Simple Ways to Come Up With Content Ideas Your Audience Will Love

Anyone with any experience in marketing knows that coming up with engaging content ideas isn’t easy. The fact of the matter is: you can’t force creativity. Not only this, but your content needs to be good. The content a company or brand puts out should always seek to build upon a brands reputation. This means that whatever content is put out there needs to not only be engaging and appeal to the target audience, but it also needs to accurately represent the company or brand posting it. If your content doesn’t follow your company’s ethos or scope, it’s unlikely to do your company much good in posting it. But how do you come up with content ideas that your audience will love? We’ve compiled a simple list of ways in which to do this, using some of the tools already at your disposal!

Make the most of social media

This may seem obvious, but there are a lot of ways you can use social media to create interesting content and increase engagement with your audience then you may think. Studies have shown that the use of polls, competitions and interactive content increases engagement on social media platforms tenfold. Use social media to ask your brand followers what they’d like to see you put out, create interactive video content like 360-degree videos or personality tests that encourage the idea of sharing and commenting on the content. Competitions are a great way to increase engagement whilst encouraging brand loyalty and keeping consumers interested in what you have to post. As long as what you post is in line with your brand image, use all of your social media platforms to full effect. Sport Social conducted a study which found that consumers appreciate a brand that is helpful, friendly and humorous. Social media is the most direct and effective way of reaching your followers and demonstrating this type of personality within your brand. Brand personality is invaluable, the more unique the better.

Analytics

So, you’re using your brands social medias frequently but coming to a standstill on what to actually post? This is where your analytics come in handy! Each social media platform has an analytics section that you can use to see which posts have generated the most engagement and reach, showing you directly what works and what doesn’t. Maybe a video you posted a few weeks ago reached 160k people and racked up an impressive 9k in engagement? Recreate that! What do you think made that video in particular reach so many people? Was it informative, educational, humorous, relatable, honest, helpful? Dissect the comments, figure out what about it was so great and struck such a cord with your followers and note that down for future content creation.

Observation

Observe other industry leaders. See what they’re doing and what’s working for them and put your own spin on it. Look at what successful companies like MailChimp or Uber are doing. Check out their social medias and investigate what kind of content they’re posting and how their followers are reacting to that type of content. It’s great to take a look at your competition too, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all! We’re not saying to copy them directly, just see what seems to be working so well. Take the concept and infuse your own brands unique personality into it. Facebook has a handy little feature called Pages to Watch which allows you to directly compare the performance of your page with other similar pages. It also lists the other pages top posts, which allows for easy comparison to see how their content is faring in comparison to yours.

Seasonality

Make the most of the time of year, and we don’t mean Christmas, Easter or Summer. It’s great to make the most of everyone’s good cheer during Christmas or to plug how hot it is in the summer, but it’s becoming increasingly popular to celebrate smaller, lesser known holidays too. National Sibling Day, Pancake Day, and even May the Fourth, capitalise on the time of year by tailoring your content and products to fit in with these holidays. Some great examples of companies doing this include Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte marketing success and the sheer amount of alcohol that is sold on St. Patrick’s Day! Find lesser known key dates in the calendar year that fit with your brand image and start planning on how to market your business during these key dates.

Key Research

One of the best ways to come up with content ideas is to let your target market do it for you! Use keywords to your benefit by finding out what people are searching for, what questions do they have in relation to your business or brand or chosen area? Once you know what people are typically searching for, you can create the content that will provide these answers for them so that in the future they are not only directed to your brand when searching these terms, but you’re creating new content to put out that people actually want and are searching for.

Infographics

Infographics have become increasingly popular and used in marketing tactics. The use of easy to read and understand images that contain educational or helpful information not only increases the chances your brand followers will pay attention to the content, but also the chances of them sharing the content. Long paragraphs and blocks of text aren’t necessarily what the modern-day consumer has time for anymore, nor does it capture their eye when they’re scrolling through social media or browsing a website. Infographics capture the eye, get the point across quickly and in an easily understood way with the use of images and large fonts, which is why they’re so popular and found to be one of the most shared types of content on social media. Infographics are especially useful for simplifying complex concepts and can also be used to create video infographics to add extra variation to your content.So there you have it, using a combination of all the above suggestions, you should have plenty of new content ideas that your audience will love. Remember to remain true to your brand personality and remain helpful, friendly and humorous, which is what all brand followers want in a brand! Inspire brand loyalty by continuing to post unique social media content and investing time in understanding what it is your audience wants to see from you. At Don’t Panic, we don’t just talk the talk – we’re busy walking the walk too. To see our work, click here, or if you’re after an attention-grabbing campaign of your own, click here.