Panning for gold in a rushing river. Rescuing the Ark of Covenant from a booby-trapped cave. Your quest for fresh, engaging content ideas probably feels a little like that, doesn’t it? Roaring rivers of information to sieve and treacherous caves of cliches to carefully sidestep, all in the name of unearthing something valuable that glows with originality.
Here’s the thrill – you’re about to embark on a journey of learning 15 unconventional, lesser-known strategies to source high-quality content ideas. Buckle up as we venture into the seldom-explored territories of idea generation, where originality isn’t a myth but a daily reality. This is that moment, akin to finding an obscure jazz record that blows your mind, opening up a whole new universe to explore. Ready? Let the adventure unfold.
Unleashing Your Creativity: Content Brainstorming Techniques
- Generate a storm of ideas with a mind map
- SCAMPER your way to unique content
- Channel free writing for unexpected insights
Step 1: Mind Mapping for Content Ideas
Mind Mapping acts like creative GPS, pulling out content ideas from hidden corners of your cerebrum. Start by writing down the core idea; then branch outwards with related topics. The benefit?
Engaging with Mind Mapping
The beauty of mind mapping lies in its simplicity. All you need is a blank canvas (digital or physical), ready to house your whirlwind of thoughts. You’d be surprised how one single concept can trigger a cascade of related topics and subtopics.
Step 2: Using the SCAMPER Method
Ready for more? SCAMPER adds seven more avenues to your idea landscape. Acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse/Rearrange. This technique challenges your routine thought process, leading you towards content goldmines.
SCAMPER in Action
Imagine you’re in charge of a blog about veganism. How can you SCAMPER this idea? Substitute vegan diet with plant-based diet. Combine health benefits and environmental impact of veganism. Adapt it for different cultures. You get the idea.
Step 3: The Power of Free Writing
If your mind feels like a dry content desert, here’s a fun technique – free writing. Set a timer, let your fingers dance across the keyboard or your pen glide across the paper. No edits, no interruptions. Just let thoughts pour onto the page. At the end of the session, sift through the stream-of-consciousness script to pick out any potential content nuggets.
Savoring the Process of Free Writing
Free writing is rough, raw, and at times nonsensical. But that’s the magic of it. It breaks down barriers of self-judgment and inhibition, triggering your brain to think outside the proverbial box. So, the next time you’re staring at a blank page, free write your way out of that content rut.
Harnessing the Power of Social Media for Content Ideas
- Learn how to capitalize on Twitter’s trending topics to tap into relevant content ideas
- Discover how Instagram’s hashtags and stories can serve as a goldmine for audience-targeted content
- Understand the value of LinkedIn groups and discussions, and how they can influence your content ideation process
Step 4: Trending Topics on Twitter
Twitter, with its microblogging feature and real-time dynamic, has become the world’s newsroom. Scanning the trending topics provides a snapshot of what is currently capturing public attention.
Tactical Use of Trending Topics
To effectively use Twitter trends, you don’t have to directly write about the trending topic itself. Instead, consider how your business or your client’s business relates to the trending topic. For example, if climate change is trending, and you are in the tech industry, how is your business contributing to the fight against climate change?
Consider it this way, every trending topic is an aspect of a puzzle, and your task as a content creator is to figure out how your brand fits within that picture. With such a strategy, you’ll not only create relevant content, but you’re also likely to boost your brand’s visibility on the platform.
Step 5: Instagram Hashtags and Stories
Instagram reaches over a billion people every month, making the platform an untapped reservoir of content ideas. The app’s interactive features like hashtags and stories forge a vibrant social network that can serve as a fountain of content inspiration.
The Magic of Hashtags
On Instagram, hashtags can be as effective as keywords. They are a pathway to the community: an assembly of people bound together by common interests, tendencies, aspirations, or concerns. Let’s say your client is an organic beauty brand, exploring hashtags like #organicbeauty, #cleanbeauty, #greenbeauty will give a pulse of what the audience is currently interested in, from trending ingredients to eco-friendly packaging—themes that can inform your content creation.
Stories: A Real-Time Content Barometer
Instagram Stories reveal the daily ebb and flow of people’s lives and interests providing near real-time insights into what content might resonate with your audience. Observe the Stories circulating among your followers, competitors, and industry influencers to pinpoint prevailing themes, questions, and challenges that your content can directly address.
