As Justin Welsh said, “LinkedIn is 90% lurkers, 9% consumers, and 1% creators. Publish daily and join the 1%. Network changer. Income changer. Life changer.”
Content ideation is the process of coming up with new content ideas.
It can be a challenge to come up with fresh ideas that are relevant to your audience and will resonate with them. But with a little planning and brainstorming, you and your team of creatives can come up with a list of content ideas that are sure to be hits.
In this blog:
Here are 4 actionable steps that'll get your creative juices flowing!
1. Research Call 🔬
The purpose of having a research call for your brand exploration is for your creative team to understand how you and your customers perceive your brand, your aim, goal, direction, values, and how it can be utilised to generate relevant content for your audience.
This is quite simply a casual call, it may be one of your first interactions with the whole creative team, but it’s always planned to be casual and stress-free.
We just need to learn more about who you are, what you do, and what you care about.
This type of research can help you make decisions about your marketing campaigns, content direction, content tone, preferences, and direction.
Questions you can expect to be asked in a Research Call:
Who are you?
What are your core values?
What is your passion?
How do people describe you?
How do you describe yourself?
Who is the smallest possible niche audience you can target with your personal brand?
What are your biggest achievements professionally?
What do you love about your career?
What do you think could be better in your industry?
2. Content Pillars ⚒️
Once extensive research has been done by the creative team into who you are as a personality, it's time to start thinking about your content pillars.
This is where you’d all identify 3 to 5 main themes or topics your brand will consistently discuss. These are the topics that you’d want to focus on in your content creation and marketing journey.
These content pillars are derived from answering key questions about your brand. It should provide something to the concerns or interests of your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona.
Your team of experts will ensure that these pillars are aligned with your business goals and future direction.
For example, if you want to increase brand awareness, your content would focus on being educational and informative.
These are some content pillars that might apply to you:
If your niche were Fitness, then your content pillars could be nutrition, pre and post-workout meals, and the purpose of different types of exercises.
If your niche were real estate, your content pillars could be homeownership, rental, and investment homes, connecting people to homes, and spreading knowledge about the market.
3. Content Call 💻
The first step in the actual content creation process where you’d conduct a content call with your creative team.
This is simply a meeting where you and your team of experts have a chat about your potential content pillars, your target audience or ideal customers, your tone of voice, and brainstorm content ideas for the future.
It’s a great way to generate a lot of ideas in a short amount of time, and it also helps to get you and the team on the same page about what kinds of content would be most valuable to your audience.
Here’s what you can expect from a content call:
Answering new, fresh, and interesting questions.
Telling personal stories that meant something to you.
Sharing work stories, learnings, interactions, and memorable moments.
Sharing pictures, memories, and videos of things that matter to you.
Opinions on industry-relevant news, updates, or insights.
4. Content Format ℹ
Now that we know what you want to write about, it's time to decide on a content format.
Will we write you a blog post? Create a video? Put together an infographic?
There are a number of different content formats to choose from. We’d rely on the extensive research we’ve done in the past 2 years to suggest content formats that best suit your topic and audience.
Let’s look at a few different content formats and the purpose they serve:
LinkedIn Text Posts:
Create meaningful content to add value to potential leads.
Showcase your knowledge, expertise, and product/service.
Boost credibility and reputation.
LinkedIn Image Posts:
Images add a personal touch, especially when there’s a face to look at.
Visual content is more attractive and easier to understand.
A higher likelihood to have readers click on your image posts.
LinkedIn Video Posts:
People know who you are & would trust you.
Videos don’t have as many impressions as images and text posts.
LinkedIn pushes it to warmer audiences.
They help communicate ideas with your audience and pack more value.
Once you've decided on the format, your content can start being churned out!
Content ideation is a critical part of the content generation and marketing process.
As the foundation of everything content marketing brings, having a strong content ideation framework is crucial for your digital marketing efforts.
We hope this post has given you some helpful tips and tricks for ideating content for your own brand.
If you have any questions or suggestions, leave a comment below 😊
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