{"id":2778,"date":"2022-08-11T16:49:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-11T20:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/?p=2778"},"modified":"2023-04-14T09:50:51","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T13:50:51","slug":"how-we-drum-up-winning-content-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/blog\/how-we-drum-up-winning-content-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Field Notes #006: How We Drum Up Winning Content Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The dreaded blank page and blinking cursor\u2014we\u2019ve all faced it. What\u2019s worse? A dry well of content ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We create a year-long Content Roadmap Report for every client we work with. Depending on our established production cadence, this process can result in nearly 100 deliverables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we\u2019re well-versed in generating unique content ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of our research involves Ahrefs and deep competitor analysis\u2014a common approach to SEO content strategy. But this process yields only so many keywords<\/a> and topics, and some can be redundant or already written about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, the results are limited to what competitors are already<\/em> writing about and what customers are already<\/em> searching for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Competitors and their keyword choices can only inform your content strategy so much. You don\u2019t always have to match your competitors to beat them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are a few ways we generate new content ideas alongside competitive analysis and tools like Ahrefs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Talk to Sales and Customer Service\/Success to understand how prospects and customers describe the product and their experience with it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This tells you how customers search for solutions and what language they use when discussing a product and its features with others. This can inform new keywords to target and queries to answer through content. It can also provide insight into how customers define themselves and their relationship with a tool or product category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, we learned that customers of a popular AI writing tool love how the tool helps combat the \u201cloneliness of being a freelancer or solopreneur.\u201d This tidbit has little to do with the product features, yet it has strongly influenced our content ideas and how we relate to the audience in each post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Take product demos and sign-up for free trials and freemium plans to understand better how features translate to benefits and solutions (and search queries)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Many product-led content strategies focus on features over benefits. Yet, customers don\u2019t always know what\u00a0features<\/em>\u00a0they desire in a new product or tool\u2014they mostly focus on finding benefits and solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By indexing on the keywords and topics related to benefits, you\u2019re likely to catch someone with commercial or transactional search intent\u2014a much more potent mindset than when searching informational.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, we could market our services at Omniscient by listing what we deliver: blog posts, fully-managed content production, a brilliantly<\/em> awesome team\u2026 you get it. But it\u2019s way more interesting and impactful to tell potential clients that we \u201cdevelop content that drives business growth and revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The outcome is what they care most about, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Chat with real customers, as queries vary between and within companies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What a decision-maker searches can be wildly different than what the end user and\/or champion searches. The same variation applies to how different companies use different words to describe tools, products, and platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, what one content team calls \u201ccontent operations,\u201d another may call \u201cblog management.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Scour social media, discussion forums, and review sites<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

People are always talking about their pain points on Quora, Reddit, Hacker News, communities and Slack groups, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and product review sites. Observing this surfaces new vernacular and language around industries and products\u2014similar to the process in step one, but by observing attitudes and opinions expressed in the wild. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonus<\/em>: This step also provides ideas for content distribution and promotion once content goes live. And new content distribution ideas are never a bad thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n