How to never run out of content ideas again
Welcome to today’s episode, which I know you’re going to love because it will help you never have to scratch around for content ideas again!
I know that as a business owner, content is often something you feel you should be doing better at, but there is always something demanding your attention isn’t there? So it gets pushed further and further down the pile. And what happens for a lot of business owners is that they tend to just push out snack content – a quote or a quick little video. But that snackable content doesn’t do the same thing as long content – it won’t help you get found and it certainly doesn’t drive your audience to take action.
CREATING SEO-FRIENDLY CONTENT IS KEY
Content that helps drive search engine optimisation (SEO), that serves your audience and shows them you can really help solve their problem is what I like to call meal content.
And it doesn’t take long to map out what this longer-form content should look like. In this episode, I provide you with the questions you need to ask to work out your content themes and determine your key messages. Doing this will help you meet your customers where they’re at, and move them to where they want to be. This is what helped attract people to come and work with me and it got me to making six and multi-six figures.
HOW TO FIND CONTENT THAT CONVERTS
Next, I share three simple activities that will help you come up with content ideas for your business:
- Conversations with your customers
- Do not feel as though you have to reinvent the wheel
- Headline mining
These are three different ways that are really simple for you to continuously find different ideas to create really valuable, longer-form content in your business. The kind of content that showcases your expertise, shows your audience that you understand them and demonstrates you have the solutions that will help.
BUILDING EVERGREEN CONTENT
This is content that has longevity – people can search it and it helps build your portfolio of knowledge and expertise. When someone comes across you, they can dive into that and very quickly receive a lot of value. It shows that you understand that you can help them and helps them want to take the next step of working with you.
So – without further ado, go you good thing! Dive in and start creating some incredible content for your business.
LINKS:
Previous episode mentioned:
Ep 251 – WTF is ChatGPT?! And how to leverage it for your marketing
Resource mentioned:
How to Create an Exceptional Online course in 2023
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to the show. Today we’re talking about how to never run out of content ideas. I know this is something that you know you should or could be doing better at. And I know that as a business owner, there are so many things that are demanding your attention. It feels like there’s a million things to do, and so you’re getting stretched from one thing to the next, and content just gets pushed further and further down the pile.
[00:01:23] And what I see a lot of business owners doing is that they’re getting some of that snack content out. I call. that snackable content. It’s maybe just a quote. It’s a quick little video. Uh, it’s something that’s really short-form content, but they’re not getting around to producing really the, the whole core of their content, which is the longer form content, the content that’s gonna help them get found.
[00:01:46] The content that really helps drive their SEO or search engine optimisation that people are searching for and bringing them to your business, to your website. The content that is really serving their audience and showing that you can help them solve their problem. You have a process that you take them through, you really understand them, and you have experience in getting people the results.
[00:02:08] And this is what I call your core content. or think of this like the meal. There’s the snack content that you’ll pop out there. That’s the shorter form type of content that you might produce on the fly. Your Instagram stories, quick little video, maybe your quote, and then there’s the meal content, and this is the type of thing that you wanna be making sure you’re producing consistently.
[00:02:29] This is the type of content that helped me to get myself out there when I first started my business. That helped people see that I knew what I was talking about, that I understood marketing. It helped to give people value ahead of time before they even started working with me, and it’s something that I’ve continued to do throughout my business, firstly with my blog, and then moving and introducing my podcast.
[00:02:54] And so for you, this might be starting out with a blog on your website that you can just. Start writing and getting out there consistently, then perhaps you might be looking at starting a podcast, especially when you are looking at growing your reach and you have more capacity to serve people, maybe through more leveraged offer.
[00:03:11] And then you might be looking at, well, maybe video is for you and you want to start playing around with a YouTube or another. The type of video, where you can share really great, valuable content that’s longer form versus just those little snack pieces of content. because what I see people doing is they are getting stuck with knowing what exactly to share.
[00:03:30] They’re creating things on the fly. So they might have content going out there, but it’s not really getting to the heart of what it is that they can help people with. And it’s really not driving their audience to take action. And so we wanna be making sure that you are sharing that longer form piece of content that you have taken the time.
[00:03:47] And this is the difference here to really think. Doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but you are taking several minutes, 10 minutes to map it out, to think, okay, what message am I trying to communicate here? What are the key points I need to touch on? How is this relating back to how I can help someone And ties back to one of the offers I actually sell, not just the random content we’re putting out there because other people are talking about that theme at the minute, but it relates back to something that you sell in your business and you help to show people that you are the expert you undersand what it’s all about. You are meeting them where they’re at and helping move people to the step ahead where they want to be. And really, this is what’s helped me in my own business to attract people to come and work with me, to get to making six figures, going from nothing to six figures in my business, then multiple six figures, and bringing in over a million dollars through my business.
