Content – Ideas for New Content

In many industries, often there are only so many key elements. What I mean is, there are really only a few aspects to talk about. These days, when all the content marketing people are saying, “Produce more content!” it can leave some a little frustrated. They’ve already talked about the 4 or 5 main topics about their business.

For example, Sam Needs More Content

Sam paints houses for a living. He sees it as a simple process. Before he starts, the house is a certain color. When he’s finished, the house is a different color. Where is he going to get and endless supply of content for his content marketing strategy.

Sam writes a post about the preparation before painting.

In his next post, Sam writes a post about the different qualities of paint.

He’s got another idea, Sam writes a post about the best season to paint.

Sam is starting to struggle a bit, running out of ideas, however he does manage to come up with one more post about drying times and optimum conditions, when to paint and when not to paint.

But now, Sam is out of ideas. He’s already covered the main topics. This is a common challenge for many. So if you’re in this category, I can help you with a good source where everyone can find more content.

Milk Your Current Content

A very good and easy source of where to find new content… is by looking back through your old, or current content. Here are three examples of how you can use the content you’ve already created as a source for new content.

One: Break it Down

This one’s an easy one. Usually every topic will have several subtopics or different aspects that make up that topic. Get specific. Cover each one of those subtopics.

Two: Say It Again

You can continue to write new posts covering the main topic, as well as the subtopics. Just keep coming up with different perspectives or angles on how to approach the subjects.

Repetition is one of the best ways to get someone to learn something. If you keep talking about the same topics and subtopics over and over again; tweaking it a bit each time; you’re going to really get people to understand that you know what you’re talking about. And sometimes you might put something out there and you say it slightly different, and that’s the time when it really resonates with people. Repetition.

Just a word of caution on this one…

It’s okay to repeat the same message, but do make a good effort to mix it up.

Especially, make an effort to make sure the new post, while it covers the same topic, focuses on optimizing for a different Keyword or Keyword Phrase.

Make the new article unique, not just a clone of a previous post. If you just kind of end up re-writing the previous post you might end up competing against yourself on this topic, and could confuse Google a bit. Make sure every post is original and unique.

Three: Mine The Content

Scour the content you’ve created. Go through each post and look for little gems that you could use to make different forms of media.

Maybe you’d find a particular phrase that really gets the point across. That could be great to use in making some info graphics. And make more than just one using that phrase. Find different photos or graphics to use as the background, and you’ll be able to put that message out over and over again, but it will just look a little different each time.

Maybe you’d find material to generate a script for video content, or maybe a podcast topic.

Okay, I’ll Wrap it Up

A common problem is that people are generating content, but they run out of ideas. These three methods can really you get the most out of your content. Isn’t that cool!? You’ve already put the work in. Milk it for all it’s worth.