Blogging

Ideation: Your First Step Toward Successful Small Business Content

“Where do you get your ideas?” It’s a question that every famous writer has been asked hundreds of times in their career. Some of them have a stock answer; others make it up on the fly.

Regardless of the reply, one fact remains: Every good book begins with a great idea.

You’re probably not a prolific writer. But content ideation is just as important for your small business as it is for Stephen King’s next bestseller. If you’re stuck for topics, try one of these idea-generating tricks!

Do Your (Keyword) Research

Keyword suggestion tools, such as Ubersuggest, can quickly help you turn a group of words into a topic. Just enter a keyword and get a list of all the search phrases associated with it!

Pretend you’re a wedding cake designer. By typing “wedding cake” into Ubersuggest’s search box, you’ll get 359 keyword suggestions. Some are unhelpful — “wedding cakes Brisbane” probably won’t do you much good if you live in California — but others, such as “wedding cake prices, “wedding cake with flowers” or “wedding cake gone wrong” can spark an idea for a blog post.

Browse the Forums

Do you follow industry-specific forums? You should! These can be a goldmine for ideation. What are people talking about? What questions are they asking? What frustrations do they have? Any of these user-generated posts can spur great content for your website, blog or social media pages.

Q&A sites, like Quora and Yahoo Answers, also can get your blogging brain cells working. Just enter a keyword, industry or phrase, and you’ll have hundreds of topics to crawl through.

Ask the Audience

If you’re looking for topics that will resonate with your current audience, why not ask them what they want to see? A simple social media post — “What would you like to read about in the coming months?” — should give you plenty of ideas.

And hey — social is a great engagement tool, too!

Put Yourself in Your Customers’ Shoes

Still wearing your wedding cake decorating hat? Good. Now take it off and pretend you’re on the other side of the counter. What questions would you have for yourself? What information would you need to decide to become your own customer?

Whatever it is, write about it!

If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time, it can sometimes seem like you’ve explored every topic related to your small business. But when you use a variety of methods to find your ideas, you will always have something to talk about!

Need some more ideation strategies? Let us know how we can help! Whether you need a marketing spark or the whole shebang, Mischa Communications is on your side.