One of the best ways to attract new readers to your blog is to write about the hottest topics. While these issues are constantly changing, when you leverage what’s trending for creating new blog content, you can ensure a steady stream of visitors to your blog.

         So how can you determine what’s hot at the moment? There are several free tools available online that you can use to identify the most popular topics. By frequently checking websites that keep tabs on trends – such as Google Trends or Twitter’s Trending Topics – it’s easy to keep up to speed, even when the most popular subject matter is continually changing.

         Google Trends provides a constant update on the topics people are searching the giant search engine for the most at any given moment. If you are looking for ideas to write about, it can be a great place to start. Often it’s possible to use hot topics posted on the site as a starting point for your blog, even if they are not directly related to your subject matter.

         Another great place to start is Quora, a question and answer site that is similar to Wikipedia. Users post questions and respond with answers to questions posted by other users. It’s categorized according to topic. When you sign up for a free account, you indicate which topics you are most interested in. Then, whenever you sign in you are presented a list of the most recent Q&As for those particular topics.

         The site also allows you to browse any other topic you like. Quora also lets you know which topics are most popular moment, so it can serve as a kind of cultural barometer that you can use to find the topics people are most interested in right now.

         Another great site is Alltop. This site monitors news stories online as well as social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to determine what people are talking about the most. It includes links to the biggest news sites, blogs, social opinions sites and YouTube. It can even tell you the top sellers on iTunes.

         If you plan to focus on the more offbeat or humorous, the website Fark provides up-to-the-minute links to the most popular ridiculous, strange and unbelievable headlines from around the world. It’s actually one of the most popular sites that news organizations use when they need human interest stories or for a funny story for the end of TV news programs.