Websites need good content as often as humanly possible. Content fuels your entire SEO plan. Good content drives visitors to your website, improves search engine rankings, helps get more high-quality backlinks, and increases business growth.
What if you are too crunched for time to create content regularly? Or what if you don’t have any good content ideas? I’m here to help. Here are 12 content creation tips & hacks to help you come up with ideas:
Content Creation Tip #1: Conduct An Interview
Depending on your business and industry, you likely have a team of experts at your disposal every day. If you’re aware of a potential customer’s pain point, consider publishing a Q&A or interview-style article on your blog.
You’ll be providing your target audience with helpful content, and it will likely be 100% original too (which is a big boost for your SEO).
Content Creation Tip #2: Repurpose A Presentation
Did you or one of your team members recently make a slideshow presentation about something that impacts customers? Slideshows make great fodder for future content. Take one aspect of the presentation, or summarize the entire presentation — it doesn’t really matter. Creating good content can be as simple as expanding on another good piece of content.
Content Creation Tip #3: Go Through Your Old Stuff
If your business has been around for a while, there is probably a dusty old file box lying around that has some information or data that’s historically relevant. Why not peruse the old stuff and see if you can turn it into something new?
Look through your business’s history on various social media platforms for ideas. If you ask around, you may even have someone on your team that wrote an article years ago that could be revised into a new, fresh version. Producing good content quickly means squeezing more out of what you already have at your disposal.
Content Creation Tip #4: Write An Article About Another Article
It sounds silly, but there is a reason the POV brings in tons of views on video content, social media posts, and blog articles. People love to read opinions and advice from other people.
You can take an article that someone on your team has published in the past, respond and/or add your own take on it, then provide a link to it (even internal links are great for SEO).
Alternatively, find a trending article that you find interesting, controversial, fascinating, etc., and write a summary with comments about the topic (as long as it has something to do with your industry). Again, it’s about making more with less.
Content Creation Tip #5: Use Social Media
Take a few minutes to browse your social media profiles and follower activity.
Is there a specific type of content that your social followers seem to like and share continuously? Write an article about that topic.
Did one of your social media posts gain more traction than others? Expand on it in a blog post.
Are you receiving questions or comments from customers? Respond to them with a blog post.
Remember, answering a customer’s pain point through content helps overcome customer objections and drives other customers to your site. Take the bull by the horns and address concerns directly through your blog.
Content Creation Tip #6: Use Google’s Search Queries Report
When was the last time you looked through your search queries report in Google Search Console?
Google provides you with some great instructions on how to read and filter the report, but if you sort by queries, you can get an idea of how many times certain terms show up in search results (impressions) and then how many times people click on each result.
A piece of content surrounding terms that get lots of impressions and clicks can impact your rankings and drive more potential customers to your website. Just remember to use internal links when your posts are related!
Content Creation Tip #7: Create A Listicle
Listicles are incredibly popular with readers because they can find a list of something that interests them without having to click around to find answers in multiple locations.
Listicles (like this article itself) are things like “10 Ways To Help Your Grandma Feel Better” or “10 Of The Best Adventure Vacations In Colorado”. The opportunities are endless, and your website visitors will love it.
Content Creation Tip #8: Have a Brainstorming Session
This may elicit a groan from your team, but it really works. Plan a one-hour meeting and have every person on your team bring five good content ideas to the table. Try to get as many people involved as possible.
Before you know it, you’ll have an overflow of great potential content ideas, and new ideas will sprout from this meeting. Divide up the list, assign deadlines, and begin writing!
Content Creation Tip #9: Revise Content For Different Audiences
Take a piece of content, a brochure, presentation, or other marketing material and spin it to fit a different audience. Many businesses cater to several audience personas or customer avatars, so challenge your team to re-write the same piece of content in a different way for each.
Rewriting content will make you a more successful content creator overall too. You’ll be thrilled by the results, and you’ll have several new pieces of content.
Content Creation Tip #10: Conduct A Poll
It’s amazing how interesting data can be used to create good content. Consider creating a poll about something related to your industry.
Perhaps you work in IT, and you want to know how companies are responding to the new GDPR regulations. You could create a short poll, send it to other experts in the IT industry, and gather their responses. The data can then be packaged into a piece of content.
You can also poll your customers about their preferences and write an original blog post about their responses.
Content Creation Tip #11: Use Google News
Google News is one of my favorite content -generation tools. I also use it for outreach efforts and for social media posting fodder.
Just type in some keywords related to your business and do some searches. What are other people talking about? Is there a way that you can write an article that comments on some “hot topics” showing up in Google News? Do the headlines spark other ideas for you?
The research only takes 10 minutes and will help you generate some good ideas.
Content Creation Tip #12: Get Questions from Your Customers
This can be done via social media, email, or a blog. Tell your followers and website visitors that you’re going to start a new “Mail” column in which you answer a customer question each week. This works under the assumption that you’re fully prepared to answer the questions that you get.
Encourage your customers to ask questions about your business, history, or tips and pointers about how to use your products and services. It can be anything. Similar to a Q&A magazine column, you’re writing a direct response to a reader’s question. It’s a creative and fun way to produce new content and have a more direct relationship with your customers.
A Note On Using AI & Other Content Creation Tools
Automated marketing personalization has reached incredible levels. With the rise and popularity of ChatGPT, you’ll likely be tempted to copy & paste AI-written blog posts. As long as they’re not plagiarized, it’s okay, right?
Automated blog content generators have been around for many years (long before ChatGPT), and they have certainly gotten better.
Years ago, we tested this one that claimed to “rewrite” original, fresh content in seconds. When we typed in “content marketing” as the keyword, the first article came up like this:
But it turned out to be the exact same text as a Forbes article that was already ranking. Even the image caption was the same.
Direct duplication isn’t as much of an issue anymore, but Google is still cracking down on AI-written content. While they’re clearly okay with it (they removed the words “written by people for people” from their guidelines), they want search results to be high-quality, helpful, and original.
With any AI blog writing tool available today, a writer would still be needed to edit, polish, and add human insight to the resulting article.
What audiences are really looking for is authenticity. So instead of resorting to machine-generated content, use the above 12 content creation tips and pump out some new, high-quality content fast.
Need help with your content strategy? Contact us.
