Even at the best of times, content creation can feel a bit like being stuck on a merry-go-round, churning out piece after piece, week after week, year after year. It takes some serious love to say the least, and when the creative juices just aren't flowing in your favour, it can quickly feel anything but merry.
To help you out in those moments of complete, "what the heck do I write or post next?" despair, I've compiled three simple things you can do to help get things feeling merry again.
Three things you can do to generate new content ideas include keyword research, attending an event or webinar, and calling upon your client's most frequently asked questions and concerns.
1. KEYWORD RESEARCH
Keyword research doesn't just belong in the land of SEO. With most people now using social media like a secondary search engine, being aware of your keywords and using these in your content makes sense really.
For the purpose of drumming up content ideas, keyword research doesn't need to be a complicated analytics game either. It can be as simple as running search queries aligned to your key content pillars and using the results to spark ideas.
Utilising keyword research is an awesome way to tap into the psyche of your target audience to better understand a whole heap of things in relation to your business, such as:
What questions they want answered
What language and words they're using to describe both their pain points, as well as your product or service
What topics are growing in popularity that they want to know more about
To get started, write down the key words and phrases aligned with your content pillars (p.s. your content pillars are the 3-5 key things you want to be known for on social media - for example mine are marketing strategy, branding, websites and content creation). Then, run search queries in a keyword research platform and explore what comes up. Here are a couple of keyword research tools with free functions that I've found helpful:
GOOGLE TRENDS
Google Trends is great for uncovering what's new and interesting in your world. Using its insights can help you jump on board growing topics before they're even a thing. Simply type your keyword(s) into the search bar and it will populate results with the top related topics, rising related topics and rising related search queries.
KEYWORD TOOL & SEMRUSH
Keywordtool.io is great for uncovering what questions people are asking. Once you run a search for your keywords there's a seperate tab for questions where you can uncover what questions people are asking in relation to your keywords.
Semrush is a little more complex, but the Keyword Magic Tool is worth it. It allows you to see different variations of your keyword to get better insight into the way your client's speak about your the products, services or pain points associated with your business.
Here are some results I received for "Marketing Strategy" -
Once you've got your search results, you can create content that speaks to the results. For example, based on the Google Trends results above, I might choose to create a carousel post with examples of different marketing objectives.
2. EVENTS AND WEBINARS
Whenever I attend a webinar or event hosted by some of the industry's best, I always come away with tonnes of new content ideas. I'm certain you will too.
To turn your learnings into content ideas, I recommend writing down all of the key insights, selecting which ones are relevant to your audience and your offerings, and for each one share your spin on it - carousel posts work well for this.
If you're not sure where/how to find events and webinars, subscribe to an industry-leading publication or brand. Often these sources share information about co-hosted webinars and events. Eventbrite can be great too depending on your industry.
3. CALL UPON YOUR CLIENTS
What are the top five questions you get asked by your clients on the regular? If your mind is drawing blanks, go back through some of your recent DM or email convos to see what crops up.
What are five of the most common mistakes/issues/troubles you see your target audience facing over and over again?
Create content that answers those questions, and addresses what to do to combat those issues. With this one it pays to remember that your clients don't live in your world. They don't live and breathe your area of expertise like you do. Just because you've read and heard about a new innovation 20 times doesn't mean that they have. Don't be afraid to share something because you're worried they already know all about it - if they keep asking the same questions or having the same troubles, chances are it's still news to them.
And if after all that you're still twiddling your thumbs, let's connect. I'd love to help make content creation a super merry part of your business!
