How To Generate Content Ideas (Even When You’re Totally Stuck)

Ever have those days where you can’t come up with content ideas for the LIFE of you? 

You sit down to do a brainstorm, or plan out your content calendar for the month...and all of a sudden, you’re completely blank.

Is there anything more frustrating?! 

😩😩

Even as a full-time content creator and strategist, I’m not immune to this feeling. 

Luckily, I’ve got a few handy tricks on deck for when your content ideas well runs dry. These strategies have been invaluable on those days where I’m in a total content rut, so I can’t wait for you to add them to your toolbox! Let’s get into them 👇🏼👇🏼

1. Market Research 

The very first place I always begin when I’m not sure what to create is to think about what my audience has been asking lately. 

Ask yourself:

• What kind of questions have I been getting?
• What kind of things have people been asking in the DMs?
• What have people been discussing in the comments?
• What replies have I been getting to my marketing emails?

These are all GREAT places to comb through to see what problems your ideal clients may be having. When you figure out where your audience is feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or confused, you can easily come up with dozens of different content ideas to help support them and answer their questions. 

It’s a simple way to create content, not to mention they’ll love you even more for sharing your expertise and answering their questions directly! 🧡

A time that I used this strategy recently is when Instagram made the announcement they are “no longer just a photo-sharing app” in July 2021. 

Everyone was going CRAZY about this news over on Instagram. It was pretty much mass hysteria in the social media world. 😂

Almost all of the comments and DMs I received were followers freaking out about their content strategy. 

This allowed me to create content that addressed their confusion and set the record straight. I was able to generate SO many educational content ideas for Reels, posts, and stories. 

While addressing Instagram rumors and announcements *may* not be your thing, think about where your clients, or potential clients, are getting confused.

Maybe there’s a part of the booking process they always get stumped at, or maybe the same questions always come up about how you work with clients. 

You can write blog posts and create content around these questions so that you’re educating people on the process before they even go to book with you. 

By handling these objections in your content, you’re not only educating your clients, but it’s a nice little soft sell as well!

Meaning your content puts MORE money in your pocket. 💰

Which I don’t know about you, but I am ALLLL about! 🙌🏼

2. Poll Your Audience 

The second strategy is a little bit more active. 

Rather than simply digging through comments and DMs for questions, I want you to go ahead and ASK your audience what they’re struggling with. 

Now, before you go ahead and pop up that little question box sticker on your stories asking “What do you need help with?” - PAUSE. ✋

This is too broad. You need to guide your audience and give them more direction.

An awesome way to do this is through their polls feature. When people have options to choose from, they’re far more likely to give their input.

So using myself as an example, as a social media content strategist, I know that a LOT of my audience is struggling with Reels.

I could throw up a poll on my story asking them to vote on what they need help with when it comes to Reels SPECIFICALLY. I could give them options like “I’m struggling with coming up with ideas for Reels” and “I’m struggling with EXECUTING my Reels”. 

By giving them options, it’s more likely they’ll vote, PLUS it allows me to tune in to what they’re struggling with in particular. 

Then, once they’ve already engaged with your content, they’ve started thinking about Reels and what they need help with. Posting the question box sticker at the end of your story after your polls will yield much better results, because you’ve already got the wheels in their mind churning.

This is one of my fail-proof strategies for generating endless content ideas that my audience goes wild for! 

3. Use Search Engines

And last but not least is to leverage the power of search engines. 

You can dive into YouTube, Pinterest, Google, Google Trends, and even Answer The Public (although TBH that one can be a bit hit or miss).

If you’ve completely tapped out the resources mentioned above, you can head to these search engines to see what questions people are asking about your industry.

One caveat here is that these topics are often very broad. 

Say I wanted to create content around social media content strategy. 

The topic suggestions I may get from search engines may be things like “how do I create a social media content strategy?”. 

It won’t give you that granular content you’re looking for, so you’ll have to dive even deeper to see what people are really asking and what their actual problems are. But it’s a GREAT tool to get you brainstorming!

Another pro is that even if it’s not a topic your current audience is struggling with, you may attract a new audience by creating this searchable content.

Perhaps your audience on Instagram isn’t having this specific problem, so you instead write an SEO-optimized blog and post your content on Pinterest. By including these ‘broader’ keywords/topics, you might bring a whole new set of new leads into your business through this discoverable content.

You’ll be able to fill in your content gaps with some of that more high-level, overarching content rather than the more granular stuff that your audience might need help with.

A Powerful Content Resource

These are just a few of the strategies that I use when I’m feeling particularly uninspired with my content! 

But luckily, I don’t have those days often. 

Thanks to my content batching system, I’ve developed a strategy where I can easily come up with 25-30 content ideas in just one sitting. 

Not only that but EXECUTING those content ideas is super simple, too! 🙌

Want to learn my content batching system to save you massive amounts of time and energy? 

Download my FREE Content Batching Guide Here

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