Does coming up with content ideas keep you from promoting your products, services or your business?
If you feel like you never really know what to say on social media or how to come up with content that makes your audience say, “That’s SO me!” or “I needed this” or “Get out of my head” type of reaction, then you’re going to want to keep reading.
Whether you’re creating blog posts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos or social media posts, at the end of the day, generating content ideas is a combination of research, strategic thinking and inspiration.
I want to show you a five-step process that can help you generate endless content ideas for social media and your business.
By following this process, you’ll be able to create meaningful content that helps you attract, nurture and sell your products and services to your audience with ease.
1. Commit to Capturing Ideas
The most important step in this process will be for you to have a system or a method for capturing your ideas.
The trick is to try and keep it all in one place for easy access.
Decide to figure out where you will capture and store your content ideas.
Here are some suggested digital tools: Evernote, Notion, Trello, Asana, Drafts App or the Notes app on your phone.
Most digital tools allow you to create folders, subfolders, tags or labels that allow you to easily organize, sort or filter your ideas to reference later. Make sure you leverage these types of features so that you can easily refer to them later. Whatever works best for your brain and organization is key here.
The trick to generating endless content ideas? Having ONE main place to store and capture your ideas for easy access. Share on XWhat about a regular notebook? There’s nothing wrong with having a notebook for your ideas, just make sure you know which specific notebook will keep your ideas so you can expand on them or refer to them later.
I’m a fan of notebooks because they are an effective tool for brain-dumping and organizing my ideas.
Implementation Tip: Make sure to limit yourself to one digital tool and one designated notebook.
The last thing you want is to have notes and ideas scattered around in too many places. Guess what that leads to? Scattered ideas and scattered content. You want to avoid this.
Instead, you want to be strategic and organized. Leave yourself clues and know where to find them!
Related: Ways to Organize Your Content Marketing Ideas
2. Maximize Content Pillars
If you want to streamline and simplify your process for generating content ideas, you’re going to want to leverage your content pillars to keep you focused and strategic while brainstorming topics.
Your content pillars can help anchor you throughout your content brainstorming process.
Content pillars are 3-5 topics that your brand or business discusses in-depth. Content pillars are sometimes referred to as “content buckets” or “content categories.”
Content pillars are an essential starting point while generating content ideas because they help you stay focused on creating content relevant for your audience and their needs. These topics help to answer questions, educate or solve a problem for your audience.
Generating content ideas starts with identifying your 3-5 content pillars. They help you stay focused and strategic while brainstorming topics. Share on XYour content pillars also serve to complement topics around your products or services so that you can sell and pitch your offerings to your audience with ease.
When you intentionally create and curate content around your content pillars, it helps to maximize your content strategy and marketing plan.
Implementation Tip: Try identifying your 3-5 content pillars and try to come up with 10 content ideas for each pillar. Do this and you’ll have content mapped out for each quarter and year.
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3. Review Your Analytics
A little bit of digging and research into your analytics will help you understand what’s working and not working in your content marketing.
Take a look and what your audience is engaging with:
- What types of content that you share do they save?
- Which content received a lot of shares?
- Identify posts that prompted questions, interest or other types of engagement.
- Which posts can you repurpose, expand on or update with new information?
- Think about the most frequently asked questions left in your content.
Looking for little clues and insights can help inform new content ideas.
Implementation Tip: Make sure to also review the traffic on your website, as well as traffic behavior and analytics from Pinterest or Google.
Capture any actionable insights and identify any new trends or themes that can help you generate new topic ideas for your audience.
Related: 14 Creative Ways to Improve Your Content Through Research
4. Ask Your Audience
Talking and interacting directly with your audience is one the most effective ways to generate content ideas.
Whether you’re in person, on the phone, conducting an email survey or polling them on social media—there are many creative ways you can mine for their feedback.
You need to understand what your audience is thinking about or wondering.
- Do they have any reservations about purchasing your product?
- What’s important to them in their buying decision?
- What do they evaluate or consider before purchasing a product or service?
If you want to understand your audience better, you can also read through their reviews on your site. You could also visit Facebook Groups to see what types of questions people are leaving or look through comments or questions from your account or your competitor’s accounts and see if there’s anything you can adapt and remix into your content.
Implementation Tip: See what your audience cares and values regarding the particular product or service you offer. Take note of the questions or comments and identify ways to incorporate their language and exact phrases into your content.
The language your customers use is important in your copy because you want to be able to speak directly to their needs, dreams, desires and transformations they’re seeking.
What has their experience been and how you can help create content that addresses their needs.
Identify content that can address their needs and values in your content.
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5. Look at Trending Topics
What is your audience actively searching for? What’s top of mind for them?
A little research can go a long way when you’re generating content ideas.
You can leverage Google Trends or Pinterest Keywords to help you with your research.
For example, if you’re a nutritionist and we’re in the middle of a holiday season like Thanksgiving and Christmas, perhaps you can generate content ideas about ways to eat healthy during the holidays.
Throughout the pandemic, we have seen many at-home or remote-type solutions for getting things done (e.g. working out from home during the pandemic, staying productive while working from home) and so on.
Implementation Tip: Get in tune with what top-of-mind topics may be relevant for your audience and identify ways to weave your content ideas into these topics.
SUMMARY:
- Identify a system or method for capturing your content ideas.
- Identify and maximize your content pillars to help you brainstorm topics that align with your audience’s needs and your content strategy.
- Take a deep dive into your analytics
- Connect with your audience and ask them how you can better serve them (e.g. leverage polls, phone calls, DMs, etc).
- Leverage trending topics to help you create content that is relevant and top of mind for your audience.
Do you have a favorite tool to help you capture your content ideas? I’d love to hear what you use and how it helps you store and organize your ideas. Let me know in the comments!