Step 6: LinkedIn Groups and Discussions
LinkedIn is often considered as the professional’s social media platform, but dismissing it as purely B2B does it a disservice. Its groups and discussions offer a wealth of information you can tap into for content inspiration.
The Profound Insights of LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups are often created around a shared professional interest or industry. This makes these groups perfect arenas for mining insights about pressing issues, shared challenges, popular industry trends, and essential skills. Paying attention to these common topics can provide a wealth of content ideas that directly address your audience’s needs and concerns.
Discussions: A Zeal of Professional Ambitions
Joining in on LinkedIn discussions not only improves your visibility, but it also introduces you to new perspectives. These discussions give you a chance to see what topics are attracting attention, what opinions are being formed, and where the conversation is headed. Consequently, these insights can form the basis of your next content piece, providing value to your audience by addressing their interests directly.
Maximizing SEO Tools for Content Ideation
- Uncover the power of Google Trends for real-time content inspiration
- Utilize SEMRush for precise and targeted keyword research
- Extract valuable question-based content from Answer the Public
Google Trends for Current Topics
Google is no stranger to any content marketer. One of its less explored corners though is Google Trends. It serves as a treasure trove for content creators, providing insights into what’s currently happening in the world.
Google Trends arms you with invaluable information about trending topics on a global level, down to specific countries and regions. This versatility makes it an essential tool for keeping your content relevant and αdaptive to the ever-changing interest of the target audience. A deep-dive into Google Trends allows you to craft content that’s a perfect blend of niche-specificity and current happenings.
Plus, Google Trends offers a feature called ‘Related Queries.’ Here, you can find a list of keywords users typed in related to the original search term. These keywords can incubate fresh content ideas.
Keyword Research with SEMRush
Accurate keyword research is a vital cog in the content ideation wheel. SEMRush, a highly-rated SEO tool, offers robust keyword research capabilities. This is instrumental in unearthing high-potential keywords, making your content more discoverable and resonative.
Keyword Magic is one of SEMRush’s standout features. Here, you drop in a seed keyword, and SEMRush responds with a multitude of related keyword ideas. Also, it filters these keywords based on their volume, difficulty, and competitiveness score. This reduces the effort of trawling through thousands of keywords on your quest for the perfect one.
Another gem in SEMRush’s arsenal is the ‘Questions’ feature. As the name suggests, it provides questions that users are asking around your seed keyword. Questions are a goldmine for content creators, translating to in-depth, value-adding content pieces.
Answer the Public for Question-Based Content
Creating content that addresses user queries can massively boost your content’s value proposition. Answer the Public is a tool that centralizes on this aspect.
Type in a keyword, and Answer the Public shoots back a visual representation of questions around that keyword users are asking. What are they seeking? How are they framing their queries? Answer the Public’s visuals offer these insights interactively and comprehensively.
The range of question phrases (who, what, why, how, are, etc.) that Answer the Public provides opens up an array of angles to approach your content from. Also, don’t overlook the ‘Related’ search section. It offers an assembly of phrases people are using related to your keyword. That’s yet another well of potential content ideas to tap into.
Creating content around these questions and phrases can almost guarantee high-value output that resonates with your audience. Seamlessly blending them into your content strategy can elevate your brand’s voice and visibility.
Extracting Content Ideas from Customer Feedback
- Your customers are invaluable sources for content ideas.
- Direct feedback allows you to address common concerns or questions.
- Surveys and user-generated content provide insights into your audience’s needs, interests, and pain points.
Step 10: Reviewing Customer Queries and Complaints
Customer complaints and queries expose content gaps in your strategy which can be closed to improve your product or offer better customer service. It’s effective wherein your solution to one customer’s query could potentially help thousands of others with similar issues.
For example, suppose numerous customers are puzzled about integrating your software with other tools. In that case, an in-depth guide offering step-by-step instructions for several popular tools would undoubtedly be well-received. Moreover, these issues indicate what your target audience is genuinely interested in or struggling with, ensuring your content is not just interesting but also useful.
Step 11: Conducting Surveys for Content Topics
Surveys allow you to probe deeper into what your audience wants. Simple questions about their interests, challenges, and what they’d like to learn more about, can reveal a wealth of content ideas.
