Tell me, does this sound familiar?
You’re scrolling through Instagram and hit a post from that one account… you know, the one woman who is effortlessly sharing beautiful designs, seemingly elaborate and valuable captions, and asking you to do something, which frequently lands you on her main profile, which is also cohesive, beautiful, value-packed, and first of all, it makes you want to work with her even if you don’t need what she’s selling – and then makes you think – wow, she must be spending A LOT of time on this feed.
Then, you pop over to your own page and realize, holy crap, it’s been a week since I’ve posted anything. She’s gotten 7 posts out since then, which is like, 7 opportunities to get in front of people and make things happen in her business. You’re thinking, ummm it’s about time I show up and remind people I exist, huh.
So, you whip out your phone, spend 10 minutes wondering what to post about, dig around for a photo you haven’t used in a while, carefully write a caption longer than a CVS receipt, wiggle in an offer right at the end, and finally hit publish.
You’re an hour behind schedule, but at least you made your daily post right? You were told that digital marketing is important, but is spending all this time really worth it?
Coming up with content ideas doesn’t have to take over your day. You definitely don’t need to be 2000% on top of the trends at all times, and definitely doing what everyone else is doing.
Been there too? We all have.
In this blog, I’m sharing my the two ways I love to come up with content ideas when my creativity is nowhere to be found, and the blanks in my content calendar are staring me down: listening to your existing audience, and listening to your future audience.
Listening to Your Existing Audience
Let’s chat about listening to your existing audience first, because this data is going to be a little more concrete than the second tactic.
Here are some questions to get you thinking about what you’ve been hearing from them that will help you come up with a few quick ideas:
- What questions do you get all the time in your DMs, in conversations on Discovery Calls, inquiry emails?
- What posts do you remember getting a surprising amount of traction on? Maybe you posted something you thought was super simple and it gained tons more attention than something you posted that you thought was super valuable?
- What mistakes do you frequently see people making that your service or product solves?
- What topics that could you talk about for just 10 minutes?
You’re essentially crowdsourcing ideas here from your most engaged followers and those who have responded well enough to your brand to take action. Simply, listen!
Listening to Your Future Audience
Hopefully, your content marketing is bringing new eyes to your website, social media pages, and email list. That’s part of the goal right? So, we need to be answering these new people’s questions before they have them and piquing their interest with concepts that they may not even know they needed.
There are a few tools that I like to use to find out what your IDEAL audience members are looking for, and I’ll share my favorite one with you today:
It’s called Answerthepublic.com, and you may have already heard of it, but it’s a website that lets you search a keyword or phrase and see exactly what questions people are searching about that topic. Try it out and start making a list!
Content creation doesn’t have to be time or energy consuming – and it could be much easier if you have a plan in place for what you are going to be talking about when.
These two solutions will definitely help you get through the next month or so, but if you want to really level up your content in 2022 – join me this Thursday!
I am hosting a FREE workshop to help you plan out ALL of your 2022 content so you never run into a dreaded creativity block again! Learn more and sign up here – and if you can’t make it live, don’t worry, I’ll send you the replay!
