Dark Mode Light Mode

Generating Great Ideas for Great Content

great content ideas great content ideas

Last month we talked about what makes solid content. In other articles, we’ve talked about how to create content that improves your content marketing. Both are integral to an efficient and effective content marketing program. But it’s hard to apply those important concepts if you can’t come up with ideas for great content in the first place. 

Knowing that we want to create content that solves a problem your target audience is experiencing while demonstrating your expertise is a start. As is understanding that we need to write from the audience’s perspective – they’re the hero, not you.

But how do you come up with content ideas that you can fit into the framework we’ve created? 

Advertisement

The Germs of Ideas

Consume more than you create. Listen more than you speak. 

I’m not sure there’s more valuable advice I can share than that when it comes to creating content, or to marketing in general. Listening intently will tell you everything you need to know about each of your audience segments and what you need to provide in order to catch and hold their attention. 

I hope it’s fairly self-evident that you should be listening to your prospects to determine their pain points. Beyond that audience, you should be listening to what your current clients love about the work you do for them and what gaps they wish you would fill, as well. 

Internally, you should be listening to your customer service team and your product development team and anyone else who has a different (non-marketing) perspective about your clients and prospects and what their needs are. 

Industry trends matter, too, so you should be paying attention to how the landscape is changing. This is true for your own industry and the industries of your main audience segments. 

Brainstorm regularly. Pose “what if” questions. Do everything you can to avoid getting complacent and falling into the “this is how we’ve always done it” trap. There’s no reason your marketing team can’t help push for innovation, rather than settling for working with what they are provided.

Understanding Who You’re Appealing To

Who your audience segments are should be fairly well known to you and your marketing team, though you certainly want to dig deep enough to understand where the interests and pain points of various segments overlap and where they diverge. 

You also need to think about where your prospects are in their buying process. You’ll create different kind of content for different stages of the buying process. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need entirely separate sets of content. You will, though, need to present your content in different ways and focus on different parts of the client problem depending on where they are. 

Your prospect’s role is critical, as well. There’s a big difference between a boots-on-the-ground employee with day-to-day concerns and a more senior executive with a broader more strategic perspective on the same problem. Thinking about the things that keeps each of these people up at night will help you generate great content ideas. 

Thinking About Format

This might sound like something you’d consider after coming up with your idea and in some ways, it is a secondary step in the process. But as you consider content ideas you should be evaluating how they can be presented – the impact of a short-form video is quite different than a long-form blog article, a presentation or webinar, an email or a social media post. 

You can come at this issue from a number of angles – how can we best present this topic as a [video / slide deck / postcard / etc.] is one way. You can also come at it from the other direction. What topics are we covering that would be most appropriate as a [video / slide deck / postcard / etc.]? 

Think Bigger Picture

While you’re thinking about formats, you should also be thinking about your bigger marketing picture. Are there topics that lend themselves to being serialized? How can you cover a topic at varying degrees of depth, from Intro/101-level content to graduate seminar style deep dives. Part of this goes back to my earlier point about where your prospects are in their buying process. But it’s also important to appeal to different kinds of learners and cover as many preferences as you can efficiently. 

Occasional large-scale changes can re-invigorate a marketing plan that’s beginning to falter and can provide a blast of inspiration that ripples out through the rest of your marketing. 
By the way, if you’re interested in hearing some of my podcast and radio appearances, you’ll find a few of them listed on the Andigo website.

Andrew Schulkind - Marketing for Small B2B Businesses

Author

  • Andrew Schulkind

    Since founding Andigo, Andrew Schulkind has asked clients two simple questions: what does digital marketing success look like, and how can that marketing success be measured? The success of Andigo’s approach has garnered Andrew invitations to present at events like Social Media Week NY and WordCampNYC, as well as other events on content marketing and web-development topics. His writing appears on the Andigo blog, in a monthly column on TheCustomer, and for a range of other print and online publications, as well as in his recently published book, Marketing for Small B2B Businesses

    View all posts

Keep Up to Date with the Most Important News

By pressing the Subscribe button, you confirm that you have read and are agreeing to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Add a comment Add a comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Previous Post
unified commerce

Transforming Commerce with Unified Data Solutions

Next Post
2024 CDP Update

Mid-2024 CDP Update - Is Yours Keeping Up?

Advertisement

Subscribe to Customerland

Customer Enlightenment Delivered Directly to You.

    Get the latest insights, tips, and technologies to help you build and protect your customer estate.