For instance, if a substantial percentage of your audience indicates they are struggling with productivity, this can steer your blog topics towards productivity tips, hacks, and tools. With surveys, you can also take the opportunity to ask your users what kind of content they prefer – long-form articles, videos, podcasts, e-books, infographics – then plan your content strategy around these preferences.
Step 12: User-Generated Content as a Goldmine
User-generated content (UGC), such as reviews, testimonials, social media posts, or forum threads, can not only provide content ideas but also be content in itself. For example, a positive review can be showcased in a ‘Testimonials’ blog post, while a list of common questions from a forum can form the basis of a comprehensive FAQ post.
Moreover, UGC provides a fantastic opportunity to engage with your audience further. By featuring their content, you acknowledge their contribution and make them feel valued, breeding loyalty and potentially sparking more engagement.
Repurposing Existing Content for Fresh Ideas
- Revitalizing outdated blog posts
- Transform webinars into captivating blogs
- Convert case studies into comprehensive how-to guides
Step 13: Updating Old Blog Posts
Old blog posts hold a treasure trove of valuable information. Instead of letting these articles gather dust, breathe new life into them by modernizing the content.
When updating, take into account the blog post’s performance metrics. Identify which sections of the posts have high user engagement and which areas need improving. Modify the posts based on these insights, enhancing the strengths and addressing the weaknesses. This strategy not only generates new ideas but can also boost web traffic and audience engagement.
Effectively Updating Blogs
The key to effectively updating old blog posts is keeping the core message intact while making necessary adjustments. This means understanding the audience’s needs at the time of writing and adapting to the current situation.
Step 14: Turning Webinars into Blog Posts
Your webinars rank among the richest content sources you own. Infused with quality information, insightful discussions, and engaging Q&A sessions, they are ripe for conversion. Transform your webinars into blog posts, unlocking a new dynamic for your readers.
When crafting a blog post from a webinar, ensure the core insights from the webinar are captured. Break down the content into manageable sections. Detail the key arguments, demonstrate the key learnings and present any valuable data that emerged during the webinar.
Lastly, remember to structure the blog post in an engaging and dynamic way. The blog form allows for more creative flexibility than a live webinar. Use this advantage to make the content more appealing to the readers.
Maximizing Webinar Content
Maximizing webinar content for blogs requires strategic planning. Keynnotes, popular Q&A interactions, and expert takeaways are prime content to translate into blog form. Plus, you might find hidden gems from webinar chat-logs and post-webinar discussions.
Step 15: Converting Case Studies into How-To Guides
Case studies are loaded with practical, substantial and data-driven insights. Reimagining case studies as how-to guides allows you to reuse your success stories and lessons learned in a new, useful format.
A well-structured how-to guide derived from a case study offers the perfect blend of theory and practice. Ensure the guide includes concrete steps, is easily understandable, and gives actionable recommendations derived from the success path shown in the original case study.
Crafting Potent How-To Guides
Crafting potent how-to guides from case studies requires a clear understanding of the audience’s problems and the solutions provided in the case study. Make the guide actionable, concise, and offer practical value. Remember, success in the digital world requires adjustments, so always be iteratively improving your how-to guides.
The result? Rejuvenated old content, a fresh influx of ideas, and an audience eager for more. All of this achieved by simply advising, repurposing and enriching what already exists within your hands.
So, What’s Inside Your Content Toolbox?
Through 15 unconventional strategies, we’ve navigated the meandering path to capturing unique content ideas. Asking fresh questions, observing competitors, quelling the creator’s ego, taking advantage of user-generated content, we’ve covered a lot of ground.
Having ventured off the beaten path, you now possess unknown insights, strategies that can transform your content creation approach. It’s about being open-minded, curious and ready to seize inspiration from the most unexpected corners.
Now, time for some action. Experiment with these strategies one by one, mix and match, see what stirs your creativity best. Make a plan, jot down some steps and get those unique content ideas flowing!
So here’s a thought to chew on: Which of these unconventional strategies cube the most with your current content style and why?
Remember, content creation is a craft, not a race. So, take your time, enjoy the process and see where these untrodden paths lead you. “Running out of ideas,” is officially off your worry-list!
