The process of creating regular, ongoing, consistent content can do a lot of positive things for your business, like:
- Builds your brand
- SEO
- Supplements Marketing efforts
- Reputation management
- Trust
- Authority
But often times it can be difficult to continually be creative and come up with topics for content that will achieve your goals.
I defiantly fall into this. Finding myself looking at a blank article page wondering what I am going to write about, what images I’m going to use, and how to best craft this content to be as useful to readers as possible in order to build those things mentioned earlier (brand, SEO, marketing, reputation management, trust, authority, etc.).
So how can you address this dilemma? Here are a few major tips and trick that you can use to open your eyes to topics for your content marketing efforts.
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Engage on Social Media, Especially Twitter
Social networks are an amazing resource when it comes to content ideas! Now you can’t expect the ideas to present themselves to you, but through using social networks like twitter, you have the opportunity to take in thousands of bits of information, links, pictures, and videos in just minutes without navigating to a new web page.
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Become a Content Disposal
Be willing to take in information on a wide variety of topics. It doesn’t matter if it is within your industry or not, start following people that are a step beyond your comfort zone, and just watch the content ideas develop in your mind. Subscribe to 5-10 new email lists and then scroll through them for a few weeks before you unsubscribe. Open your mind to new topics, new conversation threads, and new ideas. This will allow you to develop new ideas with a brand new perspective. And if you feel like you can’t take in more info, simply replace one or two of your outlets with someone new.
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Find Overlap and Explore
Often times there can be a lot of overlap in the information we take in. This is particularly true if you tend to focus in on a primary industry. The key here is to find the points that overlap and then start exploring the new possible bits of information that lay in the overlap. Your content doesn’t always have to give answers. You can explore new questions in a unique way, which shows thought leadership.
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Talk About What is Going On
Whether it is within your company, within your industry, or even things going on in the news, talk about what is going on.
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Keep Your Content Eyes Open
Don’t just be thinking about topics when the task is at hand. Train yourself to be asking, “Could this be an article, a video, a podcast, an ebook, a tweet, a post, etc?” Getting into the habit of asking this question will allow you to see content opportunities ALL OVER THE PLACE!
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Use Your Questions
When I’m going through my twitter feed or reading an article, watching a video, or whatever I’m doing, questions are coming to mind, like;
– “How does that work?”
– “Where did they find that?”
– “Is there more to know about that topic?”
And these questions can be the beginning of great content! Through doing your own research, you can kill two birds with one stone: First, you get your questions answered, and second, you have created a piece of valuable content for your company to use! -
Write ’em Down
When a good idea for content is sitting right in front of us, we don’t always have time to actually create the content then and there. We are busy, and it you only have so many hours to get everything done, which is why you should start a list. Write down topics that come to mind and compile a list that you can draw from so that you aren’t only thinking about topics when it’t time to actually create it.
EXTRA HINT:
Write down more than you think. This is something I do all the time. Instead of just writing town the title of what you have in mind, be willing to write a paragraph, or at least a couple of sentences outlining what you have in mind. This will make it much easier to pick up where you left off once it is time to create.