[00:04:41] And I will tell you, it’s not something that’s really, really exciting. To create content. It’s not super sexy and it’s not easy, but it is simple and often we can negate and procrastinate on the things that are simple because it feels as though we should be doing something that’s more complicated. We should be creating a more sophisticated funnel, or we should be jumping on the latest social media platform, or we should be maybe tweaking our website or, or trying to sell more, or creating another offering when really, if we are honest with ourselves
[00:05:14] I’m sure that you know, you could be doing more when it comes to your content and you could be producing if you’re not already. Just that one weekly, really valuable piece of content. All right, so you’re on board. Let’s have a look at ways that you will never run out of ideas when it comes to what type of content to create.
[00:05:34] Now, I ran recently in The Modern Marketing Collective, a quarterly content day, because I recognize from my members as well, it’s a challenge to actually. Carve out that time to do that, thinking around strategic content ideas. So I’m gonna share with you a couple of the activities that we did, and these are just a few of the ways that you can come up with content ideas for your own business.
[00:05:55] So number one, I adore this method, and this is from conversations with your customers. When I run retreats for my members, I barely sleep at night, which as you can imagine isn’t ideal, but it happens every time because I’m surrounded by the people that I love to work with. I’m surrounded by the most amazing, inspirational women that are my members in my membership, and I get to hear firsthand and in person what it is that they’re struggling with.
[00:06:23] Some different nuances. I’m like, okay, I know that’s a challenge for people, or, I know that’s one of their desires, but oh, I’ve never heard. People express it in that way. That’s really interesting. And so I lie in bed at night during my retreats thinking about how can I solve that? How can I explain this even better?
[00:06:38] How can I create a resource or a training or some, way to help my members with this? And it helps me come up with, I have so many ideas that come out of running my retreats. Also our annual member day out and chatting with my members, just seeing the type of conversations that we’re having. also during my coaching calls, and this might be the same for you when you are having your meetings with your clients or you’re running a strategy session or you’re doing an onboarding call, you will no doubt have different ideas that pop up like, oh, I didn’t realize that’s something that they think they have to do, when really they don’t need to do that, or, that’s really interesting, I’ve never heard that before. Explain that they think this is something, or that they struggle with this, I can totally create some content around that. Something else that I do is, I have a system in my business that you can easily implement into yours is that when people do enroll in my program, I have a survey that I send to them just asking them some core details about them and their business, where they’re where they want to be, and this provides me this whole range of activities of the ways that I’m having conversations with my customers, with the people that buy from me. It gives me so many different content ideas and it’s also content that I know will resonate with more ideal customers too. It’s not necessarily just the people that are in my audience that will always be in my audience and never buy from me, but they’re people that are.
[00:08:03] Taking that step to solve their problem. Taking that step to put money into investing in their learning, to developing themselves, to improving their skills, to expanding their knowledge, to honing their processes, and to building their business. So have a think about how you can, if you are not already, have more conversations with your customers, and when you are having conversations with your customers, look at ways that you’re gonna be jotting them down.
[00:08:27] It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. You might have a. in your phone, I know I do in the iPhone. I’ve got it in my notes app, and I’ll jot things down. A Trello board, a a Google Doc, I love my Google Docs, great ways for you to store content ideas. So that’s number one.
[00:08:40] Conversations with customers, number two. Do not feel as though you have to reinvent the wheel. Oh my goodness. There is so much content out there, and if you feel as though you can’t talk about something that’s already been covered, it’s gonna be very challenging for you. So you have total permission to talk about things and topics that other people are talking about.
[00:09:02] You even have permission to talk about things you’ve already talked about in the past. In fact, I challenge you to look back on maybe a social media post or a blog post that you shared last year. Have a look at some of your most popular content from last year or the year before, and then look at, okay, what’s a different angle or a different way that I can tap into that type of content, that same theme or that same topic, and talk about it again.
[00:09:25] Because don’t forget that your audience, not only as consumers, do we forget things, we need reminders, but not all of your audience would’ve seen that piece of content that you already shared. Now, just as it’s the same that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel by creating a totally new content in your own business all the time.
[00:09:44] You’re allowed to cover topics you’ve covered before, but the same goes for what’s happening in the wider industry. There are always going to be people in your industry talking about similar things to you or that you would like to talk about. No one owns a certain topic. So you are allowed to talk about things that other people are talking about.
[00:10:05] And in fact, this is a way to come up with more content ideas. Go have a look at a podcast feed. Go have a look at some YouTube videos, and headlines. Go have a look at a blog feed of other people in your industry. Have a look at, oh, yeah, cool. That’s, oh, I can’t believe I haven’t talked about that before. Oh, there’s another idea for me.
[00:10:22] Oh, yeah, I haven’t talked about that in so long. Start gathering different ideas. You have total permission. What you can also do here is when you might be consuming content, as we all do to improve ourselves, to learn more, to get different nuances on. What we want to improve our skills on is you will no doubt have your own ideas pop up.
