Out of ideas?
Content creators’ need for a constant flow of ideas can be dra
ining, to say the least. In order to continually drive traffic to your blog and website, you have to come up with relevant, quality topics for your blog, social media, and other online content.
But what do you do when you’re simply out of ideas? The following are 10 different ways to start content creation when you’re stuck from a marketing agency.
1 – Scan the Industry News
A successful blog includes a mix of evergreen content and up-to-date trends and news. Fortunately, each new day brings news about the economy, new products, trends, innovations, and more.
Use Google News or another news service to personalize your news with keywords that are important to your industry and, more specifically, to your blog. Then, when you’re looking for blog topics, scan your personalized news and find something worthy of mentioning to your readers. Not only will you stay on the cutting `edge of your industry, but you’ll become known as a source to look to for the latest and greatest.
2- Get to Know the Conversations on Social Media
What are people talking about on social media? These conversations are great fodder for blog posts and social media content. Look for fresh ideas on Twitter’s local and worldwide trend lists, Reddit’s homepage trending keywords, and keyword searches on Google+ and LinkedIn.
3 – Read Competitors’ Blogs
What kinds of posts have been popular on your competitors’ blog? Take a popular topic and give it a new angle or a personal touch of your own. You can find out which posts have been the most popular on social media by using the “Best by Shares” tab. Find out which keywords were most prevalent in these posts, and try them out on your own blog.
4 – Use Google Keywords Planner
If you haven’t yet explored Google Keywords Planner, you’ve got to give it a try. It’s a free service for users of AdWords, and you can use it to search for keywords commonly used in your industry. In most cases, your keyword searches will yield hundreds of phrases that are commonly searched along with your keywords. Ideas galore! It can also help your SEO to update your targeted keyword list. Check out our Free SEO analysis to get started!
5 – Explore Questions on Quora
Question-and-answer sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers can be gold mines for content ideas. These sites cover a variety of topics, and you can find out what kinds of questions people have about your industry or products and services.
6 – Listen to Your Customers
As you interact with your customers, certain topics will come up over and over again. If you turn these topics over in your mind, you’ll be able to create blog posts using these ideas. Chances are good that if your customers are asking certain questions, other people in your target audience are having the same questions and will be interested in your answers.
7 – Take Notes at Conferences
When you attend conferences or trade shows, take notes on the speakers or interactions you have with conference attendees. You may have a different take on a topic than the speaker does, and your thoughts on the topic can be turned into an interesting blog post. You can also make connections with people at conferences and make arrangements for guest blog posts or collaborations.
8 – Read the Comments on Your Blog
The comments section of your blog can be a great place to get ideas for future posts. Interesting conversations can help you to see something from a different point of view. Also, some people share personal experiences or stories that could become great case studies for future blog posts.
9 – Participate in Webinars
Information from webinars is generally tightly focused and can offer lots of fodder for content creation. Best of all, you can listen to webinars again and again for future ideas. Keep a file of your favorite webinars for the days when you can’t think of anything to write.
10 – Listen to Podcasts
Podcasts are another great source of material for content creation. You can listen to podcasts while you’re walking, driving, or doing the dishes, and your mind can ruminate on the material and generate interesting ideas for tomorrow’s blog posts.
For more information on content creation–or to get started with a content marketing campaign of your own–get in touch with us at Park Slope Softworks, your inbound marketing company in Brooklyn.
Check out this infographic that shows how you can create content for a client
