Whether it’s blogs, social media, web copy or videos – content is a key relationship builder for you and your target audience.
Valuable content allows you to engage potential customers, present your knowledge on relevant topics and build company awareness and trust – both with people and search engines.
Some evidence shows that content creates three times as many leads as traditional marketing, while costing 64% less.
However, it can be difficult to come up with relevant content ideas time and time again. That’s why we’ve put together this short guide for inspiring and developing content ideas.
It’s best to plan at least a few months’ worth of content in advance – ensuring its consistent, focused and closely related to your goals in your communications plan and personas.
Research your audience
Great content will dig into your target audience’s goals and pain points, providing them with entertainment or information that they’ll value.
There are a few ways you can find these ideas.
First, research tools like Google Trends show you which topics are trending in relation to others. You can also go straight to Google itself and see what the related searches and auto-filled suggestions are for your company or industry.
Alternatively, take a look at your social media followers – what are they talking about? If you have comments on your blog and social media posts, take these into account as well.
Q&As are a popular tool on social media to ask your audience what their questions are directly. Think about the common topics among questions – what webpage or video could you create that would engage these audience members?
Gather trends and inspiration
More inspiration for new content may come from current marketing trends, national holidays, awareness days, awards or current events.
Make sure you have key dates saved on your calendar and follow the news – you could sign up for Google Alerts to be notified when results appear for certain topics.
You can also look at competitor’s content for inspiration. This isn’t to steal ideas, but to continue to research what your target audience may be interested in seeing.
Unique ideas are brilliant, but often rare. Answering questions that others have answered before, particularly if that’s what your audience is looking for, is still beneficial. When done right, your unique DNA will come through in all your content, helping you to stand out from the crowd.
Reuse and repurpose
You can also give content that has done well already new life, to extend its reach and value.
If the content is outdated, update it, or come at the problem from a new angle – but some content will stand the test of time and will always be relevant to newcomers.
There are unlimited creative ways to repurpose: a single great blog could become a series of social media posts, an infographic, an educational video or a downloadable guide, for example.
Content is a hugely valuable tool for marketing. Coming up with ideas can be tricky, but the options are practically limitless. Everything from emails to social media can form part of your communications plan and be focused towards engaging your target audience.
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