5 Ways to NEVER Run Out of Content Ideas

If you want to get discovered online and bring leads over to your business, you have to create content. Think blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Content marketing is proven to deliver a higher return on investment than other forms of marketing, and you get better quality leads from creating consistent quality content over a long period of time. It could be years and it will be years because content is the work that never stops, but because it's something you have to be constantly doing week after week, maybe multiple times a week, creating blogs, YouTube videos, podcast episodes. Naturally, you're going to run into writer's block. You're going to think, what the heck am I going to talk about today or this week? And with really big brands, they run into this. So they start to find other people, other creators to start writing posts for them so that they don't have to keep coming up with new ideas. But it's probably the biggest question in terms of this stuff that I get is how do we keep coming up with fresh ideas week after week for our blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos for years and years to come? This is the stuff that fuels the fire. You can build the systems, passive income systems, have like online courses or, you know, coaching programs or whatever it is that you have on the back end. You're— but you have to be feeding the fire with leads. And the way we do that is by creating content. And really, the way that we never run out of content ideas is by understanding your target audience. When you understand your audience and your niche in general, finding content ideas is really not that difficult. Okay? And today I'm going to walk you through 5 different tips that I use in my own business week after week so that creating content ideas is no problem. This is probably the easiest day of my entire week is to create content. Okay? So without further ado, Let's dive in to 5 tips so that you never run out of content ideas. Welcome to episode number 18 of the Profit Your Knowledge podcast. I'm your host, James Allen, here to help you turn your knowledge, passions, and skills into an online business so that you can be your own boss. Do work that you love in this world and create a life of freedom. One of the best ways that you can actually create a life of freedom, really give yourself that time, is by one, creating your own business and starting your own business around your passions, because it's easy to do that nowadays and it doesn't need to cost a lot of money. But also it's by creating passive income. Now, if you want a full 5-step guide on how to turn the things that you're passionate about into a passive income style business, or maybe you're already coaching online or teaching things online, or maybe just a brick and mortar and you want to build another stream of income that is passive, that's working for you 24/7, day in and day out without you having to be working or having some huge team, then I highly recommend you check out my 5-step action guide. Again, that's going to walk you through step 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 as concise as possible, what you need to do first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. Even if you have no idea what you want to build your business around, this guide is still going to be super valuable for you. So I recommend you pick it up if you're interested in building your business around passive income so that you can work less hours, still make money, and really just enjoy your life because there's more to life than just doing work all the time. And a business should be designed to really serve us so that we can live our lives and do the things that we want, not the other way around. So if you're interested in that, sounds good to you, then do go over to profityourknowledge.com/guide. It's free. There's a link in the description as well. It's my gift to you because I wish more people could do this and that they had more clarity around how to create passive income doing the things that they really love online. My gift to you again, profityourknowledge.com/guide. So let's talk about content marketing really quick before we get into the 5 tips. The purpose of content marketing is simply just about consistently showing up like your favorite TV show. If you think, like Game of Thrones. I've been watching Game of Thrones lately on season 5. I'm blasting through this, um, literally like 2, 3 episodes per night, just plowing through this whole thing. I'm like, holy crap, I'm already on episode 5. But anyway, that show, when it first came out— now it's streaming— it came out the same time every single day, just like any other show that you can think of, like a late night show or whatever. Comes out the same day, same time. It's consistent. And what we're doing with content marketing is showing up consistently like your favorite TV show, and we're solving problems and answering your target audience's questions. That's literally all it is. So for example, let's say that you taught tennis, how to improve your tennis game, maybe compete in playing tennis. A common question that could come up is how do I actually grip my tennis racket on a serve? Or how do I just grip the tennis racket? That's something that an aspiring tennis player would want to learn on how to do so they can improve their game. And an answer or piece of content that you could create for that question would be how the best tennis pros grip their rackets. If an aspiring tennis player that wants to learn how to improve their game typed in like, how do I grip my tennis racket? And they saw a blog post or a YouTube video that said how the best tennis pros grip their rackets, you'd be like, I want to click on that. Like you would need to click on it because you want to play like the best. You want to learn from the best. So that would be a content idea. And that's really all content marketing is, is just finding people's problems and their questions that they have, answering them, and making it fun in the process for yourself and for your audience. So when you start creating content, every time, whether it's once a week or a couple times a week or anytime, just get into the problem-solving state of mind. That's my biggest tip. Okay. Uh, that's the tip before the 5 tips. Now let's get into the 5 tips. Number 1. Is to create and to cycle through content buckets. Okay? Now, content buckets, literally, I just want you to think about your main idea that you have for your business or what you're teaching around. Let's say that it's, um, like for me, for example, it's starting an online business and growing your online business. So I'll talk about a couple different content buckets in terms of starting and growing an online business. This is the same thing if you're teaching dating, how to play tennis, golfing, um, how to get in better shape, anything. You're just teaching things online. So you want to break up your big topic like starting a business into small subtopics. Now I'd say to really focus on like 3 to 6 different topics, okay, somewhere around there. But I'd say, I say 3 is like a really solid amount. You can do more than that as well. And my content buckets are things like working less. So anything related to productivity in general, uh, also starting a business. People actually want to know like, what are the things to actually do to start my business? I also have growing your audience. Uh, this is just the marketing. So like content marketing, that's what this bucket falls under, uh, email marketing, all that kind of stuff. And then there's building new products, uh, selling your products, and then best business tools. 