28. Four Ways to Get Content Ideas FAST

How do you come up with content ideas?

In this episode, I'm sharing the four places you should go first when creating your editorial calendar. I am all about quarterly content planning. It is planned enough that you aren't flying by the seat of your pants but agile enough that you can pivot if you need to.

Key Learnings:
1. Look for trending content.
2. Built a guest posting shortlist from BuzzSumo.
3. Look at forums to find out what people ask about your expertise.
4. Feed the Google monster with low-hanging fruit.

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Transcript

Quarterly Content Planning Podcast

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:19] Sarah Noel Block: Hey friends, it is Sarah Noel Block the founder of tiny marketing. And today I'm going to chat with you about how to get those content ideas. In our last episode, we talked about the importance of content planning and how you can create the most amount of content, how you can show up for your audience. 

[00:00:46] Sarah Noel Block: Without that content overwhelm, but we didn't get into the juice of it. We did not get into how to find those content ideas. So that's what we're going to be talking about this week. That's [00:01:00] super exciting stuff. First, we're going to talk about a lovely tool called buzz Sumo. So in BuzzSumo. You can go to it. And I think they have a freemium option. 

[00:01:17] Sarah Noel Block: But what I would go to first is generate ideas from our index of 8 billion pieces of content. Go to that section. And it's straight on the home. And what you do is you search a topic. A key word. Let's say you're really targeting SEO and ranking in organic search. If you're doing that, you probably have a list of words that you're trying to rank for. 

[00:01:43] Sarah Noel Block: Go through that list of words. And take them and go to the generate ideas section. So when you do that, I'm just gonna listen to my typing. I'm doing this lie. That's it. All right. So I searched content [00:02:00] marketing. And what it will do for me is it will show me related topics. So these topics can be. 

[00:02:08] Sarah Noel Block: Part of a hub and spoke strategy. And hub and spoke is basically. Think of hubs as actual hubs, it is a location where you have a large scale guide. Think of it like a book and then your spokes are chapters. So chapters would be subtopics within that hub. 

[00:02:30] Sarah Noel Block: So when you go to the content ideas generator, and you put in your keyword that you're looking for, it'll show you the week's top trending stories. This will give you a good idea about what people care about right now. So as I go into that, I see. Automation. I see a lot about content marketing automation tools. 

[00:02:54] Sarah Noel Block: I see information about video marketing and I see AI. [00:03:00] So that gives me a great idea about what people are wanting to know about right now. And I can use that as a jumping off point to figure out what my next piece of content will be. 

[00:03:14] Sarah Noel Block: Now as you keep going, you can go to more content ideas, but it'll show you the top engaged with content to. So look at what is being engaged with and where it's being engaged. So a couple things that you can do with this is what you can see, what publishers. Are getting the most engaged content within your content. 

[00:03:42] Sarah Noel Block: Themes. Let's say. And make a list of them. This is a great list of places that you could be guest posting or being a reoccurring. Writer for them. So what comes up for content marketing is search engine [00:04:00] journal. Content marketing Institute, entrepreneur. Those were the top three, most shared articles were from those publications. So I'm going to put those lists. 

[00:04:12] Sarah Noel Block: I'm going to put those on my list of places that I should potentially pitch. Okay next, you'll see popular keywords this month. This will give you great ideas of what kind of content people are interested in right now. So types of content, marketing, content, marketing strategy, examples. Those are trending a lot over the past 12 months and especially. 

[00:04:37] Sarah Noel Block: During this week. 

[00:04:41] Sarah Noel Block: Next book questions are being asked online. This is really good because it's a lot of people when they go to Google, they're asking a question, right? You go to Google, your BFF that knows everything. And you ask a question about the problem that you're having. So these, [00:05:00] this area will show you exactly what questions are being asked on your topic. 

[00:05:05] Sarah Noel Block: It includes a word cloud. So you know how often they're being talked about. 

[00:05:09] Sarah Noel Block: And it will search with a PDF Cora and Reddit to see what people are talking about in forums. Okay. Next, you can see what types of content. Your audience prefers the people who are searching for content marketing. What do they prefer? So for this particular search. We'll keep with our content marketing theme. We see why blog posts are doing the best right now. 

[00:05:39] Sarah Noel Block: And we have. It shows us everything from podcasts to videos, to what kind of graphics do really well. But what's doing best for content marketing is written content. And it even shows us what word count does best for this. It happens to be between 2000 and [00:06:00] 3000 words. 

[00:06:00] Sarah Noel Block: But assuming we'll also show you what. 

[00:06:06] Sarah Noel Block: Channels are getting the best distribution and engagement. So Facebook and Twitter were the best for this. And then what day is best to publish and for content marketing, it was Wednesdays. So BuzzSumo is an awesome source. When you are doing your content planning. I love it. Next. We're going to talk about answer the public. So answer the public is a tool that takes all of those little forums, where people are talking about their problems and aggregates it for us. So Neil Patel just bought it and it's part of Uber suggests now. 

