Even the most proficient and professional content marketers suffer from a creative block every now and again. Constantly coming up with ideas is tough and making sure content serves a purpose or provides a bit of enjoyment is equally as difficult.
On top of that, the subject or topics that you cover need to be relevant and suitable for your chosen audience. Whether it is a topical blog post about recent events or a helpful article that solves common problems, readers require content that speaks and appeals to them directly. When you add into the bargain SEO and social media too, the whole content creation process can feel a bit overwhelming.
However, once you’ve come up with the initial idea and have an objective to work towards, the rest usually falls into place. So for some timely and pertinent inspiration, be sure to visit the following the resources next time you need to create a killer piece of content.
Even though countless Internet users embark on their online browsing journey with Google, it makes sense for marketers to start here too.
It may sound obvious, but begin with typing in one or two keywords and see what the autocomplete feature comes up with. Although these are a reflection of the activity of users, they also take into account searches you’ve done in the past. Therefore, you might want to delete your history and cookies.
In addition to Google’s autocomplete, you could also visit Übersuggest at the same time. This particular resource takes suggestions to the next level by adding letters and digits onto your search term. Click on each result and you’ll receive even more content possibilities too.
But aside from these suggestions tools, Google Trends has become increasingly extensive and includes hot searches, top charts as well as popular topics. You can also sign up to Google Alerts, which will send email updates of news stories or competitor activity based on specified keywords, subjects or queries.
BuzzSumo
Any content marketer that hasn’t discovered the beauty of BuzzSumo will wonder how they ever managed without it. This incredibly useful and powerful tool enables you to find out what kind of content performs best in relation to your chosen topics or competitors.
Type in a subject or domain and you’ll be greeted with an exhaustive and detailed dashboard with numerous metrics to play around with. Filter content by type and date or sort by social media shares. Consequently, you’ll be able to determine what themes and formats will work best for your content marketing campaign.
The advantages don’t end there, as the ability to find out who the main influencers are in your industry is another ever-present feature. Get closer to these authority figures and capitalise on guest post or interview opportunities.
NewsWhip
Another resource that uses the power of social media to display and rank content, NewsWhip provides ideas for those interested in trending content. This site is particularly useful for marketers wanting to increase engagement levels, as shares, comments and tweets are the main contributors to the site’s ranking mechanism.
Over 250,000 stories are added to the database each day in a number of languages including English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German and Portuguese. Results can be narrowed down according to location and topic to unearth the most appropriate content.
While individual Internet users are bound to enjoy this site too, NewsWhip works closely with journalists, editors, PR agencies and marketers to provide the best content resource possible. APIs and widgets such as internal dashboards and trending content hubs are available if you contact their team.
Social media
Instead of visiting the two preceding social media aggregation platforms, you could always go to the source directly. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn all have useful and valuable resources that content marketers can capitalise on.
At the most basic level, you can see how previous or existing content on Facebook has resonated with fans by measuring and analysing likes, comments or shares. However, Facebook Graph Search enables businesses to locate new customers and discover what issues are important to them. Creating content as a result of these findings should be fairly straightforward.
Twitter’s trending topic algorithm provides the most relevant subjects and themes based on your activity and the people you’re following. However, this particular social sphere also enables you to monitor competitor content, identify thought leaders and search for keywords or hashtags.
Pinterest is growing in popularity and prevalence due to its image-rich and interactive design. Select or search for subjects that relate to your brand and browse the trending content that comes back.
LinkedIn Groups are particularly useful for coming up with content ideas, as you can locate niche communities and contribute to special interest discussions. Even though LinkedIn might be more applicable for B2B companies rather than consumer facing brands, it is a resource that should be explored and taken advantage of.
Traditional media
Even if you’re creating content for online platforms and channels, there are some great ideas in traditional media too. There is also every chance that the theme or concept hasn’t received widespread digital exposure either, enabling you to produce unique and exclusive content.
Monthly or quarterly magazines usually feature major subjects or stories that don’t go out of date. If you want to create content that can be read or viewed time and time again, this is the most appropriate avenue. But as the old saying goes, today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s chip papers, so be careful when coming up with tabloid or broadsheet inspired content.
You may even want to explore or exploit television shows, movies or music. The actual content probably won’t be the same, but you can reference and comment on popular culture to increase exposure.
There is a danger that quality or relevance might suffer from continually generating ideas for content, but by concentrating your efforts on specific subjects and utilising numerous resources, you can always come up with something that customers or clients will love.
In a nutshell, try to keep up to date with the latest developments both in the world and the world of the word and you won’t go too far wrong when it comes to inspiration.