If you have an online business, you’ll need to come up with a lot of content. There’s the content that you’ll write for your blog. There’s the content you’ll write when you’re sending out an email to your list. If you create products, you’ll be creating the content for that as well. If you’re on social media (and you probably should be…) you’ll need to come up with content for that as well!
As you can see, you’ll need to come up with a lot of content. Sometimes it can be difficult to come up with ideas of what to write about. Especially because you need so much content all of the time!
What if you’re just getting started, and aren’t sure about what to write about? Or you’ve written some content, but have run out of ideas, and are sick of staring at a blank screen every time you want to write something?
Here are a few ways to think up great content ideas so you’ll never run out of things to write about.
What Can You Teach?
Here’s a good question to ask yourself. What knowledge do you have that you can teach others? You have skills and expertise that most people don’t have. Sharing this knowledge through your content will produce a ton of value for your audience. Teach people what you know and make it easy to for them to understand and consume. They’ll be happy and look at you as an expert in what you’re writing about.
Think about problems that you’ve had in the past in this niche. How did you solve them? These are great topics to write about as if you had this issue, other people will too.
How Do You Help People?
If you’re not sure about the knowledge that you have that others don’t, here’s a good way to think about it. How have you helped people in the past? Think back to times that you’ve helped customers or your audience in the past. Have you answered questions for them? Or offered other types of help? These are great topics to write about.
If you see a common question that you’ve been asked often, that’s a great topic to write about. It’s obviously something that many people are interested in the answer to. It’s something they need help with. If you give them content about that topic, they’ll be very happy to read it.
What Does Your Audience Want to Know?
If you’re not sure exactly what it is your audience wants to know, you can find out with a little bit of work. One thing you can do is ask them. Whether it’s via an email to your list, on social media, or anywhere else you come into contact with people. Ask them what types of problems they are having, or what questions they have. Find out what their concerns and needs are, and help them.
If you don’t want to (or can’t) ask your audience directly, there are many places that you can look online to get ideas:
Social Media. Follow your audience members on social media. See what they post, what comments they make, and what other businesses they follow for help with their problems. See what topics they’re talking about. Often they’ll let you know what they are having problems with, or want to learn more about.
Blog Posts. Check out blogs in your niche and look at their comments. People will often ask questions in the comments related to the topics covered in the post. Even looking at the blog posts themselves can give you some ideas. You don’t want to copy them and write a blog post on the exact same topic, but reading the post may give you some similar ideas. You may agree, or disagree with what they say, and may want to write about that.
Question and Answer Sites. Look at websites like Quora where you’ll find people asking questions for the community to answer. Not only can you write a blog post to answer their questions, but you can then post a link to to the question as well. You’ll end up getting traffic to your website by answering their question. In this case you not only get some great ideas of what to write content about, but you can get traffic to your website from it as well!
Other Content Creators. Follow other content creators in your niche to see what they’re writing about. Don’t forget podcasts, YouTube channels, and social media. Don’t cover the exact same topics, but use their content to get ideas on what’s trending and find gaps you can fill.
Keep an Idea File
The above should give you a bunch of ideas to get started with. So you don’t forget about them, make sure you start building an idea file. Whenever you get an idea, make sure you write it down here. Then, when you sit down to create content, you won’t have to look at a blank screen. You’ll be able to refer to your idea file, choose a topic, and get started right away.
Find some other good sources of ideas and bookmark them. When you need further ideas, you can refer to these sites. No matter what your nice is, there will be multiple websites out there that you can find ideas from.
It’s great to have a nice long idea file. You’ll need a lot of content within your business, so having many choices of what to write about is ideal. This way you can write about whatever you’re in the mood for, instead of having to write about the one thing that you could think about to write about. It’s nice to have choices!
Remember that marketing is all about trial and error. Try something new and see how your audience responds. Sometimes a totally unique idea will give you a piece of viral content. Keep track of what your audience likes, and you’ll be able to find more great ideas for them.
Enjoy,
