Looking to market yourself, your businesss or have you hit a creative brick wall?

Here are my top 15 go-to methods for content idea generation:

1. Create content pillars

Don’t go in without a plan, create a table with your marketing goals at the top which feed into at least 5 content pillars then list multiple sub-topics underneath.

For example, when promoting my business my content pillars include Education, Inspiration and Entertaining.

Each will have a number of subtopics e.g. Education = social media marketing, paid ads, organic, creativity, branding, even… content creation ideas! All are relatable back to my goal of building my personal brand and lead generation.

Work your way through these content pillars to get a mixture of content and topics each week to keep your topics fresh.

2. Stalk your followers

Get to know your audience – what are they talking about? What content are they sharing and interacting with? Do they love memes and cat pictures or webinars, podcasts and book recommendations?

3. Showcase BTS

We are nosey creatures who love seeing behind the scenes sneak peaks and on one interiors client account the content getting the most engagement are actually time lapses of them TIDYING UP.

This could be anything from packaging orders, making the product, morning routines, what your to do list is looking like etc to let people into your business and start forming those connections.

4. Polls and quizzes

A great little engagement booster, you can do Instagram and Facebook story quizzes and voting buttons, you can vote on Facebook posts with reactions, hold votes on Twitter and LinkedIn or build your own fully fledged quiz on your website (FB Comms quiz coming SOON). Buzzfeed also allows you to create your own quizzes on their platform too!

Just make sure it’s aligned to a goal and driving an action, valid research query or feeling rather than creation for the sake of it.

5. Google search

Simple. Type in the start of your search and let Google finish it off for insight into what people are searching for.

6. Google results

Scroll to the bottom of your results page to see even more similar phrases and add these topics to your content pillars.

7. Answer The Public

A fantastic free tool that allows you to search for a term and see all the most commonly searched for phrases relating to your topic. This lets you know what people are interested in, actively searching for and what they’re most likely to engage with. Find it here.

8. Allmytweets

My go-to when starting with a new client – you can use this tool to see all the tweets from one account that have EVER been posted so you can gage the tone of voice and previous topics covered. Also great for searching back through when you last spoke about a particular topic. Find it here.

9. Awwwards

This is for those looking for web content inspiration – a collection of award winning websites across industries and a great source of inspo if you’re looking for a creative way to showcase something on your website. Visit Awwwards here.

10. Competitor ads

Facebook now has a ‘page transparency’ feature so we can all nosey on competitor adverts they’re running through ads manager for inspiration.

Go to the business’ Facebook page and scroll down on the left and you’ll see the ‘Page Transparency’ section.

Select ‘See all’ then scroll down on the pop-up and ‘Go to Ad Library’.

And voila – all their currently running adverts in one place.

It goes without saying but don’t directly copy them – take some tips for format, creative, call to action but use your own tone of voice always,

11. Facebook content comparisons

You can see the best performing content of your competitors through Facebook. On your business page go to ‘Insights’ in the left hand menu.

Scroll right to the bottom of the overview and ‘add pages to watch’. Search for your competitors and organisations you admire and click ‘watch this page’.

Then click on their profile and you will see their best performing content of the last week.

12. Jump on trends

Tools such as Buzzsumo, Semrush and Similarweb can give you stats on what’s hot right now in terms of trending topics so you can jump straight in with reactive content.

13. Recycle your best performing content

It performed well for a reason and it’s guaranteed that not every single on of your Twitter followers currently saw the blog you shared on Facebook that did great last year.

One piece of content can become a post, a reel, a TikTok, a quiz, a blog, an email, a webinar, a podcast or video.

Repurpose your themes and dig out those old but gold nuggets!

14. Testimonials, reviews and case studies

Word of mouth is extremely powerful and in fact, how I’ve landed most of my work and recruited freelancers to work alongside me.

Positive testimonials, recommendations and product or service reviews are found inherently more trustworthy than if they came direct from the organisation. Enable reviews on your product pages and create graphics with testimonial quotes included.

Nothing shows your abilities more powerfully than previous results.

This could be a portfolio, a great creative or blog completed for a client, some great acne reduction benefits from you skincare line working with an individual or stats on the kind of engagement you drove.

For case study inspo, see mine here.

15. Team features

This stands much more powerfully in the services sector but people aren’t buying from your business, they’re buying from and working with YOU, an actual human being with talents and prowess.

Show off your team, their accomplishments, their background and how they bring their expertise into the role. This is also great advertising when recruiting and prospecting i.e. see the fantastic people you could be working alongside.

I hope this has been useful and you’re now empowered to get researching and creating.

If you want an expert opinion or have any additional questions surrounding marketing then book your FREE 30 minute consultation here!