If content creation is challenging for you, you have a few different choices. You can turn to one of the many articles we’ve written with content creation ideas for your social media. You can succumb to writer’s block, stare at your screen blankly, and hope that an idea fairy sprinkles some content creation dust on your keyboard.
Or you can step away from the keyboard, pull out your white board and brainstorm some ideas on your own.
It’s not as daunting as it may sound. With our brainstorming tricks below, you’ll be back typing at your keyboard in no time.
Look at the Big Picture
Some of your best content creation will come from examining your existing content. From there, you can identify any gaps in your current content collection.
Take an inventory of your product and service offerings, along with the content you have to support these lines of business. You might discover you heavily cover one area and lack content in other areas.
At the same time, identify the problem that each of your products or services solves. From these problems, content creation becomes easier. You can come up with ideas that address solutions to the problems.
Keep all this information organized in one place — say, an Excel spreadsheet. So, to put it simply, your sheet might include:
- Product or service name
- Existing content related to these lines of business
- Problems that are solved by these products or services
- Content ideas addressing pain points
As you go through this process, you might find opportunities to identify additional pain points addressed by your products or services. These pain points can fuel your content creation efforts through blog posts, social media content, email campaigns and more.
For example, let’s say you provide mobile tire changes. Your service solves the problem of getting new tires without having to leave home or wait at the auto shop for your car to be done. You could create a series of social media posts with pictures of happy customers at home, with your mobile service truck parked out front.
Identify Content Creation Themes
There are many different ways to tie together your content ideas into one central theme. Start by scrolling through your feed to see what’s trending. You can also search for keywords related to your product or service.
Here are few examples of theme-related content creation ideas:
- Employee spotlights
- Scheduled Instagram takeovers
- Branded hashtags
- National days and holidays
- Days of the week with hashtags (#thirstythursday, #teammembertuesday, etc.)
The more frequently you use social media yourself, the easier it is to come up with these theme-related ideas. Your content will also become more relevant to your user base because they’ll already be familiar with the types of themes you’re using.
Create an Editorial Calendar
Once you have themes selected, you can start plugging in your ideas to an editorial calendar. There are many different content calendar tools available, from a simple Gmail calendar to more elaborate software apps.
For example, Rallio has built-in calendar and scheduling capabilities. You can easily store all your content you’ve created, upload images and videos, schedule out content for different days and times, and keep track of everything in one place.
The benefit of having your ideas in a calendar is that you can refer back to it for repeat content ideas. You can use the same “employee spotlight” theme often, highlighting different employees, for instance. As long as the actual content varies, with different images and videos, you can continue repeating your themes throughout the year.
Learn more: Your Guide to 2021 Marketing Based on Current Consumer Trends
Look at What Your Competitors Are Doing
Another way to spur content creation is by looking at the types of content your competitors are posting. Which types of content tend to get good engagement — likes, shares, comments? Which types don’t?
By looking at their content and asking yourself these questions, you can identify ways to do whatever they’re doing, but better.
In some cases, you’ll also learn what to avoid. Their content might be boring, overly promotional or irrelevant. With some types of content you see posted, you can basically do the opposite of what they did. You can be the remedy for any poorly crafted content you see from your competitors.
- The remedy for boring content that makes you want to keep scrolling? A silly video of you and your employees taking a spontaneous dance break on your retail sales floor.
- The remedy for an overly promotional post? An authentic photo of you, the entrepreneur, sharing the story of why you do what you do.
- The remedy for irrelevant content that doesn’t resonate with your local target audience? Hyper-local photos and videos that showcase your business and identify you as part of your local community.
Just Get Snapping
One surefire to spur your content creation is simply by picking up your phone and filming what you see. Did you just finish putting up a holiday display? Take a photo and let your followers know what’s in it. Did you bring your dog to work? Snap some photos and tell us more about him.
This uncomplicated approach to content creation is the simplest place to start when you’re new to posting on social media. Just upload your best images, write up a quick caption, post it and be done with it.
If even this step sounds like too much work, recruit your employees to do some of the snapping for you. Even if you’re not social-media-savvy, you can count on at least one or two people on your team being a regular social media user.
To go even a step further than employee activation, you can brainstorm content creation ideas together. Carve out 10 to 20 minutes in your next team meeting to think of different ideas. Break out that white board, buy a box of donuts (or your vice of choice), and make brainstorming a regular part of your routine.
Take Your Content Creation a Step Further
There is, of course, a lot more you can do with content creation from a strategic perspective. As you get into a rhythm with posting content, you can start looking at your platform analytics to see how your content is performing.
Make whatever tweaks are needed to ensure your content is working hard for you. And be sure to boost your content to broaden its reach to new audiences.
In time, your content will start to tell a story about who you are as a brand. With regular posting and a commitment to keeping your page fresh, your social media pages can become a source of new leads, customers and loyal fans.
