The A-Z of content ideas
When it comes to creating content, the number one question is ‘What do we write about?’ This exhaustive list of content marketing ideas is created to help you to effectively communicate your value to people who can buy from you in myriad different ways.
The A-Z of Content Generation Ideas:
A
Advice – create a useful download or online event or charge for your advice with audits, reviews or training events
Ask for advice: Pose a hypothetical question and ask your followers what they would do in that situation
Ambitions – share your ambitions and see if you can find anyone who can help you achieve them
Analogies – Something from everyday life to explain a complex concept is good video blog or infographic fodder
Anecdotes – Discussing a relevant experience or story could be a good way to start a discussion on a particular topic
Anniversaries – Key milestones in your business are interesting to people if used wisely. You could also look at historical events or industry discoveries or developments to provide an interesting retrospective. There’s a reason #ThrowbackThursday and #FlashbackFriday trend on Twitter
Amazon – look through the different departments and filter the results by ‘best sellers’ to find the most popular books to use as a starting point for content. Write reviews, summaries, a list of best books relating to that topic.
Awards or accolades you’ve received – build trust, do not brag
Ask your fans for content ideas: Find out which issues or problems your fans need help with
Answer an FAQ: Answer a question you get asked a lot on social media
Ask me anything – Let your followers ask you anything on a Twitter chat or webinar
B
Best Practice – helping people to know and understand best practice is always useful. You could do this in the form of a blog, webinar, video or event
Birthdays – Your company’s birthday, people within the company’s birthday, celebrities’ birthdays, key influencers in your industry birthdays – all great ways to start conversations about how you celebrated or send personalized messages
Books – share a book recommendation that your followers would appreciate. Write book reviews to save people time or write books yourself!
Bucket List – A nice little thing to add onto your employee profiles if you’re doing a meet the team post. If they do something off their bucket list share with your followers as it helps show the person behind the profile
Breaking industry news – Stay on top of what’s going on in your industry or niche by using Google Alerts and share it
Best blog posts – There’s nothing wrong with recycling or referring to the best blog posts you’ve done and why you think they’re popular. Old posts will gain new engagement, extending their life
Behind the scenes – This could be behind-the-scenes product shots of your products being manufactured or sourced; candid shots of yourself, your employees, or snap a shot of your office or workspace or photos/videos that convey the feeling behind your brand. Starbucks for example share photos on Instagram to associate their brand with sunshine, warmth, and good friends (not just coffee)
Buying Trip – Do you source local products? or look for unique deals and specials? Record some video footage of your buying trip. This is useful in the food and beverage industry or if you source local products/work with local businesses in some way.
Branded images – Post a funny or inspirational image with your logo or website URL on it.
C
Calendars – great gifts to give at Christmas with useful dates. An accountant could put details for key information required for tax returns etc.
Career Pathways – Local schools and colleges are often looking for guest speakers to talk about their career paths and advice they would give their younger selves. You could allow an intern or final year student to do their dissertation on your industry or business in return for publishing rights
Case Studies – Video is the preferred format however downloadable PDFs that explain what the situation was, what was done, the results achieved and a quote from the customer is a must. You could create a digital flip book of these or turn into presentation slides for salespeople to use at meetings
Calculators – a simplified, numerically-based quiz, ask for a selection of answers and provide information or meaningful data that creates a call to action. “Quick Quote” calculators are often embedded into websites to filter inquiries easily.
Challenges – talk to your team about challenges they have overcome and post a piece on what the challenge was and how it was overcome to demonstrate your value in new and innovative ways
Comics – These can be an immersive way to present a complex idea or in a humorous way. The goal is to present something in both a written and visual format in a way that users can either engage with directly or share. Have a look at Dilbert.com and WaitButWhy.com for inspiration
Charities – working with a charity is a great way to motivate staff, increase exposure for both parties and to give something back to the community
Checklists – If there’s something that people often need to do or do in a particular order, a checklist is a practical way you can help
Compliance – if there’s a law that affects your target audience, tell them about it. If there’s a change to the law highlight it, if there is a way you can help them with it, do so
D
Debates – great for engagement rates. Post a ‘for and against’ blog, video two people with opposing views, do a poll. Debates often lead you on to different subjects that can become valuable content fodder
Design – Explaining the whys and wherefores of a design process (without compromising intellectual property) can be a great way of giving people more information about your mindset and product
Dates for the diary – Reminders of upcoming events, bank holidays, the clocks going back, or forwards can be a great way to engage with people anew and provide value. You could do a bank holiday special promotion. You can plan to utilize particular holidays by referring to https://www.daysoftheyear.com/
“Did You Know” Feature – Research fun facts, events, or find out more people who have made an impact on your industry or your business – people love being able to drop new and interesting information into their next conversations
Demonstration – A Step-By-Step demonstration in a short video is a great way to help your customers learn about something you do.
