You’ll hear a lot of talk about SEO, and how it might be dying. Then you’ll hear about content marketing, labelled by some as the new SEO, while others say the title should rather go to PR (public relations if you’ve just joined the game). But all this pales compared to the fact that, if you have a website, you need content. Great content can in some ways be described as a form of SEO in itself.
So, how do you come up with inspiration for great content? Let’s have a look at some of the best ideas on the internet:
1. Idea Generators
Today, with the demand for more and better content, you can be sure someone, somewhere, probably thought of automating the content idea generation process. And they have. Formspring, BizSugar, and Inbound.org are all websites that generate content ideas at the click of a button.
Worth mentioning in that small list is Inbound.org – developed by Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz, and Hubspot’s Dharmesh Shah. As soon as you open the page, you are presented with topics people are talking about right now.
2. Comment sections
What are your competitors talking about? Which questions have they failed to answer? Scrutinising the comment sections of popular or competitor blogs can often provide excellent fodder for new content. Why? Because commenters often raise good points, thereby revealing what audiences are thinking about, and the questions they want answered.
3. Pinterest
Like Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest may not have been purposely designed as idea generators, but seem to do the job quite nicely. Having just logged into Pinterest – which, I admit, I haven’t used extensively in the past – I searched for ‘SEO’. Infographics, pie charts, and comics – everything about SEO people are talking about right now.
4. Google’s Keyword Tool
This one’s quite obvious. But I wonder how many people actually use it to come up with content ideas? Google’s keyword tool, if you’re unfamiliar with it, provides you with local and global monthly search information. In other words, it can show you how many people searched for “how to make butter” over the past couple of weeks. Simply enter your desired keywords, set the search to ‘Exact match’, and get the results. High volume queries are usually good options for post topics.
5. Be Creative
At the moment there’s a lot of high level talk about the general quality of content on the internet. The conclusion in many cases is that brands aren’t doing enough to engage their audiences; many play it safe and recycle the same content their competitors do. But at the end of the day, there’s no substitute for originality – and no better way to engage your audiences and make your content really work for you.
Yes, I’m talking creativity and originality – the kind that can be brought to life using a cheap camera, and a little initiative.
Imagine how easy it would be to integrate the key message of a post into a video clip like the one above. All you’ll need to do is change the dialogue a little, and let the actors… be themselves.
If all else fails, we can take care of your content needs – from idea generation to content creation. Read more about our content creation services.