[00:10:42] You will also have things that you agree with and things you disagree with, things that you think. I reckon I could explain that in a different way, or I actually have a case study or a different story that I could share with that or my own experience that I could share on this topic. So as you are consuming content, pull out different ideas that you can cover for yourself.
[00:11:04] And this can come from different industries too. You might even be consuming content on a whole d. Industry, you might be even watching movies and coming up with different ideas, like, oh, that would be a really fun one to talk about this metaphor that they’re using in this movie. something that I did recently was chat, g p t.
[00:11:22] That was the most recent episode that I talked about or a couple of episodes ago now. And, that was something that was popping up and that I’m seeing in my industry doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to talk about it in. All the more for me to talk about it and bring my own perspective, bring my own ways that I love to use this chat g p t tool, the ways that I can see my clients specifically can use it for their businesses to share my own perspective on it, to share how I’ll use it in line with my own values.
[00:11:52] So look and, don’t ever feel as though you can’t talk about things that other people are talking about. Find your own spin on it and you will never run out of content. So that was, don’t reinvent the wheel. The third strategy I wanna talk to you about today is by head mine headline mining. Oh my gosh, that’s like way too much of a tongue twister. But starting with the headlines. So have a look at some of the different headlines you see pop up. Again, this might be on podcast episodes, blogs, post titles, YouTube videos. You can even Google different headlines or headline ideas and see what pops up there. Then, rewrite those headlines for your own content themes.
[00:12:34] So you’re gonna have your own content themes you talk about in your business that relate back to the things that you sell and the things that you help your clients or your students with. Some examples here are of some headlines that I’m talking about might be How to X without Y. This might be how to lose weight without spending all your day in the gym, or how to train your puppy without, needing to shout at them or, I don’t know, give them a treat, would be a better thing.
[00:13:03] You are gonna see these pop up in different industries, reuse these different headlines for your own industry. Another idea is five. Two or six of the best lists are really good, by the way. How-to lists are really, really good here. It might be case studies. How so and so did this, or what I learned from doing this, or what happened when I did this for this amount of time?
[00:13:26] What happened when I, posted on Instagram every day for a month? What happened when I, tracked my money every day for a week? What happened when I, meditated for 10? Every day for January, and you can see how you can take these headlines and apply them to their own themes in your business, and you will never run out of different ideas.
[00:13:49] It’s a really fun way to do it too, cuz it kind of, for me, it gets me excited. I’m like, oh, that sounds really, really juicy. That’s a topic that made me click into someone else’s content or something that I would really love to understand. It really got my attention. I can totally use that and flip that for the own themes that I talk about in my own business.
[00:14:07] So there you have it. Three different ways that are really simple for you to find different ideas, to continue to come up with them, to create that really valuable, longer-form content in your business. It’s going to showcase your expertise, that’s going to give you that ability to show your audience, that you understand them, that you can help solve their problems, that you get what they are going through, that you have solutions that will help.
[00:14:33] And to help you build your own brand over and beyond the snackable content, that little pieces that we can get into the habit of sharing because you get so, stressed about, oh my gosh, I haven’t shared a piece of content. Let me quickly share this meme, or let me quickly share this. I, I see other people doing this, um, TikTok or other people doing this, um, Instagram reel.
[00:14:52] I should get on that trend and I should do that. When really that type of content is not what’s going to build your expertise, It’s not going to build your brand. It’s not going to build that loyalty with your audience. And by following these three ways to come up with content, it’s really gonna help you create content, that is going to have more longevity for you.
[00:15:08] Content that is going to hang around and people are going to be able to search and it’s gonna build your own, basically your portfolio of knowledge and expertise that when someone comes across you, they can go through it and. Consume it and get so much value from you. And this is what happens pretty quickly when you have longer-form content, a blog, a podcast, or YouTube series, whatever that looks like for you and your type of preferred way to create content. When someone comes across you, they can dive into that and very, very quickly receive a lot of value. Understand that you can help them and then want to take the next step.
[00:15:42] So that is it from me today. Go ahead and, take a screenshot of this podcast episode as you are wrapping up and share it on your social media. Share it on your Instagram stories. Give me a tag @emilyosmond. I would love to know that you’re a listener and I would love to re-share that in my stories too.
[00:15:57] And, without further ado, go you good thing. Start creating some incredible content for your business. Here are three ways that you can do so and do it really easily and never run out of content ideas again. All right, I’ll chat with you soon.
[00:16:11] Now, if you haven’t already, make sure that you head over to get my free guide, which is how to create an exceptional online course in 2023. I guide you through the key decisions that you need to make to really narrow down on what your course is all about. Who it’s for, what the price point is, and some key tips in there that you need to be clear on before you go ahead and get it out there in the world.
[00:16:34] So to get your hands on that guide, go to emilyosmond.com/free. That’s emilyosmond.com/free. Follow the links and go ahead and get your free guide. How to Create an Exceptional Online course in 2023.
