Content is the commerce of social media. But, relevant content, the stuff your customers and prospects actually want to know is the gold. Constantly cranking out this gold can sometimes present creative challenges.

So how do you know what to write about, how do you keep the ideas flowing, how do you keep the content relevant and popular.

There a number of ways to address these important questions, not the least of which is simply paying attention to what your prospects and customers ask on the daily basis. There’s another tool that not many small business know much about, but is a wealth of great content ideas.

The service is called Yahoo Answers. Millions of people go to Yahoo Answers to get answers to questions on just about every topic known to man. Yahoo members are free to answer these questions and then even earn points for participation and developing a reputation for good answers. I’m not sure working your tail off answering all kinds of questions is the best use of your time (although you may actually come across opportunities to interact with people looking to buy what you sell) but, I have found that the questions posed on your particular subject of expertise can provide some tremendous research for blog topics. If a number of people are asking the same questions, and they are, then maybe the market is ripe for your blog post addressing the question.

The questions are broken down into many searchable categories. In addition, if you find the occasional question that you have already thoroughly addressed on your blog you can step up and provide an answer on the Yahoo Answer page and cite your blog post as the resource for your answer. If your answer is considered particularly helpful, this can send some additional traffic (no link juice though) your way.