{"id":63158,"date":"2017-02-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rockcontent.com\/blog\/how-to-ideate-new-content\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T23:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T02:04:08","slug":"how-to-ideate-new-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pingback.com\/en\/resources\/how-to-ideate-new-content\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Ideate New Content When You Feel Like You\u2019ve Exhausted All Topics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes the hardest part of a content marketer&#8217;s job is coming up with new and fresh content ideas. It can feel like you&#8217;ve written all there is to write about a given topic or industry. When you&#8217;ve fallen into that dark place, try these four creativity kick-starters.<\/p>\n<h3>1. Monkey See, Monkey Do\u2026 But Better<\/h3>\n<p>All content marketers and creators have a handful of brands or publications that they aspire to be on par with \u2013 in terms of content quality, authority, design, experimentation with formats, etc. Competitors are often the cause of much content envy. So, if you\u2019re feeling like your creative ability to ideate has been temporarily depleted, why not begin emulating your content creation inspiration?<\/p>\n<p>Check out what the competing\/aspirational content team has created, and identify what\u2019s working for them, and see if there is an opportunity to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Create a fresher, more up-to-date version.<\/strong> For example, your competition published a blog post called \u201cTop 20 Restaurants to Try in Toronto\u201d that ranks well on Google and brings in consistently healthy pageviews \u2013 but it was published back in 2014. If it\u2019s relevant to your target audience, why not write the 2017 version with newer, better restaurants?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Create a longer, more in-depth version.<\/strong> Top 50 Restaurants to Try in Toronto? A piece of content that is more comprehensive and more detailed will likely stand out and win out over the shorter, shallower alternative.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Create a better visual experience.<\/strong> Half of the battle to capturing an audience is by providing them with content that is nice to look at and easy to consume. Create a video or an infographic to do battle with your competitor\u2019s popular blog post, or an interactive map of the 50 best restaurants to try in Toronto.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>2. Go Straight to the Source: Your Customers<\/h3>\n<p>It\u2019s odd but a lot of content marketers have never spoken to a single one of their customers. Considering that a content marketer\u2019s target audience is likely very similar \u2013 if not straight up the same \u2013 as the people already using the product\/service, they should be asking them some questions to trigger ideation.<\/p>\n<p>Find out what they\u2019re talking about, questions they\u2019re asking and what they\u2019re interested in. The easiest, most obvious ways to reach out and ask questions is by sending an email or setting up a quick phone call, but there are other methods too, like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Ask your sales and customer service teams.<\/strong> They interface with customers daily and likely know common questions they have, their pain points, etc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Create a customer community.<\/strong> Some companies have found creative ways to build communities by organizing meet-ups to enable face-to-face interaction and to encourage customer camaraderie. Hootsuite, for example, has regular meetups (Hootups) to bring social media marketers together to provide product feedback, take part in networking and have some fun. Content marketers should be able to leave a meetup like this with at least a few new content ideas.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Take advantage of live chat tools.<\/strong> There are live chat tools that can be integrated with your software or on your website, making it possible to ask customers about the content that they would find most helpful in a quick, efficient way. Catch them when they\u2019ve logged into your software or are looking for something on your website.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>3. Share Real, First-person Experiences<\/h3>\n<p>At its core, good content marketing is great storytelling. Recently, a lot of the content (created by brands) that I\u2019ve seen passed around by peers on social and on Slack have been personal accounts of first-hand experiences \u2013 someone that tried something new at work and failed or someone that tried to create a new habit and succeeded, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, though, convincing people to share their stories can feel like herding cats. Not everyone is eager to bare their soul or admit to a spectacular work fail in front of the whole company (or, you know, the internet). It\u2019s worth remembering that small anecdotes can carry just as much punch as a long saga. Even a two-minute summary of how someone dealt with a tough project deadline can be gold\u2014these little glimpses into real struggles and victories seem to stick with readers.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve done this at Rock Content \u2013 when we enlisted our Senior Product Marketing Manager, Geoffrey Gualano, to share <a href=\"https:\/\/pingback.com\/en\/resources\/2016\/10\/17\/the-7-mistakes-to-avoid-when-making-a-product-video-learned-the-hard-way\/\"><strong>what he learned about producing product videos<\/strong><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/pingback.com\/en\/resources\/2016\/10\/18\/what-working-at-an-apple-store-taught-me-about-good-event-marketing\/\"><strong>what he learned about event marketing while working at Apple<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And honestly, getting those voices from outside your bubble does more than just lighten your workload. It turns the content into a patchwork of lived experience that\u2019s harder for your competitors to copy. After all, a well-written overview of industry trends is fine, but it won\u2019t hook anyone quite like someone from your own backend team talking about the weirdest bug they ever fixed\u2014or the time a lunch-and-learn turned into a last-minute hackathon. Those personal touches? Readers can spot them, and they\u2019ll keep coming back for more.<\/p>\n<p>The beauty of making real stories a part of your content strategy is that it doesn\u2019t all have to come from the content team, freeing up time and resources to churn out other content.<\/p>\n<p>Find other people in your company that would be able and willing to share a story that is helpful and relevant to your target audience. You may run into a roadblock when someone from the human resources or development team has a great story but may not be entirely confident in their writing skills. Ensure them that you\u2019ll be there to help the whole way through and that it\u2019s your job to make them look good. Once you have one person on board, it will be easier to get others to start sharing their own stories, too.<\/p>\n<h3>4. Interview Thought Leaders and Influencers within Your Industry<\/h3>\n<p>Most industries have their own versions of rock stars \u2013 the people that have broken new ground, led disruption and influence practitioners.\u00a0When you\u2019re stuck on ideating, why not reach out to one or two and ask if they would grant you and your organization an interview. This has two benefits:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The interview can be posted on your blog (or another form of a content hub) in text or video, providing you with brand new A+ piece of content<\/li>\n<li>Their answers to your questions will likely give you a brand new topic to feature that you\u2019ve never thought of before<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Interviews also harpoon back to the point above about personal, authentic stories \u2013 you can ask about achievements, adversity, etc. to provide your audience with an interesting profile of a person they\u2019re familiar with or can learn from.<\/p>\n<h3>In Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p>When it seems like the well of content ideas has run dry, you can hack inspiration by looking to your competitors, customers, co-workers, and influencers. Sometimes the most obvious content ideas are the ones closest to you\/the ones that go overlooked \u2013 so don&#8217;t despair for long and start using the above ideas to make your editorial calendar look a little less barren.<\/p>\n<p> }}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes the hardest part of a content marketer&#8217;s job is coming up with fresh content ideas when it feels like you&#8217;ve written all there is to write. When you&#8217;ve fallen into that dark place, try these four creativity kick-starters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How To Ideate New Content When You Feel Like You\u2019ve Exhausted All Topics - Pingback<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The hardest part of a content marketer&#039;s job can be ideation. 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