a long time 🙂
I get ideas for blog posts or articles all the time, and I write them down (on a piece of paper, LOL), at the spot, because I know I’ll forget about the idea later, if I don’t.
Sometimes, my ideas derive from conversations with my husband, other times from headlines in magazines, other times again from other people’s blog posts or tweets.
But spying on your readers’ thoughts like this is a brilliant idea.
Thanks Robert!
This is a great plugin that I’m going to install on my blogs right now! I do keep track of the questions that my readers ask through my inquiry forms (and turn my answers into blog posts).
But the intelligence that can be gathered from this plug in is great because nearly ALL of my blog traffic comes from organic searches. And it captures the information or questions that people had but didn’t bother to ask using the comments or the inquiry form.
Excellent! THANKS AGAIN! 🙂
Is there a plug-in that tells me when they have their credit card out ready to buy something? LOL
Interesting post Robert. time to test it out…
Mtn Jim
I’m no psychic, Robert, that’s for sure. So I better run, not walk to download Psychic Search.
Although I may not possess any powers of mental telepathy or extrasensory perception, I do have good gut level instincts.
And my gut tells me I need to keep on reading your blog.
Melanie
#blog30
I do not have WordPress….but I do use my Sitemeter like this at times. Your post served as a reminder to me that this is an excellent way to gear content to readers/improve traffic. Thanks.
#blog30
Robert,
Doing a psychic search on my blog or website at this point wouldn’t give me much to go on. Now… if it would tell me what people are looking for on YOUR site… ?
Thanks,
Dan
Wow, cool tool.
Best way to find out what people are looking for on your site, and you din’t even have to ask.
Robert
Thanks for the heads up on this one it looks great.
Hey Robert!
Been doing a bit of digging about this plugin. Came up with this and others like it:
http://strangelyperfect.tv/7670/psychic-search-mucks-up-search/
What would you say to this?
Even if it doesn’t give me topics it will help me slant the topics to what my readers want to hear. Great idea. Thanks Robert.
Got the psychic search plugin a couple of weeks ago. I use it every day, excellent plugin.