Ok. The pressure is on. That blog is due in 4 hours. The marketing manager has been on your case to create fresh, unique, new and vibrant content EVERY SINGLE DAY. You’re done. You’ve had it. You can’t get one word out, let alone an idea for a whole, entire blog post. What to do, what to do…. You scour the net looking for inspiration. TheOnion.com isn’t doing it today. HuffPo isn’t ringing your bell. Yahoo is still trying to get you to read the latest celebrity gossip and buy a house and get a new credit card and give you the badminton scores from the big match last night in Sri-Lanka. You’ve got no where to turn! The PRESSURE! You bury your head in your hands. You take a walk around the office. You stroll to the water cooler to listen in on some gossip about Mike and his pet chinchilla. Your boss is going to be pissed. What do you do?
Relax. There’s Hope.
As content marketers, we are always scrambling to find ideas, heck, this morning I was scrambling to find ideas to create this blog post. Some days we have em’, some days we don’t. But the fact of the matter is this: in order to thrive, grow and bring awareness to our brands, we must create amazing content. Where do you turn then when the well has run dry? You turn to your clients. That’s right. The ones who pay the bills. The ones who comment on your Facebook posts, the ones who leave product reviews about your brilliant new products, the ones who write in asking for help with attaching the doohickey to the gazinta. The content you need is right at the tip of your keyboard and mouse.
3 Places To Find Inspiration For Content.
1.) Your E-Commerce Store.
If you run an e-commerce store, there are more than likely product reviews. Product reviews are gold. They show the true colors of your product, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Turn to your product reviews to create rich content about how you are improving the products or possible applications that your clients find that you never thought of. Create a blog series about the many faces of people who use your product and what it’s done for them. Create an infographic about the 4 most useful applications for your product based on the store feedback.
2.) Your Help / Support Desk.
Behind every annoyed help desk is a wealth of consumer driven, rich content. It may not all be cherries, unicorns and cupcakes in terms of sentiment, but there is also content gold lurking amongst those customer service inquiries. Maybe your customer found a way to accidentally destroy your bullet proof product product by accidentally dropping it into a streaming flow of hot, liquid magma. Or maybe Sally got so frustrated trying to assemble the mail order Flux Capacitor that she is torqued and demands a full refund NOW. Perhaps Bob had a wonderful experience with your product and just simply wanted to give you ideas on how to make the product more Cat / Feline friendly. Again kids, pure content marketing GOLD. Create a series of blog or visual / graphic content to show the many adventures of your product, or how NOT to use your product. You’ll entertain and at the same time, educate your audience. Meow.
3.) Social Media Land.
Dear sweet baby Jesus. If there was ever a place to find content inspiration, it’s within an active Facebook news feed or your latest Periscope feed. Your fans / friends / enemies / cousin’s room-mates are talking. They’re talking a lot. They’re sharing stuff about your product. They’re complaining. They’re rejoicing. They’re sharing more cat pics MEOW than you would ever care to see. They are creating. They are creating what they want to see. You can take a hint, right? Create what they want to see more of. Maybe it’s cats. Maybe it’s chinchillas. Maybe it’s how-to manuals, maybe it’s hot, liquid magma and how it affects your product.
STOP. Hammer Time.
Breaking It Down.
The point is this, my friends. Listen and learn. Listen to your audience, listen to your customers. Sift through the gold, and sift through the crap. You’ll find content that your audience actually wants to read because it’s about their favorite person in the world: THEM. Content should always speak to the hungry ones, the ones who are craving your leadership, the ones who are wanting to come closer to your brand.
Go In Peace.
Stop banging your head and start digging deep into the cat box MEOW to find some true content inspiration. Your audience will thank you, your customers will be educated, your boss will chill the hell out and Bob’s chinchilla will smile once again.
Thanks for reading and sharing.
@TomJelneck
