Plan 365 days of content in 5 hours!

Words By Tara Wagner

How to Find 100s of Content Ideas for Your Small Business

A sign sitting on a desk saying turn ideas into reality

Tired of writerโ€™s block, staring at a blank screen, and scrambling to figure out which content ideas to focus on in your content marketing strategy?

There are 8 secrets I use to gather ideas, some of them on autopilot, that I wanna share with you so that you’re never stuck staring at a blank screen again trying to figure out what to write or what to record.

In this video, I wanna share how I come up with content ideas, literally hundreds of content ideas. I am so deep in content ideas right now I will probably never run out.

Watch this video to never run out of content ideas again or scroll down if you prefer to read.

How to Find 100s of CONTENT IDEAS for Your Small Business

How to find 100’s of content ideas

I’m going to show you the 8 things I do to find content ideas. These things are why I am hundreds deep in content ideas right now. I don’t think I will ever catch up.ย 

So whether it is blogs, social media, YouTube content, podcast content, let’s talk about how to never run out of content ideas again.

In the video I’m going to go over the 8 secrets including:

Click below to read through the transcript or use to follow along with the video.

Welcome back boss. In this video, I wanna share how I come up with content ideas, literally hundreds of content ideas. I am so deep in content ideas right now I will probably never run out.ย 

There are eight secrets I use to gather ideas, some of them on autopilot, that I wanna share with you so that you’re never stuck staring at a blank screen again trying to figure out what to write or what to record.ย 

So whether it is blogs, social media, YouTube content, podcast content, let’s talk about how to never run out of content ideas again.

I’m Tara Wagner, Breakthrough coach and lifelong entrepreneur. I help other entrepreneurs use a holistic approach to business so they can create profits they can depend on without burning themselves out. If that sounds like your jam, be sure to check out my free training on how you can do the same.ย 

Now I’m gonna go into all eight of these little secrets, but the first three are the most important ones because they are the ones that are not gonna come from your brain, they’re gonna come from the brain of the people that you are showing up to serve in your business.ย 

Secret #1 – Ask Via Email Automations

Secret number one is to ask via email automations. This is setting up an automation that will constantly ask people what they need or want from you. This gets ideas on autopilot, because you’re gonna have replies to this all the time.ย 

Now I’m gonna show you in a screen share of how I set this up. I set it up to be a response, something that they’ll actually reply to. And this is because I wanna reply to them. I wanna actually have a dialogue and connect with people and really show up to serve them in that way. But you can set this up to also be a form instead that they’re gonna fill out. I do find that you might get less answers to that depending on your audience. Some people will get less answers if it requires somebody to hit reply. So just know for yourself or maybe test out and see which one works better for you.

Let me show you how this is set up inside of Active Campaign. I have this set up in an automation. And when you click into this automation, what it will show you is that anytime they submit a form, a couple things are gonna happen. The first condition it’s gonna take us through is if they submitted it through this particular form, they are going to end this automation. If they have already gotten this thread, they’ll get a tag for that that will say the social invite was sent that tag, if they already have it, it will end this automation. So they won’t go through this automation multiple times. If they have another tag, which is our private customers tag, that will end this automation as well, because they don’t need to get these questions. Then they get this tag. So if all of these were no, that means this is the first time they’ve gone through it. They’ll get this tag. It’ll wait 20 minutes. It’s gonna send an email, introducing myself, telling a little bit about me, things like that, that they should know. And then based on some of the forms that they sent, if they have a tag for our essential oils, they’re gonna get a different question that’s gonna ask them. Um, basically what their biggest question is around emotional aromatherapy. And if they got any of our other opt-ins, it’s gonna wait a couple hours and it’s gonna send them an email saying, what’s the number one question or frustration that you have in your business right now. And I’ll open this up so you can see the copy. Um, Hey, first name. I forgot to ask you this in my last email, but I have a quick question for you. What’s the number one thing burning you out in your business right now? So this has been really effective to get people to reply back, to be able to build those relationships, but also get those content ideas.