[00:06:47] Sarah Noel Block: Which is pretty awesome. But basically what you can do is you can put in a topic just like you do in BuzzSumo. And you take it. And find out what questions [00:07:00] people are asking about it. So I am going to do that right now. We're going to go to. 

[00:07:08] Sarah Noel Block: Keyword visualization. And we'll put in content marketing again. 

[00:07:14] So when you go to content visualization, or I'm sorry, keyword, visualization. Then you will get all of those little questions that are being asked online. And you can look at it as a mind map, but that just blows my brain. I don't like. Looking at mine maps. So I was doing it in data form. And you can see what, why, what, how, when, which, who. 

[00:07:41] Sarah Noel Block: And his questions are being asked on the topic. 

[00:07:46] Sarah Noel Block: So I'll just give you one why content marketing is important. So answer the public is another great option for figuring out what content marketing you should be creating right now, when you're doing your content plan, [00:08:00] it's a place to go. 

[00:08:02] Sarah Noel Block: Next. If you have an SEO tool. I love going to that to figure out what is my low hanging fruit, what content can I create today? That might get me ranking tomorrow. So I use Uber suggest for my own. And if you have a. Uber suggest account, then you have a dashboard. And it gives you your low hanging fruit right there on the top. It has an, a top SEO opportunities section. 

[00:08:35] Sarah Noel Block: So when you go to that, it'll show you what articles you can create that will get you ranking on Google really fast. And it's not lying recently. I worked with some rash on. A Twitter thread. And I talked about how I beat HubSpot in the SERP. And this is how Uber suggest showed me a, or it gave me [00:09:00] a topic that I should write about. 

[00:09:02] Sarah Noel Block: And said that I would rank really quickly for it. So I did, and they were not lying. I did rank super quickly. So use your SEO tool and find out what that low hanging fruit is and what you can rank quickly on. My most recent discovery calls have all been people who just were Googling about content marketing and found me on there because SEO is awesome. 

[00:09:28] Sarah Noel Block: Okay. And the last tool that I'm going to talk about when it comes to content planning. Is your sales calls. Your sales calls are a great resource for figuring out what you should be talking about. I like to, I use Google. I'm a tiny marketing is a Google company. So what I do is I record all of my sales calls. 

[00:09:56] Sarah Noel Block: And I download the transcripts of them. So I can quickly [00:10:00] scan through those transcripts and find what questions I'm being asked most often. In the moment. You're not thinking about the questions you're being asked. You're just answering them. But when you can go back and look at those transcripts scan through them, highlight them, it's an easy way to figure out exactly what your audience wants to know. 

[00:10:22] Sarah Noel Block: And that should definitely be part of your content plan. My advice for you is to create a quarterly content plan. So you have your schedule set for the entire quarter. It's agile enough that if things move around and some big life event happens. You can adjust to it. But it's planned enough. That you're not flying by the seat of your pants. You know what content you're going to be creating. You can schedule it. 

[00:10:57] Sarah Noel Block: And build a process around it, including [00:11:00] repurposing. So in our last episode, I talked about how you can create 64 pieces of content from one interview. And that is where I would suggest you start. Start with creating that one piece of core content each quarter and repurpose it. So it feeds your channels for an entire quarter. 

[00:11:21] Sarah Noel Block: 64 pieces from one hour. That's a good, that's a good idea. But how you can do that is start with the content plan. Start with BuzzSumo. Start with answer the public, your SEO tools. Your frequently asked questions. And let that be the base of whatever your core content is. And remember that repurposing is not reposting. 

[00:11:51] Sarah Noel Block: You are not just regurgitating things that you have said before. You're creating new content from the base [00:12:00] that you've created that core piece of content. So it's not. It's not you just repeating yourself all quarter. It is you driving value and giving information in new and different ways and helping your audience the best that you can without burning yourself out. 

[00:12:19] Sarah Noel Block: You can do this. You can consistently show up for your audience. And drive value for them. Build trust with them and grow your audience. All right. Thank you so much for joining me today. You guys are rock stars and I hope you have a wonderful new years. Thank you. Here is a special note from my son, Dean. 

[00:12:44] Sarah Noel Block: / Merry Christmas, happy new year. Thank you for joining Tiny Marketing. I help tiny marketing departments create consistent content that builds trust with their audience. Book done for You, content [00:13:00] marketing@sarahnoelblock.com. Don't forget to follow the podcast on your favorite podcast app, and if you're watching this on YouTube or LinkedIn, make sure to hit the subscribe or follow button.

[00:13:09] Sarah Noel Block: See you next time, friend.