4 Easy Ways to Find Content Ideas
Today, I'm going to give you four sources that you can go to when you need content inspiration. Whether you're suffering from writer's block or you just don't even know where to start, this will help you a ton. Get ready for lots of light bulb moments.
Alright. I am showing my Pinterest screen because that is the first place we're going to go to when it comes to finding inspiration content ideas for all of the things that we have to continuously create in our business. For this example, I'm going to go with, “intuitive eating.”
I'm a business coach, not a health coach, but I wanted to use this as an example to show you how any coach can find inspiration here. I'm just going to Pinterest I'm in my business hub and I’ve typed in, “intuitive eating.” Without hitting enter, I can see all kinds of different ideas that are already popping up, but I'm going to hit enter because I want to go into Pinterest’s main feed.
This is my favorite place to go to find content inspiration because I am a super visual person. And I just think that color and photos and even lists help me pull more information out of my head so I can create something special for my people. So you can use any kind of terminology that your future clients or your current clients are using. Always keep that in mind.
Just by scrolling through the feed, you can find all kinds of ideas so be sure to write them down. Be sure you’re to avoid copying what other people are using. Change the number, just switch it up a little bit, so you're not just going fully 100% off of what somebody else is talking about. You want to actually just make it your own. Everything you do in your business should be based on what you would say. Not what someone else is saying. This is inspiration, not copycatting.
Answer the Public
I use the free version of Answer the Public. You max out after a couple of tries a day and I don't really need that many tries a day unless I'm working with clients and I'm pulling things for them, so the free version is totally fine. I typed in intuitive eating again and I am going to hit search.
And what it does is it pulls data from Google and it lays it out in a really fun manner. This makes me so happy because I can see what people are Googling in a nice and friendly visual. The extra special part about it is, you can click on each title / keyword phrase and it will go to Google for you.
This is actual data pulled from Google and then we're able to see the top Google picks, which is really interesting because now we can just go down the rabbit hole here. We can see podcasts, books, and YouTube. You could write down the podcasts and use that as a bonus tip for research. Go look into the podcast shows and go check out their episode titles.
People are searching for intuitive eating criticism, intuitive eating facts, is intuitive eating healthy, etc. It gets me so excited looking at all of this, because it just shows the possibilities. Because sometimes we just don't know what to write about.
What I really like about Answer the Public is you can download a CSV of the results. Which is awesome if you are a spreadsheet person like me. This would allow you to sort everything and you wouldn't have to copy and paste all of those titles.
They go the extra mile and alphabetize it for you too, which is even better.
Some topics are going to pull up more results than others. Sometimes you'll see a wheel that's very full and sometimes it'll be a little bit scarce. It just depends on the Google search results and the keyword(s) that you entered in.
Bonus tip
Extra bonus tip! You can go into blogs and look at their comment sections and see what people are commenting on all right.
Amazon
Using our intuitive eating example, I'm going to go over to the book section. You could use the titles as inspiration for sure, but I have another way that I like better. I'm going to go into a book and look at the ratings because people, especially readers, leave really long reviews. And we need that for our research. So I'm going to go down to the one stars because we're looking at what people wished was in the book or what they might have hoped that was in there. Something that didn't work. Make your content for the people who need your help and were disappointed with the guidance provided in the book. They’re feeling discouraged and saying things like, “ I really wanted to try this, but it didn't work for me. Why didn't it work? What did, what did I do wrong? What am I missing?”
What are some common things missing out of the book you’re researching? Go up to the two star reviews and do the same thing. And I like to go through and just copy phrases that like really stick out to me.
Really study the people. These are people who are ideal clients for you, the readers who went the extra mile to leave an opinion. Don't count on your memory to remember why people didn't like the book or what they were looking for. Copy and paste it somewhere, so you have a bank of juicy content.
Go into multiple books and repeat this exercise as needed. And if you don't know what other books to go into, Amazon helps you with their amazing upsells. Just look at the section of frequently bought together or products related to that item.
Youtube
Using our example of intuitive eating again in the search, we're going to pay attention to the results. In this example, we have intuitive eating basics and benefits, quickstart guide to mindful eating. Side note, I think mindful eating would be another good keyword you can search, especially in Answer the Public. Simply scroll through and note down all of the episode titles that jump out at you.
I like to filter on the videos too. I can go by view count, which would give me older videos more than likely, and that's totally fine with me. I can scroll through and I can catch things that I may find some commonalities. I do notice how keeping the titles simple work very well. They're not their terms. They're using what people, who are on YouTube, Google, or Amazon are searching for in their language.
By now, I'm guessing you have a ton of ideas running through your mind right now. So you want to make sure you’re putting them all somewhere safe so you can go back to them when you need them.
So make sure you are using a project management system, like Asana. You can use the free version and create a project called “content ideas” or “future content,” whatever floats your boat. Put all of your ideas in there so they're never forgotten. I don't know how many times I rely on my memory to keep something for me when it comes to my business when I come up with a great idea, maybe while I'm doing the dishes, and I think, “Oh, I'll remember this later!” And I never do. I remember that I had an idea, but I don't remember what it was. So I have to put it somewhere pretty much immediately. Be sure to do the same! Better yet, download the app on your phone so it's easily accessible for you. Pretty soon you'll have this whole bank of great ideas for your content! You will be so grateful you did the next time you have some writer's block or you just need a fresh new idea.