Let’s face it…Whether you’re an independent blogger, a copywriter, or content management specialist, there may come a time when you just can’t seem to come up with any good content ideas. It can feel a lot like having a blank slate, but no chalk with which to write.
Lucky for you, we’ve rounded up these 10 ways to generate content when you are fresh out of ideas.
1 Create Keyword Synonyms
By adding synonymous keywords, you can create long-tailed keywords and relate topics to new keywords and explore whole search terms. This can allow you to widen your reach and attract a bigger target audience. For example, if your keyword is “digital animation,” you can expand that keyword by extending it to “digital animation studio.”
2 Repurpose Old and Poorly Performing Content
Recycling and repurposing old content that maybe didn’t perform as well as you would have liked can save you time and stress coming up with new content ideas. By reworking old angles, you can use the same statistical figures and information that you gathered and re-write the article from a different angle. For example “10 reasons to work with a realtor when buying a home” can easily be flipped to “10 reasons to work with a realtor when selling a home.”
3 Ask Your Audience What Content They Want to See
Another great way to make sure you’re generating engaging content is to engage your audience. By questioning your readers you can encourage them to relate their own experiences and by enabling comments on your blog, you give your readers the chance to offer feedback. It also makes your audience feel that their opinion matters. Without an audience, a blog is just a blog.
4 Find Out What the Competitors are Doing
Compile a list of your favorite blog posts from competitor blogs and channels. Check your competitors’ backlinks and search terms with digital marketing tools like SEMrush. This will allow you to compare your keywords, search terms and tactics with your competitors, and even help you to further expand your potential topics to capture broader audiences.
5 Two Heads are Better than One
Sometimes, when we can’t think of content ideas, we find that in a pinch, it can’t hurt to ask a colleague for their opinion. By sharing work and brainstorming with colleagues, you can help one another bounce ideas back and forth, and if need be, you can ask your colleague to write a guest column. This will give you some time to come up with your own fresh content and also give them some exposure on your blog that they may not otherwise get. It’s a win-win.
6 Write About the Challenges One Might Face in Your Niche or Industry
This is useful advice for anyone who writes blog content or does any other writing for that matter. Relating your own personal experiences can allow you to write quality content that will help anyone interested in getting started in your field know what they should expect by way of possible challenges. Recounting your successes and failures is also a good way to explain the do’s and don’t’s of any niche or sector.
7 Interview People
Make a list of relevant questions that you can use to interview authorities and thought leaders in your market or sector. This will allow you to get expert advice in regards to your niche, as well as make for engaging and exciting content for your readers. Don’t forget though, good questions almost always have good follow up questions, and the more information you gather, the more information you can pack into your content.
8 Content Idea Generators
When all else fails and no other option seems viable, there’s no shame in plugging your keywords into a blog title generator like the one from Portent.com. It’s a quick way to generate a list of possible blog titles, and it’s bound to generate a laugh or two with its randomization engine sometimes turning up hilarious and thought-provoking results. We like to keep this one up our sleeve as a last resort.
Conclusion
There you have it. Our top 8 ways to generate content when you are fresh out of ideas. If you are running on creative empty, make sure you give one of these easy content creation techniques a try. Whether you’re working on blog content or an explainer video, these tools are bound to spark a few ideas. Everyone has slumps, it’s about getting through them.
What are your favorite brainstorming techniques? How do you get your creative juices flowing when you can’t seem to come up with any good topics for content?