E
eBay – People buy from eBay so why not use it as a search engine. If you put in “video marketing” as keywords into eBay, you get two good ideas quickly – “101 Video Marketing Tips and Strategies for Small Businesses” – have you got any tips and tricks you could share? and “YouTube and Video Marketing in an hour a day” – could you create content related to this in some way?
eBook. Collate some of your top-performing posts, add some new content and make a comprehensive eBook – you can then sell this to create an additional revenue stream or give as a free gift to new clients
Employee Profile: Let your followers get to know the person behind the job role – do a Q&A or share a random fact about them
Economy – Working out how your product or service can be related to a new budget announcement, or how an economic policy affects your target market can be timely and useful
Education – Many of the people you work with will have families of some description or another. Be aware of key term dates, big results days and childcare issues or policies. These are great opportunities to offer advice or information
Environment – Being environmentally-friendly, providing sustainable solutions or volunteering with certain initiatives is a great way to show you take corporate social responsibility seriously
F
Future trends Write a blog or record a video of what you expect to happen in your industry or developments on a certain issue one year from now. You can then write a follow-up piece to evaluate how close you were later
Follower of the week or month: Acknowledge your brand ambassadors and let them know they’re appreciated. Reward them for being engaged and providing recommendations in some way.
Flash sale: offer a limited-time discount code or promotion that only lasts 24 hours. This could be for a product or a service package of some sort
Flowchart – Flowcharts are interactive visual guides that help users through a process based on yes or no decisions. Each node on the chart provides a user with a branched set of options, followed by more nodes which lead the user further down the chart. You can use a chart like this to help guide them through a buying decision, such as deciding which product or service package to choose from. You could have more fun with it to lead people to a punchline or laugh at the complexities of your industry
Flickr – a picture speaks a thousand words and sometimes looking at visual content can spark an idea.
G
Games – Through gamification, you can turn anything into a game or create a game. If you’re in retail, you could post about a scavenger hunt that your shoppers can play in your store or take inspiration from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and the golden ticket hidden in the wrapper. You could present a complex strategy in a game format to help users understand it on a more instinctual, conceptual level.
Gifts – seasonal gifts and cards can be a great way to get in touch people if you haven’t seen or spoken to them for a while
Giveaway: Ask your followers to like, share or comment on a post or another preferred call to action
Google+ hangout: Promote it through all your other social media channels and see if this could work for you
Google Related Searches – At the bottom of the search results pages, you will see related searches that can offer inspiration for what else you could be covering in your content
Google search: Visit Google’s top charts to find out what people are searching for most and see if you can make them relevant to what you do in some way. https://trends.google.com/trends/topcharts
Google search box – Notice the suggestions that appear when you start typing a search into the Google search box. Some may give you additional ideas about what people are searching for
Graphic Recordings – make your ideas visual by booking a session with a graphic recorder or illustrator. Created in real-time a graphic recording captures key ideas and messages as they unfold during a meeting or conference. Watching the drawing progress engages the participants and helps make the information more memorable – ideas are connected, and creativity stimulated and you get a unique visual artefact which can be displayed and shared after the event. Have a look at Emma Paxton’s work on http://imagistic.co.uk/graphic-recording/
Graphs – graphs or charts that are relevant to your audience or that you can explain are great forms of content
Groups – Facebook and LinkedIn are full of groups that you can join to share information or ask questions and get answers. Build a community of like-minded people and spend time engaging in these forums
