Top 16 Idea Generators for Your Content Marketing Program

For some marketers, it may be a challenge to generate enough ideas to keep the pipeline filled with new and relevant content. However, there are plenty of good ideas to be found; it’s just a matter of getting your creative juices flowing.

The following sixteen suggestions should help you fill your editorial calendar:

Listen

…to what your customers are asking. Your sales people and customer service center hear their wishes and frustrations every day.

…to your customers’ customers. Get to know who they are, what is most important to them, and how their needs impact your customers.

…to your employees. They are immersed in the details of your product or service daily. They know what’s working, what isn’t, and why.

…to your own thought leaders. These subject matter experts can offer unique perspectives on new developments and fresh viewpoints for existing concepts.

Chronicle

…a process or event. Then use this information to create a how-to or instructional piece. Don’t worry that everyone already knows this. Quite often this information is new to many of your prospects or it introduces an innovative way to work around a challenge.

…search terms used to find your website. Hidden within your web analytics are the words and phrases people use when trying to find you. View these as the questions prospects want answered and create content to answer them.

...current best practices. Whether from within your company or from an industry perspective, best practices are germane to all your customers and prospects. Don’t assume that they already know all the best practices or how to incorporate them into their processes.

…results of surveys of customers and prospects. There is nothing like a well-designed survey to uncover the mood of your audience and the industry. Results can be summarized and presented as survey findings, or you can use them to generate topics for other types of content.

Recycle

…previous content by updating it with new information. If you published something a year ago, is it still up to date? Think about what recent developments or updated facts or details you can add to freshen up older content.

…and repackage in a new format. This is the low-hanging fruit of content marketing, so think creatively about how you can repackage what you’ve already created. For example, you can generate several blogs posts from the transcript of a podcast, or create a video from an existing thought leadership article.

…in-depth reports and documents. Break them apart into smaller stand-alone reports to create niche materials that may be more useful and more readable to a subset of your audience.

…internal documents such as memos or notes from the sales meeting. As long as you aren’t giving away any corporate secrets, internal communications are great resources to uncover relevant operational or product details and raw data that can be mined to write strong marketing materials.

Uncover

…news stories and industry press. Keeping on top of trends in your industry and the business world in general will spur ideas and help keep your content topical and current.

…what your competitors and industry thought leaders are talking about. Take advantage of what you learn about your competitors and their opinions to understand their market position. You can dig deeper into the subject, add your two cents to the conversation, or rebut their claims.

…the social media communities critical to your industry. The benefit of social media is that people share their ideas and questions freely in a way they may not when dealing directly with a vendor. Use the information you find in these communities to better understand the market or customers’ frustrations, then create content to address those issues.

…demographic trends that can connect users with your product or service. If you always market to one type of customer or prospect, consider reworking the same content for another customer population. Even if you think your customers and prospects fit into one fairly small and specific group, brainstorm ways to divide that group—by industry size, customer base, role in the company, etc.—and modify the content for each subgroup.

Implementing just a few of these ideas should keep your pipeline filled with great content and make it easier for you to keep up with the amount of content your program requires.

-November 2010