Marketing: Strategies for Getting Content Ideas

A few years ago, the phrase “content is king” began trending, as businesses and marketers realized the positive gains that can be had from creating content such as blogs, videos, ebooks and more.

Today, content’s reign as king — in particular blogging — is still going strong, and has proved vital for those that strive to have their pages appear in Google search results.

According to Lindsay Kolowich of HubSpot, “Blogging helps boost SEO quality by positioning your website as a relevant answer to your customers’ questions. Blog posts that specifically use a variety of on-page SEO tactics can give you more opportunities to rank in search engines and get customers to visit your site.”

However, creating content on a consistent basis can be challenging, even for people who write for a living.

With this in mind, here are a few ideas for creating content that might prove useful.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes: Mentally, picture yourself as a member of your gym and walk through their entire experience. What might they struggle with? What might they need solutions for? What are they ensure about? Use this as inspiration for creating content that will provide solutions, educate and empower your members.

Interview your customers: Whenever I’m short on ideas, I turn to you — our readers — for ideas. You can do the same. Ask your members directly: What would you like content written on? What do you need help with? What format do you prefer to consume content — videos, blogs, webinars?

Interview your front-line staff: Your staff are on the front lines, and as a result are extremely plugged into the membership. Turn to them for ideas on content that will resonate with members.

Interview your sales staff: In addition, your sales staff can be great sources for content ideas, because every day they hear from members what they’re struggling with. Don’t let this knowledge go to waste.

Social media: Last but not least, social media can be your best friend when it comes to getting ideas for content. What are your members posting about? What about your staff or other gyms? The inspiration-sources on social media are endless.

One last tip: Once you’ve created a piece of content, don’t just post it once, share it once and then call it a day — especially if it was well received. Nowadays, marketers are taking a “repurpose, reuse and repackage (RRR)” approach that shortens the creative process and breathes new life into great content.

“Time is a precious Internet resource, which is why one huge benefit — maybe the hugest — of repurposing content is the time it can save you in the content creation process,” said Kevan Lee of Buffer.

How exactly can you repurpose content? There are lots of ways actually. Take a blog for example. That blog can be repurposed into:

• Memes/images for social media
• Infographics
• SlideShare presentation

Or what about a member testimonial? In addition to creating inspirational memes for social media from the member’s quotes, consider doing a quick video Q&A or even a podcast. Again, the opportunities are plentiful.

Again, content creation can be hard. But hopefully these strategies will make the process a bit easier, especially if you have a limited staff.

Rachel Zabonick is editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.