Boosting your brand’s online reputation is easy when you’re pushing out fresh, entertaining, and engaging content. The catch? Pushing out fresh, entertaining, engaging (and consistent!) content isn’t easy. We’re just people—creative slumps happen, and we can’t always control when they happen or when we get out of them. You’ll have a well of inspiration one day, and it’ll have dried up by the next. When you’re feeling creatively drained, turn to tried and true resources!
Blog Subscriptions
As digital marketers, we know that blogs have some major benefits. They’re a great way to connect with your consumers, drive traffic to your website, increase SEO, establish credibility, and increase brand loyalty.
Start by subscribing to blogs that offer content that appeals to your users. Around the office, we’re always sharing great articles and tips from other companies—because other companies have good ideas, too. Make sure you’re reading content that appeals to your users. It’s a great way to stay updated with the latest news in your market!
Pay close attention to what’s popular or gaining traction—those hot topics are great opportunities to get your opinion out there. Take something that you find helpful and interesting, and reinvent it for your specific audience.
Pinterest, at its core, is a search engine. It’s probably the place people go most to get inspired. Whether you’re redoing your guest bathroom, making Thanksgiving dinner from scratch, gearing up for fall fashion, or self-publishing your memoirs, Pinterest is an incredible resource for you.
Start your inspiration hunt by researching keywords and phrases that accurately represent your business and what your business does. Use these to browse popular content that’s well-liked on Pinterest—and of course, browse the unpopular stuff too. Figure out what sets them apart.
One of Pinterest’s best features is the suggested box. When you search something, Pinterest suggests related words to help you narrow your search. If you type in “marketing” for example, Pinterest suggests adding: social media, tools, quotes, digital, strategy, career, and so on. You can use these to get into your niche and see what people are after! This will also show you all of the possible paths your customers are taking when they search similar things.
And of course, look at your competitors. What are they pinning? What are they producing and sharing? How are their boards organized? See what they’re doing, and do it better.
Your Competition
Do not, we repeat, do not steal things from your competitors. It’s not cool, even in the cut-throat world of marketing. The goal behind this means of finding inspiration is to separate yourself from your competitors, not mimic them. The idea here is to find basic ideas they’ve done that maybe you hadn’t thought of—and then do it newer and more tailored to your unique target audience.
By skimming your competitors’ websites and social media profiles, you’ll find valuable insight into what kinds of content works for your audience and what kinds just flop—all without risking flopping yourself!
Read comments and thoughts from their users to learn how they feel about them. If you stumble upon an idea you like, or one that’s really popular, get to reimagining! Use your unique perspective and opinion to create something new.
Social Media Groups
Take serious advantage of this one. Join as many social media groups as you can physically keep up with! Groups keep you accountable, up-to-date with the latest trends, and interacting with your peers and consumers. LinkedIn and Facebook are both great places to join social groups—LinkedIn even has them divided by industry!
By joining groups like these, you’ll constantly discover new content, blogs, and information relevant to you and therefore relevant to your audience. You’ll learn more about your target audience, too. Again—look at popular posts, and read the comments. You’ll get a real feel for how customers are reacting to certain content, for better or for worse.
Follower Feedback
Piggy-backing off of the last section, customer feedback is your golden key to the content marketing promised land. You can go looking for it (and you’ll find a lot!) or you can ask for it directly. People love to share their opinions and want to feel heard. Use social media to find out what your followers want more of, what they want less of, and what they do or don’t care about. There are tons of ways to do this on social media, especially on Instagram.
Not only will you get exactly the feedback you’re looking for (without really looking for it), but you’ll build a stronger sense of community with your brand and its followers. They’ll feel like you really care about their opinions and desires—and you should care, because they dictate the market. Figure out what their problems are, and solve them.
Trending Keywords and Phrases
Make sure you’re always keeping an eye (maybe even two) on your market so you know exactly what’s in demand for your current and prospective customers. Doing this helps generate new titles for your content that are more likely to gain traction—that’s how things go viral.
When you’re tracking trending keywords and phrases with intention, you avoid churning out content that’s simply not wanted—people could have a genuine interest in your brand or business, but if what you’re pushing out isn’t relevant or interesting, they’ll tune you out.
Deep Dive
If you’ve been around for a while odds are you’ve posted plenty of well-received content, and your struggle might not be a lack of inspiration, but a lack of ideas you haven’t tapped before. Guess what? You can reduce, reuse, and recycle. You can expand on broader topics you’ve already covered, turn an idea into a recurring series, repurpose old stuff, and reimagine things you’ve thought of before.
It’s actually good to have a balance of generic, easy-to-digest content and super specific deep-dive content. So if you’re searching the web and find tons of content on the topic you have in mind, don’t get discouraged. Take the stuff that’s out there and change it! Write similar content from a different angle or a different perspective than others have.
If everyone is writing about where to take the best weekend vacation, write about how to have the best weekend staycation. If everyone is sharing their best matcha latte recipes, write about common mistakes people make when trying to create them—or the best places to buy a matcha latte so you don’t have to make one. Look at what’s popular, and write about what’s missing.
Everyone appreciates a new take on something that’s already been talked about—this is an incredible opportunity to show people that you’re a thought leader in your industry. Opinion is incredibly important. Voice is incredibly important. Personality is incredibly important—and you can convey all of those things in your content. With all the content out there already, people are craving authenticity even more. Use that to your advantage!
Don’t Fret
Everyone gets into creative ruts, even the professionals. One of the best things you can do is capitalize on the times when you’re filled to the brim with inspiration—write down all your ideas so you can come back to them later, when the well has run dry.
Content marketing is a constant, hands-on beast of a strategy, but it’s a must. Need help managing yours? Give us a call.
