What do you use to come up with content ideas?
-
Buzzsumo charge and not sure it's worth it. didn't find Quora helpful. Any others?
-
Hi,
I'm working on a presentation that helps brands answer this question. It really feels like one of those questions that should have a great, simple answer.
My quick-fast-dirty process looks a lot like this.
Brand-level
- Determine goals for brand
- Ascertain how content can help brand attain those goals
Competition
- Do a simple Google search to see which brands are competition for the same audience (e.g., using your money keywords)
- Pay close attention to the content they've created that's ranking well
- Try to create a short list of things you can do content-wise better
Audience
- Figure out who they are being visiting social media, Quora, Reddit, etc., and doing a keyword search to see who is using your terms
- Make at list of the folks who are influencers and what questions, concerns, issues are being raised
- Use this information to find other such platforms where similar audiences might be congregating (i.e., do a Google search or Twitter search or Facebook search to see what other groups key members might be a part of)
Content
Armed with your keywords, the questions you can likely answer and the types of content your competition is creating, you can being to think about the types of content you can and should create based on your brand's needs and goals.
For example, if you have an existing product that is now newer and better than ever, but you need to get people to learn about the changes, maybe you write a top of the funnel piece that includes your brand as part of a solution to a problem you found from online discussions. The maker of a sleek, redesigned wallet for millennials, say, might write a post titled "Why Your iPhone Case Should Never Double as a Credit Card Holder."
The key is to focus as much on the execution as the idea. That is...
- Have a clear goal with regard to each piece of content
- Know in advance which segment of the audience you're attempting to reach and what desired actions you wish for them to take
- Understand that publishing content is only part of the process. (It must be shared, promoted and, hopefully, amplified to be successful)
To help you get started, here are a few indispensable resources:
For help with what questions you should be answering:
For how to come up with better ideas more easily:* Creating Demand for Products, Services, and Ideas that Have Little to No Existing Search Volume - Whiteboard Friday*GENERATING BETTER CONTENT IDEAS
-
Thanks, all. Regarding trying to guess what our customers are looking for, I've found from previous jobs that attempting to surmise a searcher's language can be tricky. I used to do digital marketing for a cookware company and we'd have a word for a saucepan, for example, whereas we found that searchers were using different language and terms.
Google Trends I like but doesn't it just give you an idea for the search volume over a defined period, and allow you to filter down geographically etc? I want to make sure that there is significant call/traffic to justify the pages that I'll be creating.
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Go to SEMRUSH. Check keywords that bring competitors big traffic and where I am not yet competing. Make pages that will defeat theirs.
-
Amanda is on point with her suggestion. The 90 foot view is always where I start.
What are you user's actually looking for? Like really step into their shoes - they're human too remember - and ask yourself what kind of questions they have. We marketer's all have fancy terms for different levels of marketing funnels but ultimately it's very simple. A human being has a need and they look to Google for their solution. Given what you know about your customer/user/visitor - how can you make their journey easier, faster, simpler? Add value, be authentic and don't cut corners.
Once you have a few idea's that start with the person, use the tools Amanda has recommended to validate your theory and gain more understanding.
Good luck!
-
Sounds simplistic but keyword research categorized by estimated volume based around semantic relativeness, Google Trends, competitor research, and the 90 foot view of those three things together to then define a content strategy.
~Amanda
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using # in parameters?
I am trying to understand why a website would use # instead of a ? for its parameters? I have put an example of the URL below: http://www.warehousestationery.co.nz/office-supplies/adhesives-tapes-and-fastenings#prefn1=brand&prefn2=colour&prefv1=Command&prefv2=Clear Any help would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CaitlinDW1 -
Duplicate Tag Content Mystery
Hello Moz Communtiy! i am also having error of Duplicate Tag Content Mystery like: http://www.earnmoneywithgoogleadsense.com/tag/blog-post/ http://www.earnmoneywithgoogleadsense.com/tag/effective-blog-post/ Pages are same. I have 100+ Error on website so how can i remove this error? DO you have any tutorial based on this? Can i change canonical url at once or i need to set it one by one? If you have any video basis on it, i will recommend.
Technical SEO | | navneetkumar7860 -
Duplicate Content Issues
We have some "?src=" tag in some URL's which are treated as duplicate content in the crawl diagnostics errors? For example, xyz.com?src=abc and xyz.com?src=def are considered to be duplicate content url's. My objective is to make my campaign free of these crawl errors. First of all i would like to know why these url's are considered to have duplicate content. And what's the best solution to get rid of this?
Technical SEO | | RodrigoVaca0 -
Page Content
Our site is a home to home moving listing portal. Consumers who wants to move his home fills a form so that moving companies can cote prices. We were generating listing page URL’s by using the title submitted by customer. Unfortunately we have understood by now that many customers have entered exactly same title for their listings which has caused us having hundreds of similar page title. We have corrected all the pages which had similar meta tag and duplicate page title tags. We have also inserted controls to our software to prevent generating duplicate page title tags or meta tags. But also the page content quality not very good because page content added by customer.(example: http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/evden-eve--6001) What should I do. Please help me.
Technical SEO | | iskq0 -
Shopify duplicate content issue
We recently moved out site to shopify but now have a duplicate content issue as we have the same products in different collections. I have added canonical code to get rid of this but my webmaster tools still shows hundreds of duplicate pages. How can I tell if the code I added is working? How long will it take for google to recognise this and drop the duplicates from their index and is this likely to have a significant impact on SERPS? Our we page is www.devoted2vintage.co.uk. Thanks Paul
Technical SEO | | devoted2vintage1 -
Copying my content
Hi there, I run a successful e-commerce website, which the product pages are rich with content linking to other products etc, one of our retailers who sell our products I just noticed copied and pasted the content I have written for these product pages leaving in all the links, which it turn are linking back to my product pages, is this a good thing? or should I make that retailer put in canonical tags? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | Paul780 -
404-like content
A site that I look after is having lots of soft 404 responses for pages that are not 404 at all but unique content pages. the following page is an example: http://www.professionalindemnitynow.com/medical-malpractice-insurance-clinics This page returns a 200 response code, has unique content, but is not getting indexed. Any ideas? To add further information that may well impact your answer, let me explain how this "classic ASP" website performs the SEO Friendly url mapping: All pages within the custom CMS have a unique ID which are referenced with an ?intID=xx parameter. The custom 404.asp file receives a request, looks up the ID to find matching content in the CMS, and then server.transfers the visitor to the correct page. Like I said, the response codes are setup correctly, as far as Firebug can tell me. any thoughts would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | eseyo20 -
Duplicate Content
Hi - We are due to launch a .com version of our site, with the ability to put prices into local currency, whereas our .co.uk site will be solely £. If the content on both the .com and .co.uk sites is the same (at product level mainly), will we be penalised? What is the best way to get around this?
Technical SEO | | swgolf1230