Creating Content Ideas that Will Convert

So I guess we are all on the same page that quality content in a variety of forms is vital so that people at the various levels of the funnel will benefit. How can we create quality content?

That is where we need to develop ideas that are marketable. Now, most of us don’t have the luxury of an ideas team that can sit around the boardroom table with coffee and Cinnabons and brainstorm. No, we have to do all that ourselves and develop content creation methods that will build our brand authority. How?

Obviously, coming up with a bad idea and running with it won’t help. So where can we source a range of good ideas?

1. Ideas file: During the past 25 years, I have kept an ideas file for my public speaking activities. These range from newspaper articles to copies of poems or quotes. Some call this a swipe file. Pinterest is a great place to store your ideas. As you trawl through pins related to your niche, you will be inspired with some new and creative ideas to use when developing content.
2. Brainstorming: If you are in a position to have a brainstorming group, document the discussion and have a strategic process so that the time spent will be productive.
3. Research the Competition: Finding out what is working with the competition can give you some great ideas for content creation. Remember, though, we don’t want to be copycats. That just leaves us always playing catch-up in the marketing game. The competition isn’t just someone else with an online business; it also includes the traditional marketplace, yes, that vintage clothes store that has been open for years in your town's main street.
4. Social Media Research: Try to ascertain what is trending across social media channels that have relevance to your niche. I follow all sorts of technology related people on Twitter and LinkedIn so that I can see what the conversations about my niche are about. Some of my posts have come from ideas that percolated after reading some of these posts/tweets.
5. New Angles: One of our new members here at Wealthy Affiliate lamented that her chosen niche has millions of others following the same general direction. This is where standing in a different location, so to speak and getting a different perspective on the chosen niche is vital. This could be viewed as horizontal thinking.
6. Content Freshness: Having content that is time relevant is crucial. That means reading news releases, getting the Google Alerts on products and niches. We are taught this early on in our Wealthy Affiliate training and it is worthwhile setting these up early so that we have a plethora of ideas landing in our inbox. Someone else is finding relevant content for us.

Collating the Ideas

After we have done all the above, it is time to cull the content that is irrelevant to your content marketing goals. Sort out all that you have gathered into the following categories:

1. It is boring me to tears!
2. Is that within my monetary or time budget?
3. Does the content call out or speak to me?
4. Could the content become a series of shorter posts rather than one long-form blog?

Avoid Ideas Fatigue

It is very easy for us to get so overwhelmed by all the content idea research that we stop doing anything related to our content goals. Even if we have made some progress in gathering relevant information, we need to start writing and developing the content piece. Sometimes we can do too much research and find that information-overload creates writer's block. The ideas file will be ongoing; it doesn’t need to be full before we start. Our competitors will have something new so we can monitor that for further inspiration. The key is once we have some ideas collated, get started and watch it unfold. Before long we will find that our mind is being stimulated not fatigued by the content creation process.

Next, let's talk some more about scheduling content creation. What are some tools we can use?