Companies hire me to help them create content that is different and stands out from the crowd. Most realise creating one piece of great content is achievable, as you are tapping a lifetime of experience and ideas. But once that creative reservoir is drained, you realise it’s quite hard to crank out kick ass content day after day.
Which brings me to sex and almonds. hardly ever do I read blogs about Tinder during my daily surf of the web (although I mostly read industry websites), this may be because the English are too embarrassed about it, the Americans are too puritanical about it, whilst the French are too busy having sex to write a blog post about it.
And yet it’s probably the one of the single biggest drivers of web traffic, so whilst we wait for Rand Fishkin to write a blog called, “How getting jiggy with it gets you web traffic”, let’s consider two articles I came across this week.
First adjust your frame of mind.
When we are looking for content ideas, we are looking to create them rather than consume them.
This is an important point as you need to be a dealer, not an addict.
If you are the person in your organisation responsible for cranking out content, you need to be in a frame of mind which is constantly looking for ideas. Coming across a well written article should trigger at least twenty solid content ideas. This frame of mind of being the dealer is something worth adopting if your desire is to maximise the creative process.
As someone who has always written, my mind is constantly in search mode for new content ideas from the media I consume. And so when I read the Vanity Fair article of the month about dating apps and the effect they are having on users moist brains, it triggered a huge amount of ideas and not just for the dating niche. Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”
I encourage you to read the Vanity Fair article to see if you come up with a bagful of content ideas, if you do not and your job is to come up with content ideas, ping me and let me help you.
You don’t even need to try hard to come up with ideas for so called “hard to blog niches”.
I came up with a bunch of ideas for the insurance niche:
- How a Tinder user can insure themselves against a bad date.
- Can a bar owner insure themselves against a lawsuit from Tinder users who hook up with the wrong person in their bar
- 10 ways to insure your Smartphone whilst on a Tinder date
- Quick and easy ways to find out if the guy you met 30 mins ago is an axe murderer.
Etc.
Once you get in the right frame of mind ideas will flow, albeit as long as you are consuming excellent content.
Almond content
You may have noticed that almonds have become the fashion food of the month, although as far as I understand the science almonds have a proven health benefit.
As someone who intends to eat healthy (most of us intend to eat healthy, creating a large hungry crowd, ahem, for such information) I am always on the look out for a way to hack my diet (to “hack” is of course the buzzword of the year, probably a few months left before it’s considered old and knackered) as are large numbers of other web users. And so this article about almonds not only caught my eye, it drew me in and allowed itself to be consumed. Read it here, What America’s nutty demand for almonds is doing to California.
The article takes a counterintuitive stance regarding the almond craze, which can be very powerful, as our brains naturally look for danger after learning good news.
Thus an “Almonds are bad” story will get more attention after a reader has read an “Almonds are hood” story. You may think, “no duh”, as the reader may be in a frame of mind to learn more. But, that’s the point, as a content creator you find out where the interests and needs of the mob are and then provide the content which satisfies their lust.
Which is why I always tell people to be a dealer and not an addict. You’re aim is not to promote your own thoughts and opinions but to provide the content which will allow the reader to get their fix.
So if everyone is talking, tweeting and thinking about almonds you need to be creating content which fulfils that need. You don’t have to write specifically about almonds, but you need to be able to tap the hunger of the brain that is currently starving for more data about almonds.
For example, this article has almonds in the title, I did this for the specific reason that some people may be attracted to blog posts that touch on the subject, sex of course needs no explanation for why it is used, although I hope it needs no explanation. These keywords also trigger curiosity and whenever “sex” is mentioned the primal brain gets pinged.
Your content does not need to be about the thing that attracts, although it does need to be contextual else people feel cheated. As this blog is about how to create great context, the idea that it produces an article about how to use the subject of almonds is within context and I doubt that people came expecting information that cleansed their arteries.
I hope this article has shown you that you never need to be stuck for content ideas, you simply need to find out what people want, give it a twist and creates something that atracts and engages.
If you require help with your content strategy or help with coming up with content ideas, I have created a number of ways I can help you:
Creative Content Boost for Digital Agencies
Content Marketing Training
Content Marketing Consulting for Digital Agencies