Guest posts – Find an expert or someone in a field relevant to you and ask them to create a guest post for your site. This means both of you can promote it
Guides for beginners – provide helpful, actionable information and tips to help people at the start of their journey, once they have the basics you can then offer help getting them to the next level of expertise
Guides for buyers – Buying guides help users make an educated decision when buying a certain product – your guide could include general descriptions, compare and contrast different products, or include top considerations or common pitfalls for most buyers
H
Hashtags -Follow popular industry hashtags and look for popular articles, buzzwords, and questions. This can lead to potential topics for your content
Harm, myths and lies – thinking about these in relation to your industry, product or service often generates controversial topics to talk about
HARO – Short for “Help a reporter out!” This is a great way to get included in stories. You can also review popular topics and trends and add your input into the discussion
How-to or tutorial – These are always useful to readers, plus you’ll have the opportunity to write a title with a long-tail keyword relevant to your industry. Include images and/or video if you can
Hypothesis – Talk or write about a hypothetical situation and ask your visitors what they do in the same situation
I
Infographic -Find an interesting industry topic or process, review your top FAQs, or find interesting collect statistics and publish them in a new engaging format
Influencers – respond to their content, review their speaking event, ask them for an interview or to attend an event
Instagram Stories – Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform globally. Turn short videos or photos from the past 24-hours into Instagram Stories
Internal Data – it could be a research project or a collection of statistics about your current customer base, however, being able to say “80% of our customers use X to solve this problem” is really useful
Interview. Interview someone relevant in your industry – you can do this via video, audio or release a transcript of the conversation to create lots of great content
Introduction to your industry – If you were coming into the industry you’re in now, anew, what would be the important things you’d need to know?
J
Jokes – As the old adage goes “To Be Memorable, Make ‘Em Laugh” The latest marketing best practices highlight the necessity of relationship-building, and a well-placed joke does more to further a customer’s connection to a brand than undecipherable industry jargon. That being said, there’s a time and a place for jokes. Not every situation necessitates a laugh
Join In – Being active and engaging with groups and conversations online is a great way to learn more about what content your audience is looking for or promote your content in the places people are searching for it
K
Keyword Research – Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable, and high return activities in the search marketing field. Ranking for the right keywords can make or break your website. By researching your market’s keyword demand, you can not only learn which terms and phrases to target, but also learn more about your customers as a whole. It’s not always about getting visitors to your site, but about getting the right kind of visitors
L
Linking articles – Write a post listing and linking to all your articles on a particular topic or theme. This is great for SEO and for increasing readers’ time on your website or blog
LinkedIn Local – Go to one or start one in your area https://community.localx.org/
List – A top-ten or similar numbered list still work well for people
Local Newspapers – opinions and letters to the editor can often be sources of inspiration for content. Fill in the blanks or extend the conversation
M
Magazines – Pick up the magazines for your industry and offer your commentary on some of the topics
Manuals – Refer to old manuals to see if you can borrow or comment on the evolution of products or services based on sketches and details back then. Create a new one for your industry
Mashable – a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company that provides lots of ideas for content that you can like, comment and share with your followers
Meme: Getting your customers to laugh is a great way to start building relationships. Daniel Disney started creating memes about life as a salesperson and is now considered the 16th most influential person in sales globally on LinkedIn. Have a look at “The Daily Sales” and comment that you found his page via EMARI Group Ltd, we’d appreciate it!
