5 Reliable Tips to Help You Get Better at Content Ideation

5 Reliable Tips to Help You Get Better at Content Ideation

Did you know that 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute? The competition is fierce for attention. 

Any target keyword you choose is already getting covered by other people in your niche. So, how do you stay competitive?

Keeping up the good work with your content ideation is a part of the solution. And a HUGE one.

5 Reliable Tips to Help You Get Better at Content Ideation Share on X

But it’s not easy to keep your blog on an upward trajectory. You can come up with a unique blog idea 5 times, 10 times, 100 times. But at some point, the well runs dry.

Generating amazing content ideas on a regular basis is a gargantuan task.

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Here are some reliable tips that will help you get better at content ideation.

1. Learn From Customer Feedback

The biggest mistake you can make with your content strategy is to fail to take your audience into account when coming up with your content ideas.

Still, many marketers analyze their target audience at the outset of their marketing campaign. Until they abandon this trend.

Don’t make the same mistake! Before you get your content ideation rolling, be sure to go right to the source. Leverage every customer touchpoint and collect regular feedback.

Put your finger on the pulse of your audience. Take notes as you hear them voice their concerns, express their doubts or pose questions.

Use the following communication channels to collect information.

  • Use surveys to collect customer insights.
  • Use social media monitoring tools to look for guest blogging opportunities and influencer partnerships.
  • Parse your customer support email archives and use them to come up with valuable content ideas.

2. Tap Into the Tips & Tricks Category to Come Up With Fresh Blog Ideas

Now, try another tack to kickstart your content ideation process. Create a Tips & Tricks subcategory on your blog.

It’s a nook where you’ll offer technical knowledge and answer ‘how-to’ questions for your audience. Look for problems to resolve and issues to troubleshoot.

When you run out of ideas to write about, have a peek at what your audience is talking about on websites such as Quora or Reddit. The ideas you find there are most likely to morph into some of your most popular blog topics.

Let’s say you run a blog on Apple gadgets. Here are some blog article topics you could come up with:

  • How to Restore Lost Calendars & Reminders From iCloud
  • How to Enable Flash Player on Chrome
  • How to Take Full Page Screenshots in Safari on iPhone & iPad

Now, if you sell an app that helps with car diagnostics, your Tips & Tricks category could feature the following blog post ideas:

  • Why Is My Check Engine Light Still There?
  • How to Drive an Overheating Engine
  • How Often Should I Replace My Car Battery?

And here’s another example by Lumapps, a company that sells digital cloud-based HR solutions. They have a Tips & Tricks Category where they write on a host of topics that help readers create an intranet in their organization.

lumapps

Source: https://www.lumapps.com/blog-categories/tips-and-tricks/

3. Use Keywords to Generate Ideas and Plan Your Blog Posts

Another smart way to come up with content ideas for your blog is to do your keyword research.

Doing this will not only help you come up with ideas that resonate with your audience. It will also help you think from their perspective.

Your job isn’t remotely done if you’ve published an article that doesn’t reach your audience. So, to get your intended readers to find your blog post in the first place, you need to think out of the box.

Recommended read: How Can Big Companies Compete with Agile Startups?

You want to use the exact same keywords you’re audience is using when they type in their Google query to find a topic.

So, these are the steps you take:

You can also do a Google search for the selected keywords and identify which topics and angles are most commonly discussed.

4. Use Content Planning Tools

Your content marketing strategizing will include plenty of content planning. And once you’ve depleted all that’s left of your creative resources, you can resort to content planning tools.

Head over to AnswerthePublic to look for questions relevant to your business and your audience. Use them to inspire your own content pieces. Give the real people out there the answers they need.

You can also try these extra ideas:

  • Try also KeywordTool.io, Google Trends & Quora for similar research.
  • Look at Google Analytics to identify the highest-ranked landing pages. Use them to replicate their formats in your future content efforts.
  • Use Moz’s Open Site Explorer to see which pages have the most backlinks. This will help you identify the topics that captures interest of your target audience.

Answerthepublic

Source: https://answerthepublic.com/

5. Go the Extra Mile: Breathe Life Into Boring Topics

Some topics and industries can bore everyone to death, from the CEO to the writer to the average reader.

If you do business in pest control, you’ll have it much harder than someone selling a popular up-to-the-minute software. How on earth are you supposed to get anyone interested in reading slabs of text on pest control strategies?

Now, if you have a similar problem, we have a solution for you.

A case study by Brian Dean shows that you can gain traction among readers even if you’re unlucky to work in a boring industry.

Mike Bonadio, founder of an SEO agency, added a fun twist to the otherwise boring pest management topic.

He created an idea for an infographic: how bugs can help you defeat garden pests.

Interestingly, this experiment resulted in 60 referring domains and hundreds of links for the client’s website. Epic, right?

Recommended read: 12 Advanced Link Building Tactics to Crush SEO in 2020

There’s hope for you even if you’re doing content marketing for a client that sells wall paint. Identify an interesting angle, dig out interesting trivia, link your content to celebrities.

Here are some fun, attention-grabbing blog post examples on wall painting:

  • How Much Does it Cost to Paint a House in Australia
  • How to Get Best Painting Contract Work Near Me
  • 50 Famous Celebrity Homes And Their Color Schemes

Mckinnongroup

Source: https://mckinnongroup.com.au/our-work/

Get Your Content Creation Rolling

The tips above will help you stay sane when you need to come up with content ideas for your editorial calendar. You’ll get your mojo back when your brain refuses to cooperate.

Use all the available resources to keep your content production line going. Even if it sometimes means you’ll have to rely on content creation websites to help you scale your content.

Either way, you’re in better control. 

General FAQs

What makes a great content?

Well, quite simply, great content is content that goes that extra mile – for example; basic content may get read, good content may great read and shared, but great content is content that will get read, shared and talked about.

What are content ideas?

Content Ideation. A fantastic idea is the heartwood of any content campaign or project. Excitement around an idea is what sustains you through the (sometimes) long slog of creation, and it’s part of what gets your audience to share, share, share.

Why is content important?

It educates your audience to make smarter purchasing decisions. You can fuel content with SEO, helping you attract more leads through search engines. Content can be shared to enhance your social media strategy.

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Devendra Singh

Director, Content Strategy at Digital Marketing Trends. I develop, evaluate, and improve the company's content strategies. Providing a big online presence for SMEs and StartUps.