It’s time for a little secret.
The hardest part of writing successful content isn’t the writing itself—it’s knowing
what topics to write about.
There’s nothing more frustrating than staring at the blank page with no idea where to start.
But don’t worry—your muse is here.
Today, we’ll guide you through 5 content ideas that will provide you with endless streams
of content.
By the end of this video, you’ll make Stephen King look like a writing slacker!
The first and easiest place to start is documenting your journey: ask yourself what you’re working
on day-to-day and write it down!
Now, I know what you’re going to say next: “But Chris, my day-to-day is soooo boring…I’m
not a Kardashian, no one cares!”
Sure, you might not be working on a new theory of relativity, but neither are the Kardashians.
Always remember: the work you do will always be interesting to someone.
Your most dedicated readership will come from the people that matter most to your business:
your customers.
So let’s say you’re a freelance marketer.
Your clients—and prospective clients—would love to get a peek behind the curtain at the
Wizard of Applause aka YOU.
You don’t have to share company secrets, it could be something as simple as your daily
routine or your approach to a new company challenge.
To get you started, here are three simple ways to document your journey:
Use meeting notes: Look through your notebook at your last few meetings.
Find 1-2 things that stand out to you and try to center a blog post around them.
Share a failure: It’s painful, but we learn a TON from failure, and your audience can
too.
So think about some missed opportunities in your business and what you’ve learned from
them.
Share your biggest win: On the flip side, you could write about your biggest successes.
These don’t have to be million-dollar-wins, they could be as simple as maximizing your
productivity with a new morning routine or how you landed your first customer.
Stories are how we connect with each other, and people love stories with real-world examples
and anecdotes!
Don’t forget that your life is one constant stream of inspiration for those!
Next up are websites like Reddit, which are full of people asking questions aka customers
asking for solutions.
Since there’s literally a subreddit for everything—there are over 2 million of them—that’s
a ton of potential content!
So here’s how we recommend diving into Reddit.
First, locate a relevant subreddit.
Let’s say you’re an interior designer.
Just head over to the appropriately named r/InteriorDesign, and search for words and
phrases like: “How can I”, “Can someone help” or “Suggest”.
These words and phrases will help you to find problems your audience is experiencing, and
then you’ll see a list of results matching your search criteria.
Next, you can sort the posts to view the most upvoted and commented on posts that match
your search words and phrases.
Look how easy it was to come up with three content ideas from the results for our Interior
Designer example: How to find products that match your existing
design style How to successfully work with an interior
designer The basics of paint colors
The great thing about this process is that the topics are already vetted and validated
for you, because they’ve already been upvoted on Reddit and generated a ton of discussion.
This way, you know these subjects will resonate with your target customers before you even
start writing.
Ever wondered how some businesses manage to land in the #1 spot on Google?
It all starts with keyword research, our third thing to write about when you’re stuck.
Picture yourself as a detective, Sumolings.
Keyword research is the process of uncovering the search terms people use in Google.
Before you even write a single word, you’ll have evidence that there’s demand for your
content.
One free tool to help you with keyword research is LSIGraph.
With LSIGraph, you can enter your high-level keywords into the search field and see a list
of related, longer-tail phrases.
For example, here’s what we see if we search for email lists in LSI:
Using these results, you can find a bunch of keywords and ideas for what to write about.
Another great tool to generate keyword ideas is AnswerThePublic.
AnswerThePublic helps you find questions people are asking Google based on a keyword/phrase
you enter.
Here are the results from searching ‘email marketing’ in AnswerThePublic:
This is a GOLDMINE of a tool.
Almost every result here is something you could write about.
For example, here are three blog post ideas from these results:
The 5 Best Email Marketing Software Products Will Email Marketing Die?
Here’s Why It’ll Still Be Thriving in 2030
The Complete Guide To Email Marketing: How it Helps Businesses
The beautiful thing about keyword research is that it works universally across any industry
or niche.
No matter what topic you’re looking for, these tips will help you find some things
to write about.
No matter what industry you’re in, there’s always something to talk about.
If you work in construction, it could be the latest building regulations in your state/city.
If you work in social media marketing, it could be new Instagram updates to their algorithm.
If you work in renewable energy, just mention Elon Musk and people will pay attention.
Every industry is always evolving and changing.
To win new business, it’s wise to present yourself as an industry thought-leader with
a finger on the pulse of what’s happening.
As your industry evolves, use these changes as inspiration to write.
Every time you see some big industry news, try to write five quick headlines of things
you could write related to this news.
For example, here are three post ideas based on the Instagram guides launch:
What Guides Mean for The Future of Instagram From Filters to Guides: A History of Instagram
Feature Releases What I Learned From Instagram’s First Guides
Even if you don’t write any of these posts, it’s good to start flexing your creative
muscles.
Train yourself to look at news stories and industry changes as potential topics to write
about.
For number 5 on our list, we want you to go deep, Sumolings.
Think about the reasons you want to write.
Are you looking to grow your brand?
Get your name out there?
Maybe it all comes down to generating revenue for your business.
To achieve any of these things, you need to put your customers first.
Imagine that you are Christian Bale about to prepare for your biggest role yet: the
role of your customers.
The best way to do this is to become them with your thought exercises.
Step into their shoes by asking them directly about their daily work lives: What’s frustrating
them?
What are their biggest challenges?
Their biggest worries?
When do they feel happiest at work?
What’s taking up too much of their time?
The answer to each of these questions could spark a number of things to write about.
Your customers are the most important part of your business.
Without them, your business doesn’t exist, so create content that speaks directly to
them.
That just about does it, but before we leave you with your final challenge, give
this video a thumbs up if you found this helpful for writing your next piece of content.
And now for your challenge: the second you finish this video we want you to go find 10
things to write about RIGHT NOW.
You can find the action list based off this video in the description.