Quality and shareable content keeps your audiences engaged, educated, and informed. But it may seem demanding to churn out great pieces all the time, and occasionally, you experience creative block. So, how do you keep your creative juice flowing to generate great ideas?

If you’re stuck for content ideas, brainstorming can be a helpful way to jump-start your creativity. Whether a business owner or a marketer, engaging your team offers a collective approach to formulating powerful and share-worthy ideas for your next post.

In this article, we’ll share with you some of our top tips for coming up with ideas for content creation.

Perform a Content Audit

A content audit assesses all the content on your website or blog to identify pieces performing well and those that need updating. While at it, keep an eye out for duplicate content, outdated information, or poor-quality writing, and make edits as needed.

To get started, take an inventory of all the existing content on your site and identify the ones already ranking and the key terms they rank for. You can use a tool like SEMrush to get this done.

Once you’ve identified the areas that need improvement, you can start brainstorming ideas for new and better content. You can improve existing content by:

• Adding more information that is relevant and valuable to your audience to fill in any gaps
• Updating existing details if they are outdated or no longer accurate
• Improving the writing style and tone, especially if they do not align with your brand
• Enhancing and adding new visuals to improve engagement
• Editing titles and meta descriptions to make them catchy and informative

Sometimes, you may need to go all out and rewrite some poorly written pieces that are outdated or simply do not align with your brand. This can improve your SEO and boost your authority and credibility while delivering more value to your audiences.

Check Industry News Outlets

Industry news outlets make excellent sources for content ideas – they allow you to identify trends, timely angles, and topics you can explore. You can share opinions or analyses on trending subjects to ensure that your content remains relevant and engaging.

Make sure you have subscribed to relevant industry blogs and read articles from thought leaders in your field. You can also attend industry events and networking functions to get abreast of what’s new in your industry. By staying informed about what’s going on in your industry, you’ll be able to come up with fresh, unique ideas for content that resonate with your audience (and position you as an expert).

Review Competing Sites

It’s essential to check out what your competitors are doing — identify the topics they’re covering, what kinds of content they’re creating and how they’re presenting them. This will give you a good idea of what’s working for them and what isn’t.

When you review competitors’ websites, you can identify content ideas you may not have thought of. Try to create something similar for your business, but make sure you put your spin on it to make it truly unique. If you can find a way to improve their content by adding more depth, data, or a completely different take altogether, that’s even better.

Also, see if there are any areas where you could fill a gap with your content. You can help set yourself apart as an expert in your field by providing something that others aren’t.

Meet with Your Customer Service Team

Your customer service team is one of the best sources of great content ideas. They are on the front lines of your business and deal with customers daily. They have an in-depth understanding of your customers’ needs, pain points, and preferences — key elements for generating great ideas.

Try to get answers to the following questions:

• What kind of content would they find helpful?
• What questions do they get asked most often?
• What topics do they wish we should provide more information on?
• What specific problems do they face the most?
• What are the most common problems they encounter?
• What can you do to help alleviate those problems?

They may also have some ideas for specific content they would like to see, so be sure to ask about that. Once you have some ideas from your customer service team, turn those into compelling and exciting content for your target audience.

How to Ensure You’re Creating Content That Aligns With Your Strategy

Getting caught up in content creation is easy without taking a step back to ensure that your content aligns with your strategy. Here are a few tips to help you make sure you’re on track.

Focus on Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases most important to your business that you should use throughout your content. To make sure you are on track, do the following:

• Identify the most critical keywords and phrases for your business.
• Use the important keywords and phrases in your content and create pillar pages for each priority keyword.
• Make sure that all your content is keyword-rich and relevant to your business.
• Track your progress by monitoring how often your keywords are used and how much traffic they generate.

Work with the Sales Team

Sales teams have their finger on the pulse of what leads are interested in, so they can be valuable resources for content creation. They are in constant contact with potential customers, so they have a good idea of the information people are interested in.

By talking to them, you can get an idea of what topics to write about, understand what topics resonate with potential customers, and give a better idea of creating content that aligns with their needs.

Survey Your Subscribers

One of the best things you can do to ensure your content is aligned with your strategy is to conduct a survey. Survey your subscribers to see what kinds of content they need and would like to see.

Ask them what topics they want to be covered in your content and what format they prefer, e.g., blog posts, infographics, videos, etc. This will give you valuable insights into the kinds of content that are most useful to your target audience and help you ensure your content strategy is on track.

Leverage Benchmark Email’s Smart Content

Creative block can be stifling for content teams, but brainstorming can help break through a block and generate great ideas. We hope you found our tips helpful and that they’ll give you a good starting point when you run out of new content ideas.

Additionally, you can employ content tools to generate exciting ideas, and Benchmark Email’s Smart Content feature is one great example of such a tool. This intuitive feature is powered by OpenAI, the research firm behind ChatGPT. Smart Content is particularly important when creating email content.

There’s so much out there about layout, format, and design for successful emails. However, without compelling content, all other elements won’t get results – the content nails it all together. This AI-powered copywriting tool helps you create compelling email content that resonates with your audience.

If you are also unsure about the angles to take for some of your existing content, you can use the tool to generate new copy from existing content and best-performing emails. This also provides you with fresh creative ideas and angles you can use to improve on existing content pieces.