Content is king in creating brand awareness and increasing traffic, which builds a foundation to convert traffic into leads, and then sales.

Creating social media content and social ads is no longer an optional task. It is an essential part of just about every digital marketing strategy. The key, though, is to have a clearly defined strategy that speaks directly to your audience.

How To Come Up With Content Ideas For Social Media

Once you know who you are creating content for, you need to set aside some time to create content that appeals to the people you’re targeting. Without a strategy, is it likely that you will spend time and money on your content without any real benefits to your business. I also recognize that coming up with content ideas can be a challenge. What to write about, how to approach certain topics to make it interesting and anyway, what is trending…?

Useful Tips To Come Up With New Content Ideas When You Don't Know What To Talk About: 

1. Create Topics In Blocks 

The general topic of your blog or website will already give you an idea of what to write about. For instance, if your blog is health related, you know that you’re going to be writing about health and wellness. With that in mind, it’s important to write content that is relevant to your audience.

One of the best ways to think of content ideas is to create many topics at once. Start with a general topic pertaining to your website, like “health and wellness,” and then expand from there. The idea is to get more specific with each topic. You will be surprised at how far down your general topic can be broken into more subtopics.

Health and wellness could break off into “tips for leading a healthy lifestyle” which could lead to a topic about “20 healthy recipes to use,” and you can keep going until you run out of ideas. The great thing about creating topics in blocks is that once you’re in the process of researching ideas, it’s easy to keep going. Also, you are truly able to come up with content ideas in a strategic way because you are focusing on the next 5-10 topics instead of just the one that you want to publish at the moment.

To learn more about the best content creation strategies, check out this post: How To Create Content For Social Media with High Impact

2. Think About Questions Your Audience May Have

The focus should always be on your audience and the problems they are trying to solve. When people search, they are looking for a solution to their problem, and you want your content to be the answer.

Therefore, after creating any piece of content, it’s important to ask yourself what questions readers may have after consuming this piece. For instance, maybe you’ve created a guide on the best exercises to do to lose weight, but perhaps readers will also want a guide on how to perform these exercises correctly.

You can research other blogs in your niche and look for questions that they’ve neglected to answer, which may give you a great idea for a new topic. But also be sure that when you write a post, you answer some of the relevant questions. If it’s not possible to do it in one post, be sure to write a follow up-post or a series of posts. 

3. Ask Your Audience

The best way to find out what your readers want to see from you is to ask them. They may even be leaving you great ideas for your next piece of content without you even realizing it.

Check comments on your social channels and blog posts, emails, and DMs, what questions are your followers asking or what feedback are they giving? A comment praising one particular part of your article or raising a question about another will point you in the right direction.

You can also go live on social media to ask your audience what they want to see from you. You can simply post a question or a poll asking what content they would like to see you talk about. If you already have a good idea of what they are looking for and want to narrow down the topic, you can create a poll and list a few options.

Also be sure to check out competitors’ blogs and social channels to see what questions the audience is asking them.

4. Use A Research Tool

Buzzsumo is one of the best online tools for finding content ideas. It’s like Google for the most highly shared posts on the internet. You simply enter any keyword (e.g. health and wellness) into the platform, and Buzzsumo will identify the most popular topics around this keyword.

By looking into what content is being shared the most, you can get a good idea of what topics are hot in your niche right now.

Another great thing about this tool is that it allows you to filter out by type of content, date ranges, languages, and more. Plus, it will tell you how many shares a piece of content got on each platform, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 

By using Buzzsumo, you can gain a lot of insight regarding what topics your audience is interested in, what platforms get the most shares, and more. Your job is to start writing and put your own spin on the topic(s).

5. Find Relevant Keywords In Your Niche

Keywords drive traffic to your site and are one of the most important parts of a content marketing strategy. You should be targeting as many different (but relevant) keywords in your content to grow your audience as possible. Keyword research tools are fantastic for not only optimizing content, but also giving you fresh content ideas.

SEMrush’s Keyword Magic tool is one of the most popular programs. With a single click, it will deliver new themes and topics in relation to your focus keyword.

You simply enter a keyword (or keyphrase) related to your business and hit search. A number of other topics (keywords) related to your search will pop up, showing you similar terms and their potential performance.

SEMrush gives users the option to view results as a Mind Map, which displays a hyper-relevant keyword snippet, complete with headlines and viable questions on the right-hand side. You can click on each keyword in the circle and see what questions people ask about it. It’s an excellent way to determine what content your audience wants to read.

Conclusion

Consistently coming up with new content ideas is time-consuming and can become very stressful, especially if not managed correctly. However, it’s an essential part of your marketing strategy and is vital for building and staying in touch with a loyal following.

Fortunately, there are many ways to come up with great content ideas, it just takes a little time and effort. From listening to what your audience has to say and researching the competition to using online tools, like Buzzsumo and SEMrush, hopefully these tips will help you create high-quality content that converts. If this is not the case, Contact us at [email protected], and our team will be happy to help you with content strategy and content writing for your blog, social media or website.