Creating the right content that will build a strong connection with your audience doesn’t come easy. You must utilize all aspects of your creative genius to continue creating content that your audience finds interactive, relatable, and, more importantly, interesting.
When you find it difficult to come up with content ideas, you must introduce a few hacks to ensure you keep the content juice flowing. By following these strategies, you will constantly build content ideas you can use when posting on your blog, social media channels, and other platforms.
You can even improve them to fit other ideas you might have about improving your content marketing strategies to be better targeted and strategic.
What Are Content Ideas?
Content ideation is a term in content marketing that gives meaning to the process of identifying and picking the most relevant topics that will engage your target audience. By ‘engaging’ we mean the content has to be interesting, entertaining, and very shareable with your audience.
Your original content must begin a conversation and offer you the opportunity to engage with your audience. You could use social media to aid you to decide what content to create next. Select things your audience is frequently talking about, ask them when interacting with them, or even set up a poll.
How To Come Up With Content Ideas
If you have a hard time coming up with ideas for your content, there are a few strategies you must be in place to ensure you have a huge stream of content ideas. These ideas include:
1. Google search suggestions
Google search suggestions are one of the unique ways to build up content ideas. When you search “content management” online, you’ll see a lot of results showing you different answers to the question of content management.
In addition to the search suggestions you can find, you could also discover some of the related search connections in the bottom aspect of the page.
If you’re lost about how to get started with these aspects, you can start by typing in a content topic you’ve used before.
This strategy is perfect as you get to create content relevant to people in your niche. And you’re sure they are SEO friendly because of how they relate to what you do.
2. Blog comments
Constantly reviewing comments on your posts is a good practice. And you shouldn’t only do this when you’re seeking to build content ideas. It’s a perfect opportunity to keep in touch with your audience by replying to them.
Some comments come with questions and concerns which can form the next topics for any of the conversations you want to have.
If your readers ask questions in the comments section, they can form titles for many contents. You only need to tweak a few words and ensure it adapts to the best practices of SEO.
The significant thing about this source is it keeps coming. As long as you keep publishing new posts, there will always be new ideas hidden in the comments.
3. Create topic lists in bunches
When you want to create content, you don’t need to sit down and craft what you desire to write. Instead, you need to come up with ideas that can help you create a long list of contents that you can structure anytime you want.
When your mind is focused on this duty, it’s less difficult to think constructively. You start with the ideas first, after which you can perfect the titles when you write.
This strategy will make it easier for you to bring out content. You’ll be able to choose a topic from your list and start writing.
4. Social media followers
To get these ideas, you must begin with people who follow you on social media. You can click on their profiles and see what forms the majority of their conversations.
Some might be useless, but others can be crucially beneficial to your brainstorming process. By posting them as questions, you can get a lot of responses that will ensure you get the correct idea.
For example, let’s say you have a brand related to health. Ask your followers a question about their favourite meals or what recipes they use.
The answers will help you come up with new content ideas.
5. Conduct interviews
By using interviews, you can get to understand more clearly the intentions of your audience.
The great thing about an interview is you don’t need to go directly, and the answers don’t have to be definitive. By finding open-ended questions, you get them talking more, which can give you so many ideas.
Ensure you always record your interviews. That way, you can review them later instead of frantically trying to write things down while someone is speaking.
6. Competitor websites
If you’re running out of ideas, you can always check out your competitor’s blog. This is one of the best ways to come up with content ideas that can draw more readers to you.
In doing this, ensure you plagiarize none of their content, as this can get you sued both by the search engine and your hosting company.
The superior advantage this offers you is the ability to construct content better than that of your competition. For example, let’s say you’re using a top 10 list from a competitor’s blog as an inspiration for a new content idea. Well, you can try to one-up them by creating a top 20 list on the same topic.
7. Product reviews
Product reviews are a significant source of content ideas you can hinge on when you feel uncreative in that area of your life.
You can review these topics in a blog post or using video content.
For example, let’s say you own a website related to car technologies. If you go on a race with another car, you can discuss the experience relating to what made one car beat the other one.
This strategy is important for building hype about a new product launch.
By writing reviews for a range of products, you can continue writing for more which ensures you always have content to use at any point.
8. Personal stories
Stories are one of the best ways to draw followership or increase readership on any of your platforms or ideas. By telling a story of success, pain, doubt, or any experience, this content can do a lot for you and your audience.
Personal stories are awesome because they make your content unique. While people may have similar stories, the details of yours won’t be the same as anyone else’s.
9. Sign up for newsletters
By signing up for newsletters, you will get the content ideas delivered straight to your inbox.
When you sign up for these newsletters, ensure you sign for industry newsletters. They’ll ensure you’re up to date with trending topics, news, and events.
You can even sign up for competitor newsletters and get to experience the conversations they have with their customers.
10. YouTube videos
All businesses need a YouTube profile. A platform wherein they can upload videos and share all these videos on all other marketing channels.
YouTube is a perfect place wherein you can grow ideas for YouTube channels.
YouTube functions similarly to a Google search; as you type in a subject, you’ll see suggestions that fit the description of your search.
When you watch a video, you will find other videos for your consideration on the sidebar.
In addition to discovering topics based on the titles of videos, you can also see some of these content to find some inspiration within their content.
Similar to the practice of your website and the websites of your competitors, you’ll also need to read through the comments section of YouTube videos. Look through the comments on your videos as well as the videos you’re watching to help generate new ideas.
11. Check Your Emails
Emails are a great way to generate content ideas that are vital for you and your brand to use when you want to grow bigger.
Emails are the most personalized form of content marketing used by many marketers to get their customers interested in a product or service. Unlike other open marketing formats, email marketing follows a closed format that works incredibly well.
Conclusion
Content ideas are important to keep your users engaged and active. A lot of content creators have ideas screaming in their head all day, however, they never really get to itemize all these ideas in a way that is profitable to them.
When you have a long list of content ideas, you find out that you hardly run out of ideas on what to post for your audience. Hence, they always have content to engage with when interacting with your brand.