Mistakes – Everybody makes mistakes, help prevent them by writing an FAQ or advice style piece that anticipates common errors and educates people on how to avoid them
Myth Busting – myths, misconceptions and false assumptions abound. You can dispel them one by one or collate them together and dispel in a single blog, video, webinar, podcast, twitter chat… The list goes on and on. Make sure you have specific examples or hard evidence to provide your point
N
Networking – Chambers of commerce and other organizations put these on constantly. Ask via social media for recommendations. Sell through the room, not to the room by remembering the questions people ask you – a few conversations can often inspire potential content. The least you can do is a post-event summary
News-jacking - use the news tab on Google search, it’s a goldmine of potential content ideas that are current and relevant to your keyword search
Nostalgia -Have a look at old marketing activities from within your company if you have a long heritage or from your industry if not. The way things were sold decades ago can provide content inspiration – you could collect your top 10 favorites retro ads, you could comment on how things have changed in a retrospective post, you could even poll people on their favorite
O
Outbound links – links that point to some other domain from your site. When you link out to related domains, it not only helps the search engine to understand your niche, but it also helps to increase the trust and quality of your site which plays a vital role for SEO. Even a comment link is counted as related links. You can search for “related:(your domain name).com” in Google to see related site links. You can track outbound links in Google Analytics. This gives you an idea of which links are the most popular and how often they are being clicked. It also can help you decide which links you may want to discard or renew with better resources
P
Packages – Create a service or product-bundle package to make it easier for people to become aware of the variety of things you can offer – they will invariably buy more from you as a result
Parodies – Think of “the singing dentist” (if you don’t know who that is, search for him on YouTube) McDonald’s used the countless bad lip-reading YouTube videos of the NFL players to create a humorous marketing campaign for their new Mighty Wings.
Photo contest: Ask for photo submissions and then get followers to vote for their favorites. Then share the winning photos. This is a great way to get more traction at events. Alternatively, ‘Caption this’ competitions can be used to create some entertainment and humor
Pinterest – If your customers are on Pinterest (this channel is heavily skewed towards educated, high-income females), share a Pinterest board via your other social media channels
Podcast – Use a microphone to record yourself speaking about an issue in your industry (or company). Turn your podcast into a video by converting the audio into a video file using a tool such as https://www.tunestotube.com/ Many people in the military and elsewhere listen to audio via YouTube due to lack of alternative options. We once did this with a client’s radio interview and added some basic images to keep people interested.
Polls – poll your audience’s opinion on a certain topic and publish a post with your findings
Pop up an opt-in list – Test this on your website to see if it affects engagement rates
Portent’s Content Idea Generator is a funny way to introduce new ideas and headlines for your next piece of content. https://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker
Q
Quizzes – Fun and interactive, quizzes often do well for engagement metrics. Make it short, easy and quick to take action afterwards
Quora – a useful site that you can use to research questions that people want answers to. You can contribute unique insights and quality answers
Quotes – Quotes from industry experts are popular, you’ll often find inspiration for content from these
R
Recommendation: Ask for them and post them online or recommend someone/a business you’ve worked with successfully. Share someone’s social media pages and suggest they follow them
Reddit – Reddit gives you the best of the internet in one place. Get a constantly updating feed of breaking news, fun stories, pics, memes, and videos just for you. https://www.reddit.com/r/trendingsubreddits/ is a good place to start
Regulating Organisations – some industries are more regulated than others however people care about regulations that may affect them. Do some research, follow updates and provide commentary so your customers know to come to you to find out what’s happening and how it affects them
Respond to a tag or mention online: Tagging means people are trying to get your attention, reward their engagement by responding to them in a post or giving them useful information
Round up of current or industry news – A weekly or monthly report that saves people time by collating several pieces of emerging news in a “round up” style of report is very useful
S
Salespeople – Like customer service representatives, salespeople are in constant communication with potential customers and existing customers. Find out what the common questions they get asked or any other type of feedback they receive from people at all stages of the buying journey. Turn that insight into great content that will attract other potential customers.
