How to Generate Content Ideas from Audience Pain Points

The best source for content ideas is right in front of you. In the last three months, I’ve 9x’d my LinkedIn posting frequency - from once a month, to twice a week. This directly led to closing several deals. 💥 A critical aspect of frequent posting is generating ideas for what to write about. This sometimes feels like the toughest part of writing. Well, good news! Getting your next juicy, timely, educational, non-salesy content idea is as easy as joining your sales or customer success team on their next calls or meetings. Yes, forget about reading “thought leadership” pieces and industry influencer LinkedIn posts to figure out your content strategy. Sure, I follow industry influencers and read many blogs, and you should too. But you should not use them as your primary source of content inspiration, or as your way of figuring out what your audience cares about. Why? Because fluff begets fluff, and exclusively relying on the industry echo chamber will result in fluffy, unoriginal, irrelevant content for your audience. Instead, understand what your audience cares most about by hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth, on calls with them. 🐴 You'll learn about their challenges, goals, recent surprises, upcoming experiments, frequent questions, and new tools they're using. All of these easily translate into rich fodder for your content. As an added bonus, you’ll hear their precise lingo and nomenclature. Nothing indicates a true insider more than using the right jargon. Example from last week: A prospect, pre-PMF enterprise cybersecurity startup, told us on a call about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on paid media campaigns. That inspired two LinkedIn posts - why spending money on paid ads at this stage is a huge waste, and what to do instead (links in comments). The essence of effective marketing lies in producing valuable, informative, educational, non-salesy content that addresses your audience’s concerns and what keeps them awake at night. 🌙 Participating in client and prospect calls is one of the best ways to uncover these insights. #B2BMarketing #ContentMarketing image: The Fluff Factory

Them: "How did you choose these content topics?" Me: "I didn't choose them. The audience told me." Here's the thing, you don't have to spin your head trying to follow industry trends or guess what customers will respond to. They're literally telling you what they want. You just have to listen. First, don't worry about trends. If you're producing content, that stuff lives perpetually online. Trends are... well, they're short lived. Trying to catch them and capitalize on the conversation requires speed, and a lot of promotion to make sure that content gets the notice you hope. If you're just producing the content and hoping it catches on organically, good luck. Instead, keep a social listening document. As you engage online, screenshot or type into your social listening doc all of the questions your audience ask, the conversations they have, the pains they announce... They're literally giving you everything you need to create a content strategy. Once you have this list, you can choose the topics most relevant to your offering and company expertise. Don't just create content about any topics in your industry -- write about things you can really speak on. Things your product or service solves. Things you're the experts on. It sounds super simple, and it really can be THAT simple. You just have to start listening and keeping notes.

I've got a way to generate content topics my ideal clients love - you can apply it to any niche. Here's how it works: First, pick a RESULT your ideal clients want. For example, mine want to get more business from their newsletter. Then, create pieces of content based on each of the following concepts... 1. How they can get that result quickly. Example: "5 ways to get a client from your newsletter this week." 2. Why they're not getting the result they want. Example: "Why your newsletter subscribers aren't buying from you." 3. How to do a thing they need to do before getting the result they want. Example: "How to get more of your ideal clients to subscribe to your newsletter." 4. Tools they can use to get the result they want. Example: "These 3 tools will help you get more sales from your newsletter." 5. An example of how someone else got the result they want. Example: "The clever way an agency landed a million-dollar client from their newsletter." 6. A simple first step they can take. Example: "Just adding this paragraph to your newsletter will get you more business leads from your list." If you create content based on those six prompts for each result your ideal audience wants, you'll see great results. But I know you're an overachiever... So let's take this a step further. 😉 You can zoom in and apply the same prompts for any element of what your ideal audience needs to do in order to accomplish their desired result. For example: Since my audience wants to get more business from their newsletter, they need to get more subscribers for their newsletter in the first place. So I can run the same playbook for that result to come up with these content topics: 1. How to grow your newsletter by 10% this week. 2. Why your newsletter signup page isn't converting. 3. How to figure out where to promote your newsletter. 4. These 3 newsletter tools will help you grow your list for free. 5. How I got 32,000 potential clients to subscribe to my newsletter. 6. Change your email signature to this if you want to grow your newsletter. Simple, right? What RESULT will you create content around? Tell me and I'll suggest a content topic that will work well for you.