Once you’ve decided to get started with content marketing and building your personal brand online it’s time to do some research and come up with ideas for your content creation.
If you are passionate about what you do it’s probably not that hard for you to come up with topics to blog about. But that’s just one part of the equation. What about your audience? Do they want to hear the same thing?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. One thing I really want to make sure is to create content that is useful for my audience. Something that helps them overcome a problem, get inspired or just plain entertains.
In this post I’m going to share some ways that I came up with in order to create content that is not only interesting to me but that also helps my audience.
Here are some simple ideas you can use to ensure the content you create is relevant, on topic and “in demand”
1. Twitter
One simple way to find out what people are talking about on pretty much any given topic is to do a Twitter search. Just go to twitter.com/search-home and type in a keyword or phrase.
You’ll find plenty of people talking about your topic. You can either engage with them by writing an @reply or just listen to what others are saying. That way you’ll get a good overview on what specifically people are talking about. You can then use those topics to create content on your blog.
2. Facebook Groups
No matter what market you are in, you can be sure that there will be a Facebook Group around that topic. This is a great place to start your content marketing research.
You can participate in the group and at the same time drive some qualified traffic back to your website. I have participated in a couple of Facebook Groups related to my german Backpacking website – it’s actually fun!
3. Authority Blogs in your market
If you’ve been working in your industry for a while you probably already know the “who is who” of bloggers in your market. This is another easy way to find topics that are of great interest to your audience.
Here a few things you could do:
- check out which posts got the most comments
- check out which posts got the most “shares” on Facebook, Twitter, etc…
- read a few comments and look for questions that people ask!
4. Relevant Forums
Forums have been around since the beginning of the internet. I believe most people underestimate the power of so called “forum marketing”. I don’t like the word very much… I prefer to call it “Forum Engagement”.
Some of the most successful blogs and magazines you see today have simply started by using “Forum Engagement” to participate on a given topic and drive traffic to their sites.
Here some benefits of “Forum Engagement”:
- Find relevant questions from your audience (if one person asks that question chances are that others have the same question too)
- Be helpful by answering some questions you know the answers to. (Be helpful – remember my first post?)
- Include your social profiles like Twitter and Facebook as well as a link back to your blog in your forums signature. This will increase awareness and also drive some traffic to your site.
- Use frequently asked questions to create content on your blog.
- You can also include links in your forum posts (don’t over do this otherwise you look like a spammer!). Only include links if it’s really relevant and I would not recommend to do this in your first 5 to 10 forum posts.
5. Podcasts
Yes, that’s right. Podcasts are also a great way to find topics that are interesting to your audience. Now… I don’t recommend you start your own podcast straight away. Just tune in to some popular podcasts on your given topic.
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately and they are a great source for generating ideas for future blog posts.
If there is a popular podcast on your topic chances are that the guy (or girl) who is running the podcast is talking about things that are of interest to the audience. Just tune in and get inspired for your next blog post. You can also check how often a podcast got downloaded. Just look for the once that got downloaded most often – there is probably a reason for it!
Many podcast hosts often interview other industry experts. Before the recording they will ask their audience what questions they would like to ask the next expert on the show. Here we go… more questions from your target audience that you can use for content creation on your blog.
What next?
Ok, those are just some of the ideas I came up with. I had more than 30 ideas but most of them were no good… so I’m not going to share them with you 🙂
I hope you found some of the ideas helpful and can use them for your own content marketing efforts.
For the next couple of weeks I will be doing some research on relevant forums to my audience. I’m looking for forums that are of great quality, have a sufficient number of active users and that are (hopefully) full of people that I can help.
If you have more great ways to come up with topics that are relevant to your audience… please share in the comments below. Keen to hear what works for you!
Thanks for dropping by… and remember:
Connect with your audience.
Be helpful.
Do it often.
Have an awesome day!
Fabian