Secret #2 – Ask Via Facebook Group Questions

Secret number two is to ask via your Facebook group questions. When you’re setting up your Facebook group, you get three questions that you can ask people, make sure one of those questions, ask them what they’re looking for, what their biggest frustrations are, what their biggest questions are. If they could ask you anything, what would it be? This allows you to start gathering ideas, to start seeing trends, to start seeing popular topics in what people are telling you. Again, this is another one that can be set up on autopilot. Just make sure as those questions come in, that you’re actually putting them in your content spreadsheet planner.ย 

And if you haven’t seen that video, make sure you check it out right here. It’s gonna show you how to map out all of these content ideas.ย 

Secret #3 – Ask Via Social Media Posts

Number three is to straight up ask your audience via a social media post. This could be a quick graphic and a quick post that just says, Hey, I’m planning out content. What are some topics that you would love for me to tackle? What do you wanna know? If you could ask me anything, what would it be? What’s your biggest question or frustration or headache around this particular topic? This is gonna get the ball rolling. Get people asking you questions and get tons of content ideas. This isn’t necessarily automated, but it is a great way to start your list.ย 

Secret #4 – Use Answerthepublic.com

Number four is to use a little website called answerthepublic.com. With this website, you can literally fill in any topic and it’s gonna give you questions that people are Googling about that topic, the number of ideas that you can come up with, especially cornerstone ideas, content that you wanna create, that you wanna have, that you might point back to again and again, or that’s gonna be really great for search engine. That’s what you’re gonna find from this. There is a paid and a free version, and you are limited on the free version to how many searches you get. So just be very mindful about how you want to use it and make sure you take screenshots or copy things down so that you have those lists for later as well.ย 

Secret #5 – Use Keywords Everywhere

Number five, use a plugin called Keywords Everywhere. This is not a free plugin, but it is definitely worth the cost. What this allows you to do is type in any keyword into Google, or just about any other search engine but Google is the best in this case, because what it will do is pull up the search volume for that keyword, but also give you a whole list of other keywords that you might consider. This is a great way to come up with content ideas. A lot of times you’ll be thinking about one idea, you’ll type it in, and you’ll realize that a lot of people have a question, a very particular question about that content idea, a very particular question about some topic that you didn’t think of, that you could create an entire spinoff video on. So this is a great way to add to your list of content ideas. It doesn’t take very much time. You can spend a couple minutes going through your main topics and collect a bunch of ideas this way.ย 

Secret #6 – Search Quora or Reddit

Number six is to search either Quora or Reddit. This is where you’re going to type into Google Reddit and a question or a topic. This is gonna come back with a lot of different topics that people are talking about and asking about, which cannot only give you great content ideas, but also help you to make sure those content ideas are well rounded; that you’re covering all the things that somebody might want to know about that topic just by hearing what other people are asking, or maybe even looking at some of the answers. Some of those answers might be really great and it’s like, oh, Hey, I gotta make sure I remember to include that. Or some of those answers might be crap and you might be like, you know what? I need to make a topic about the fact that this is actually bad advice. So again, it’s just another great way to get lots of content ideas by scoping out to see what’s already being asked, what’s out there, what are people already looking for?ย 

The more you can focus on content that people are already searching for, whether it’s got good search volume, whether there’s a lot of topics around it online, this shows you that people actually want the content you’re gonna create. There’s nothing worse than creating a ton of content that gets no traction, no views, no likes, no engagement whatsoever because people don’t actually need it. You might know they need it, but they don’t think they need it. And so the content just doesn’t go anywhere. You wanna make sure that at least a good majority of your content is content that people know they need and is answering questions or solving problems for them so that you can make sure that content will gain some traction.ย 

Secret #7 – Keep a Running List Nearby

Number seven, keep a running list nearby, keep something in your phone where you can quickly easily drop ideas as they come to you. Because what’s gonna happen is when you turn your brain onto this idea of creating a list all the time, having this running list in the background, you’re gonna start noticing content ideas where you didn’t before you’ll be watching a movie and it’ll say something or reference something about what you do and the type of content that you would create. And it would give you an idea for something else that you might wanna write down and create around.ย 

I’ve done this with newsletters. I like to tell a lot of stories in my newsletters. So if I’m watching TV, if I’m out with friends, if I’m doing something and there’s some little analogy or something interesting that happens, I’ll go and write that down quickly so that when I’m sitting down to write content, I can go through that and pull those stories out, to relate it to whatever topic it is or thing that I’m trying to teach.ย 

