When creating content, you want to avoid dull and generic text, and here’s why:
- There’s little point putting out the same information as every other site in your niche. If you’re not different, you’ll simply end up as a follower instead of a leader in your field.
- Readers will take one look at generic content and know they’ve seen something similar somewhere else. Most likely on the niche’s foremost authority who ranks highly in search results. Then they’ll forget all about you.
- Audiences are continuously looking for new information. They want content that’s helpful and unique. They want different opinions on a topic. Whoever can provide that comes out on top in their minds.
- Interesting and exciting content makes readers want to learn more about you. If your audience truly appreciates your content, they’ll click on more of your work. This increases traffic to your site.
- Content is essential to your conversions. It can inspire audiences to take action and buy what you’re selling if done right. If done wrong, it can discourage audiences from ever taking up any of your offers.
We get it, it’s easy and safe to create dull and generic content. You’re not taking any risks and you can tell yourself that you’re still creating and getting work done.
But easy and safe doesn’t get you far in any field, let alone content marketing.
Everyone’s trying to grab the reader’s attention and take customers away from each other. Are you content (pun intended) with surviving or do you want to thrive?
The best way to start thriving is to stand out from everyone else and ideate great content.
Here are 5 little-known tips to help you do just that.
1: Collect and Consume Content
If you want to be a good writer, you need to read a lot. That’s advice you’ve probably heard or read before from well-known authors.
In order to put something out, you need to let something in. That’s basically how life works.
Similarly, if you want to create great content, you need to consume content yourself. Whenever you come across content that intrigues you, wherever you might find it and in whichever form, collect it.
It could be:
- Visual content you see on social media, in an online seminar, a graph, or on television.
- Audio content you hear on the radio or a podcast.
- Text-based content you read in a tweet, a book, a magazine, or an article online.
Keep it with you so that you can use it at any time. The content you collect will help inspire what you choose to create next.
When it’s time for you to write, go through the content you’ve collected, and use it in your own way. Add your own twist to any relevant information you manage to obtain.
2: Ask Your Audience
If you’re going to create content for your audience, it might be useful to ask them what they want to know. Many content creators seem to forget this step and presume to know what the audience needs.
Ask them for their opinions on relevant topics and get to know your readers.
Not only will you get an idea of what might work, but they’ll also appreciate that you value their opinion. This leads to creating a sense of community with people who appreciate your content.
In order to ask them, use every mode of communication you have:
- Post polls on your social media channels and find out their leaning between a choice of two or more options.
Source: twitter.com - Read and respond to comments they leave on your existing content.
- Present them with surveys, emphasizing that their answers will lead to better content.
- Email your audience to let them know they can reach out to you if they have any questions.
- Promote a special offer in exchange for feedback on your products or services.
3: Practice Perfect Practicing
“Practice makes perfect.” You’ve heard that statement countless times for as long as you can remember. It sounds great, but does it really represent the complete reality of work in any field? Maybe not exactly.
“Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” — Vince Lombardi, legendary American football coach
The key to creating great content is creating good content on a consistent basis. No one becomes great overnight or through one single action or piece of work they produce. Life just doesn’t work like that.
“Greatness is not instantaneous. Greatness is earned.” — Steph Smith
You have to keep practicing, keep creating content, but ensure that it’s content you’d be proud to publish. Don’t simply write for the sake of writing, write for the sake of improving.
Put yourself in the right conditions to excel by building an efficient routine:
- Start your day off by consuming content for a limited amount of time.
- Discover what your audience finds interesting.
- Ask yourself questions that are relevant to the brand you’re trying to promote.
- Research keywords and answers to those questions if you don’t already have them.
- Write down how you could best present these answers in a way that makes sense to the reader.
- Develop a clear outline to assist your content creation.
- Start writing a draft of your content.
- Review it when you’re done and make any necessary changes to it.
Constantly creating content can be challenging. It can even take focus away from other parts of your business. Luckily, you can outsource content creation to experts who apply these ideation tips and more.
Focus your time and energy on building your business while you get content that gets you noticed.
4: Consider Your Competitors
You have to keep an eye on your competition when you create content. You have to see what they’re publishing and what works for them, and you have to do so frequently.
It’s crucial in content marketing that you know:
- Which keywords are trending? So that you can apply them and come up with content ideas. You can use Google Trends to analyze the popularity of top search queries in Google.
- Which of your competitors’ pages have the most links and which sites are the links coming from? This helps you know which content themes and types appeal most to readers. You can use Link Explorer to do this.
- How do your competitors perform on social media? Rival IQ allows you to analyze your competitors on different social networks. Knowing this gives you an insight into how frequently they post and what gets the most engagement.
5: Provide Different Kinds of Content
You can’t limit yourself over what type of content you provide your audience with. Otherwise, you’re likely to miss out on entire segments of your target market.
Different people prefer to consume different types of content:
- Video is the best content medium for most people as it’s easiest to understand and captivating. When done right, videos seem like a more genuine effort to communicate with your audience.
- Long-form articles provide readers with lots of information and appeal to search engines. This means this type of content dominates the first page of search rankings. This, in turn, increases traffic to your site.
- Micro-content provides your audience with quick answers on a topic. You can create micro-content by repurposing parts of your long-form articles into:
- Images
- Slideshows
- Tweets
- Checklists
- Memes
- Mashups
- Quotes
- Audio content like podcasts allows your audience to learn about topics from experts. Many people enjoy listening to podcasts because they’re able to do so while multitasking.
Stand Out in a Sea of Boring Content
Coming up with brilliant content ideas is the first step in standing out from the others in your niche.
Audiences don’t search the internet for boring content that they can find on multiple sites. They’ll appreciate your ability to provide them with interesting and different information.
When you apply these tips, you can be sure that your content ideas won’t be boring or safe.
