How to find content ideas
I’ve written about how to have ideas in the past, but where the previous post focuses on coming up with ideas from scratch, here we’re focusing on where to find the useful and relevant information you already have which can be turned it into content.
Content ideas could be staring you in the face, you just have to know where to look and then think creatively about how you can turn what you’ve found into content that your audience will find useful or engaging.
The Builtvisible blog is a prime example of this. Our agency is alive with experts in the industry, who learn new ways to tackle client conundrums, train themselves in tools and create solutions. While it’s easy to forget, over time we’ve fine-tuned the art of documenting our discoveries to produce a blog that’s packed with industry knowledge from all walks of life.
And you can do the same – so let’s go through some of the potential places you can start to look in detail.
Reviews and customer service
Scouring through your customer reviews can be very telling. Root through comments on social platforms and product page reviews or speak to your customer service team and find out what your customers are saying about your business.
Group the common themes into a spreadsheet. From there, you should be able to see how you can start answering some of the questions that are being asked or how to show your customers the different ways they can use your product. This could result in a step-by-step landing page, an FAQs page or an instructional video.
Daily processes
You might be thinking ‘what’s so interesting about my day-to-day tasks?’. Well, to someone who wants to understand the ins and outs of what you do or to those who are fans of your business the answer is very!
Pick the last full day of work that included the broadest scope of work that you do and write about the minutiae of it. This content could then be made into a day-in-the-life feature or even some how-to guides.
Let’s say you own a restaurant, here are just a few pieces of content that could be created based on your daily tasks:
- Meet the owner: an interview-style video that could be shared across social channels
- How to become a professional chef: my journey
- The 10 dishes you need to master as a professional chef
A lot of the content you think of may already exist, but tying your personal story and recommendations adds a uniqueness. With a bit of organic optimisation, the content you produce will not only answer queries of the general public – who will learn about your offering in the process – but producing these pieces also bolsters your brand’s personality.
Tools or processes
The tools you use and the processes you perform might seem like second nature to you, but there will be people out there who’ll be looking for insights into the types of tools and processes that are used in your industry or type of business.
List the tools and processes that you use most as well as the type of task they help to complete and the pros and cons of each one. Here is some pieces of content you could create based on that list:
- Comparison articles: XX vs XX – which one is better for XX?
- A bumper round-up of all the tools you use based on your profession or industry, such as this one
- A listicle of the most suitable tools you use to aid a certain task, e.g. ‘The 5 best tools to design business cards’ or ‘The 5 best accounting tools for small business owners’
- A step-by-step guide of a process: ‘10-step guide to finding the right restaurant supplier’
Content
This one is quite meta, but if you’re constantly reading, listening and watching content about the business you’re in, then you’ll most definitely have some thoughts and opinions on what you’ve consumed.
Have you read any articles or books? What podcasts have you listened to recently? Have you taken any online courses?
Did it inspire you? Make you angry? Make you think differently? Write these thoughts down and assemble them into something structured. This could then become a long review, a long social post or – if you have a strong and well-researched opinion on it – a thought-leadership piece.
Collaborations
Is there someone in your inner circle who you could join forces with? Raid your contacts list, messages and emails to see if there are any conversations that could make good content or for someone you could reach out to.
You could pick someone who is in the same industry as you and discuss the similarities and challenges being faced or you could pick someone from a different field and discuss the dissimilarities or how you work together. These conversations can then be turned into something like a Q&A article or even be made into a live interview.
Every person you collaborate with instantly doubles your marketing efforts and showcases your existing knowledge to a whole new subset of people who could then become part of your audience.
Make a big deal out of the little things
No one’s expecting you to reinvent the wheel, but no matter how small or trivial it may seem to you, the content you create will undoubtably help someone and invariably increase your brand’s awareness. Smaller posts (500-600 words) about a realisation you’ve had or a trick you’ve learnt make for great nuggets of content, especially if your audience is time poor, so don’t shy away from blowing up the details.
If you understand where best to look when creating content and get used to sharing the knowledge you have, you’ll have a packed content calendar in no time.
If you’ve followed these tips, please share what you’ve created below – we’d love to see! Or, if you need a steer with your content efforts, our team can help.