You can definitely use the content spreadsheet for this as well. But I do find that sometimes you need something a little bit more accessible than a spreadsheet, even from your phone. So make sure that you’re using what’s gonna work for you.ย 

And I actually have a list here of different places that I’ve pulled ideas from. Just to give you an idea of where to start paying attention. So this could be from conversations you’re having top questions from clients or customers, Facebook threads, movies, TV, testimonials, success stories, before and afters, promotions, tips. Anything that you see that can give you an idea or that can create more content for you or that you can use as content itself, specifically in terms of things like before and afters, testimonials, success stories, you wanna make sure that you have one place where you’re writing those down so that it’s all in one place when you’re sitting down to create.ย 

This is where I get to do a quick plug for our awesome sponsor, ClickUp. ClickUp is the perfect place to capture your content ideas. You can either do this in a task that you can access from the app or keep trayed for easy access on the web or embed it in a content spreadsheet. So you keep it all in one place without even switching tabs. You can also organize the tasks around each piece of content with templates to save you time and mental bandwidth. Just a few more reasons why ClickUp is the best project management tool for small business.

Secret #8 – Snoop on Your Competition

And then number eight, you get to snoop on your competition. I actually will tell people don’t pay attention to too much of what your competition is doing. Specifically, because it can really deter you. It can take you off track from what you need to be doing because their business is different than your business, right? Even if you’re really similar. However, if you’re running out of ideas or you need to find some really good ideas, specifically ideas that might gain a lot of traction in an algorithm, this is a great way to do it. Now this is done primarily on YouTube, but you don’t have to be making YouTube content to make this work. It does help because obviously YouTube content is gonna gain more traction on YouTube than it might on something like a podcast, but it’ll at least give you some ideas of where you might wanna start.

So the way that you do this is actually to go to your competition on YouTube, whoever that might be, go to their top videos and look to see which videos have the most views, specifically views that are far above their subscribers. So if they have 10,000 subscribers, but a hundred thousand views, that might be a good topic for you to tackle.ย 

I would tell you to snoop around on 10, 15, maybe even more channels, just to write down ideas of what that content is about. Now, I’m not telling you to copy your competition or to create the same exact content that they’re creating. What I actually want you to do is try to one-up them, watch through their video, take notes on what they covered, what they didn’t cover, what did they cover, but not very well and you could explain it better, what are some of the comments in the comment section that need to be included in the video?ย 

What I want you to do is take the concept, but then make that concept better and also make it your own, make it match your branding, make it match your style, make it match your ideal client and what they want to know. This is just looking for content ideas, but then making them even better so that you can gain even more traction than hopefully that person did in the algorithm.ย 

Doing these eight things is why I am hundreds deep in content ideas right now. And I don’t think I will ever catch up, which is a good thing, but maybe also sometimes a bad thing. If you let yourself get overwhelmed, which is why you need the content spreadsheet to keep it all organized and help you map it all out a year at a time in less than a day. If you haven’t seen that video, make sure that you watch it for sure. It’s a good one.ย 

ย 

What if content marketing actually felt easy?

Content marketing can be great for business….and it can be a beast. Learn how to streamline and organize the entire messy process with “A Year In a Day”, the content map and toolbox to help you map out 365 days of content in 5 hours or less. You’ll also learn how to:

  • Create content that attracts yourย DREAM audience (while repelling the โ€œnightmaresโ€!)
  • Organize it all with my spreadsheets, templates, and SOPs, so the chaos no longer overwhelms or distracts you
  • Come up with 100s of ideas on autopilot, without burning a single brain cell of your own

Click here to learn more how to save yourself time and energy with A Year In A Day.

WHAT ABOUT YOU, BOSS?

Did this give you any fresh content ideas? Which secrets are you going to utilize?

Leave me a comment below.

xoTara

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About the author

Picture of Tara Wagner
Tara Wagner
Iโ€™m Tara Wagner, creator of the Breakthrough Bossยฎ. I help small biz owners overcome burnout and create part-time schedules with full-time profits. Not with some new marketing strategy, but with a holistic approach to how you operate. Click here to learn more.
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