What to do when you are running out of ideas for your content marketing ?

Every content marketer must have faced this situation. You are staring into your computer screen waiting, wondering – what should I create about today ?

Content marketing is a massive marketing force. Everyday in the life of the internet, two millions blog posts are published. According to research from Content Marketing Institute, marketers have no intent to loosen up their massive content output. Most marketers plan to either maintain or increase the amount of content that they publish.

Trying to come up with amazing content ideas on a consistent basis is a challenge for most content marketers. Idea generation ranks right up there with producing engaging content, which is something more than 60% of B2B marketers currently struggle with.

Just throwing out new ideas and hoping they stick isn’t sufficient, either. You have to create content that contributes to your funnel and has a purpose – even if that purpose is just to educate prospects or nurture a lead along in the sales process.

You need to balance both quality and quantity in your content stream, but once you’ve exhausted all your ideas, where do you go from there?

Rather than delaying your content production schedule until another idea pops into your head, check out these content generating tips to keep your creativity flowing:

1. Read more. The best way to keep your mind in constant content generation mode is to maintain a steady diet of reading. It really does not matter what you read, as long as you are reading. Reading, even in genres and topics far afield of your niche, is great mental exercise. Reading fires up the mind, putting it in creative mode, and inspiring ideas.

2. Write down every idea. Note-taking has immense value for capturing content ideas. When you’re exercising, reading, walking, eating, or even napping, you may suddenly get the inspiration for a killer content. You think to yourself, “I’ll write it down later.” Later never comes. Instead, the mind promptly discards your killer idea, and you’re left with a hollow spot in your memory. Force yourself to write these ideas down as soon as you’re struck with them. Your phone’s notes app, or even the proverbial back of the napkin are the perfect place to sketch out your next viral blog idea.

3. Find trending popular topics from many different sources. Your goal is not to steal content. Your goal is to understand what is hot, why it is hot and use this information to inspire your own content.

4. Make a list of problems. Some of the most popular blog articles are solution-focused. How many times have you clicked on a “how-to” article? Excellent blog articles help readers overcome a problem. The best method for creating such contents is to come up with a list of problems. What is the biggest challenge in your industry? What daily hurdles are you trying to overcome in your niche? What unique problems do you deal with? Don’t just talk about the problem; solve it ! Everyone wants to overcome pain points. If you can successfully propose a solution, then you’re way ahead of the game. What if you’re written on the topic before? Do it again. A fresh take on the topic won’t hurt anyone.

5. Get content ideas from your competitors. When you’re running low on fresh content ideas but you need something comprehensive that will blow your followers away, look to your competitors for inspiration. Don’t copy what they have, but do analyze their most popular contents to find out what they produced in the past that was widely embraced by your shared audience. Look for gaps or opportunities to improve on it.

6. Source content ideas from your audiences. When the fountain of fresh ideas starts drying up, spend more time interacting your audiences to find some new inspirations. Explore the social media channels where they spend their time. Join and engage user groups. Find relevant forums for your business and industry. Participate in online Q&A communities like Quora and Reddit. Pay attention to the content they’re sharing and the topics they’re talking about. Search for various industry-related keywords in your social channels and review the public discussions and posts circulating around. This can provide insight into pain points you weren’t aware of or industry issues that you can address in a future content creation.

7. Buzzsumo it ! Using an online tool like BuzzSumo, you can search for key phrases audiences use while searching for content online. Buzzsumo then returns a list of different content types ranked by the volume of social engagement. Rather than focusing on a single competitor’s content, you can view the most popular content for a given topic or keyword across the entire industry.

8. Check with influencers. Someone always has a new spin on an old topic, and one of the best places to find content like that is from influencers within your industry. Find the people your audience pays attention to and browse through their content. Monitor their social channels, check out their blogs, and find guest posts that received significant engagement. It’s also a good idea to join the influencer’s email lists to receive updates when new content comes out. Considering how tapped in to an audience most influencers are, joining their subscriber lists can create a constant feed of new ideas for future contents.

iMarketology can help you to develop your digital marketing contents everyday. You can outsource your digital marketing content development to iMarketology.

Happy content marketing !

– iMarketology –