If you aren’t used to researching content ideas, it can be a time- consuming process. But as I explained in this blog post, you need to resist the temptation to resort to something quick and easy like a news review and put a bit of effort into coming up with valuable content which will engage your audience. If you’re struggling, here are a few tips.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is one of my favourite tools when it comes to generating ideas. It’s pretty straightforward- you simply enter a keyword to create an alert, and then Google provides a list of relevant news items. To improve the results, go into the settings tab and under sources, click on ‘news’ and ‘blog’. As I said above, regurgitating a news story isn’t going to catch anyone’s attention. But by scrolling through the results, you’ll have a better understanding of the hot topics in your industry. This may provide some inspiration, or you could think up a new angle on an existing story.
Hashtags
If you can ignore the spam and the self- promotion, Twitter is essentially one big conversation. That means it’s a great way to keep up with what people are talking about right now in your industry. The easiest way to do this is to search hashtags. There are plenty of social media tools, like Hootsuite, which allow you to set up a feed for a particular hashtag. Another useful tool is Hashtagifyme if you’re looking for a list of similar hashtags to explore. For example, when you search for #Fintech, it suggests #blockchain, #bigdata and #artificialintelligence.
Customer survey
Another way to come up with relevant content ideas is to ask your customers. If they’re sufficiently engaged, then they’ll probably be happy to take a few minutes to answer a couple of questions. I helped an investment trust with a survey recently- we asked potential investors what challenges they face when choosing investments, where they research investments, which influencers they follow on social media and what aspects of investing they’d like to learn about. We ended up with a 30% response rate and some very valuable insights. Just don’t ask too many questions, or you risk putting the respondents off completing the survey.
Speak to your sales team
Who knows your prospects better than your sales team? After all, they hear about the problems your prospects are trying to solve, ideally with your solution, and the obstacles preventing your prospects from making a purchase. It’s a safe bet the rest of your audience is facing the same issues, especially if your sales team highlights a recurring theme. Imagine how powerful a piece of content would be if it appears to read a prospect’s mind and address their concerns in advance? That’s what I consider providing value.
Industry reports
Finally, industry reports are a useful source of ideas for content that may be relevant to your audience. They’re usually produced by industry bodies and tend to feature data about the industry in question. You could base a blog post on the figures you think might be most interesting to your audience, ideally providing commentary around the data. And if you really want to add value, create an infographic. Keep an eye on press release distributors such as http://www.prnewswire.com/ for the latest publications.