Schematics – Schematics or blueprints are great ways to outline what your product is made out of and given written explanations for why it has been produced in that way. This is an interesting way to talk about how your products work and will appeal to engineers and other detail-orientated individuals who will appreciate your level of attention to detail
Showcase pages – LinkedIn now offers you the option to create specific showcase pages to expand your company presence on the platform. Create showcase pages for specific products or service package offers
Sketches – Sketching is often used to help focus our minds, you can use the sketch itself as the piece of content. Review “The Daily Sales” on LinkedIn for inspiration
Skyscraper Technique – Created by Brian Dean, of Backlinko.com, this is a way to get your blog posts to rank well in search engines like Google. The premise is to find the number one ranking post for the keyword you want to rank for. Analyze how and why it’s number one and then create something even better
SlideShare – Search for your industry, find the most popular decks. Create content that builds on popular topics or that provides interesting commentary. Look for the information you already have that you can put into a PowerPoint for SlideShare, you can also embed these presentations into your blog
Social Media Feeds and Comments – Influencers do not always have time to answer every question they receive on their favorite social media channels. Review their feed and comments and answer questions people pose
Sneak peek: Whet your followers’ appetites by showing a sneak peek of some form of content that is coming soon – it could be a product or new service launch, podcast, eBook, white paper
Summaries – if you or your staff attend conference, workshops, seminars or other forms of events you can take notes and combine these into a post-event summary. Post additional thoughts and offer useful resources so others can benefit from your experience
T
Templates – a basic outline or content that people can use as they want to. For example, in EMARI’s social media survival guides we provide a sample outline of a basic channel plan summary that people can modify for their own needs. Depending on what people need, you could offer these as downloadable PDFs or spreadsheets which people can save or print or embed the template directly into your blog post of choice
Testimonials – Ask your readers to submit a story of their experience of your product or service
Tips and Tricks – Provide useful bitesize pieces of information on a given subject, process or task to help make people’s lives easier
Tip of The Day – Create a long list of quick tips and schedule them in advance to post each day throughout a month. @ittotd posts a useful IT tip of the day each day on Twitter
Tools – Share useful tools or resources
Twitter Chat – Hosting a Twitter chat is an amazing way to interact with your fans and followers, to better understand and grow your community quickly. Check out our Social media survival guide Volume I for more information on how to host one.
Truth or fiction?’ Let your fans guess whether it’s the truth or a myth and if it’s the latter send them to your myth-busting posts
Thank you cards: Simple, old-fashioned perhaps but not many people take the time to write hand-written notes anymore and a thank you can go a long way to building relationships with people
Transformations – People love before and after pictures or videos. Change always makes for a compelling story
U
Udemy – Udemy is an online learning and teaching marketplace with over 80000 courses. Leverage the power of the search bar by searching for key terms for ideas
V
Video – Video does what text doesn’t. It creates an immediate, real and authentic route of interaction and connectivity with audience members, who can often provide reactions and comments in real time. By 2019, it is estimated that online content will consist of 80% video marketing, and mobile consumption of video content continually rises by 100% annually
Virtual Tour – People love going to places that they are not usually allowed to go. If you can’t open your office doors for tours (brewing businesses and certain manufacturing businesses cannot for example) take the time to create a video tour to post on your site
W
Webinars- An educational and entertaining webinar can be published afterwards, and you generally get loads of good content that you can follow up with
Website Analytics – review them and see how visitors are currently finding your site. See if there is something else you can do to create content to attract more of the same type of visitors
What not to do – the practical opposite to “best practice posts,” outlining some of the worst choices or strategies you can follow in a given subject. These are made better with the use of specific examples
White paper - Look at your existing blog engagement or speak to your clients to find a topic that warrants expansion into a full-scale white paper. Comment on other white papers, suggest what you’d like to see next as a follow-up
Wikipedia – always offers a lot of related topics, descriptions, terms and them to analyze and explore
Workarounds – provide workarounds for a common problem or issue in your niche
Worksheets – These are more specific than templates as they allow the user to work through a problem or process effectively. For example, EMARI provides templates for social media strategy plans that people can edit and outline their goals and objectives. Our video strategy worksheet created in tandem with professional videographers allows people to work through the entire planning process and the end results create a detailed video marketing brief that can be then shared with their chosen videographer. Worksheets often feature questions, forcing a user to think through a specific problem and in some cases include quiz or calculator. These are best as printable or editable digital files
Y
YouTube: Find the most popular industry videos from your industry. Look for those with views, comments, and other engagement, and you will naturally find topics that your content should be focusing on. e.g. if you put in “video marketing into YouTube” these two posts have the most amount of views. DollarShaveClub Our Blades are F***King Great is a fantastic video ad. You could do a list post about the Top 5 best performing video marketing ads and provide commentary on why they work
Yin and Yang: Set-up a two-sided debate on a specific subject, provide a summary of differing points of view on a certain topic.
Z
Zoology - Who would have thought meerkats could sell insurance? Tony the Tiger sells cereal... Animals can be a great way to add some personality and make your brand memorable.
Have any other content ideas... Can you help me find something beginning with Z? Let me know and I’ll happily add them to this blog!
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