'Cause a big question I get is like, what are the best tools that you use to run your online business or that I can use to run my own business? And then what we're going to do here is we need to fill up these different content buckets, if you will. So you'll have your buckets that you lay out, basically just the subtopics that relate to your big topic. For me, it'll be starting a business is one of my buckets. So what you do is you can go over to google.com and just type in starting a business. When you click on starting a business, you're going to see that there are this— there's a little section inside of Google that says People Also Ask. Now when you click on the three little dots here, you can, you can actually see that these are questions that people are actually looking for inside of Google. Okay, so what are the 4 best basics or the— what are the 4 basics to start up? Oh, what are the 4 basics to a startup business? That's one question. But yeah, if you just type in whatever your topic is and then look at the people also ask, the 3 dots there say these are questions that people are commonly searching on Google. So this is stuff that people are literally typing into Google consistently on a regular basis. And their questions, which is what we're looking for. So what's cool about this too is that when you type that in, you can click on these different things. Like one says, how can I start my own business with no money? So that's a piece of content that I could personally create. And what's cool is when you click these different people also ask sections, it's going to start auto-populating more and more topics. So what is the best small business to start right now? How can a beginner start a business? What is the cheapest, most profitable business to start? What business can I start with $1,000? And then what I'll do is go to my content buckets and I'll take those different ideas and put them down. Okay, what business can I start with $10? Or what's the cheapest, most profitable business to start? And then I'll just add that over to my content buckets. And then basically what you're going to do is just find those ideas and put them into your content buckets. Now, when you're creating content buckets, what's valuable is to think about like working less could be one of my content buckets. So what I'll do is I'll make one piece of content with this, like how do you work less? How can I work less and live more? These are all questions that people have and I can create content around that. And then the next week I would say how to start an online business so I can create a piece of content around that. And then how do I get emails from my email list? Growing your audience, that would be my next content bucket. And you just cycle through these. Week after week. Okay. So that's the first really, uh, I guess the biggest stepping stone that I would say first and foremost, create your content buckets because every other thing I'm about to share with you, the other 4 tips, we're going to find different topic ideas and you'll just throw them into your content buckets. But that's the real strategy that I use. And if I'm ever like, what am I going to talk about this week? Sometimes I have inspiration, different ideas of what I'm going to talk about. Something just feels right. So I'm going to create content around that. But I always just look at my content buckets and I'm just like, I'm going to do something around this, you know, and I just cycle through the different pieces. Also, when you cycle through the different subtopics or your buckets, it's going to give your content a nice different, like, balanced feel, I would say. So sometimes I talk about the productivity or more the mindset stuff that's like the working less component. Sometimes I'll start, I'll talk about the content marketing or marketing your business or building a new product or selling products, selling things online. All right. So create and cycle through those content buckets and use Google search and just the people are also asking or people who ask section, and you're going to come up with a ton of different ideas just from doing that. So that's number 1. Number 2 is to remix content. There's a great book that I highly recommend every single creative person reads. I think everybody should just read this book at least once. It's called Steal Like an Artist from, from Austin Kleon is his name. Great audiobook. Highly recommend. I listened to it on Audible and I love it, but I just started re-listening to it too. But this is so good because there's a quote that he says from a French writer named André Gide. And André Agide said, everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, everything must be said again. Now what we can get from this is that people are creating content all the time. There's so much content being put out in the world nowadays, and some of it is totally crushing it. Some of it is not getting any views at all. And what's, what's really cool is that you can actually find the topics that are doing really well and then take those ideas and even like the style of the thumbnail and the title and then create your own content hijacking that style basically. Now pause with me. You might be thinking, well, James, that's like pure theft, but the book is called Steal Like an Artist, but it's about doing it in an ethical way. You're taking the things that are already working and you're remixing it. I have taken many courses before I ever knew about Steal Like an Artist, and they would literally teach the same thing. I follow, I work with different like YouTube creators and content creators as well. And they all say this in one way or another. I'm going to call it remixing though. So a great example is if you think about like the big creators in your space and it doesn't even need to be related to your core topic actually, which is pretty cool. But like an example for me is that this, this isn't even something in my space, but I'll go over to Athlean-X and he's like a fitness coach online. I'll go to his YouTube channel and he has like I don't know how many, 13 million subscribers. This dude's just crushing it. Really good content. I don't know if you like ATHLEAN-X or not. That's up to you. But the bottom line is that you cannot deny that this guy has amazing thumbnails and titles. So what's cool is you can actually look at these big creators and I mean, you could probably think of some of the big creators in your space that you can look at or just creators that you like to watch their content. Like this guy, he's a fitness coach, but I'm teaching online business, but I can still look at his style of titles and thumbnails and then repurpose them and recreate them in my own way and use it basically as inspiration because there's things working that this guy is doing, and that's the reason that his channel is growing. So for example, if you look at his channel Athlean-X on YouTube, you can see like his thumbnails are super simple. They have like 2 to 4 words typically. Where it says like, fix this or this is the worst. And he's in like one of them right here, 7.9 million views from one year ago and he's still getting 245 views per hour. I use vidIQ as a tool to see that. But this one workout or this one video says chest exercises ranked best to worst in all caps. And the thumbnail is him doing a common chest exercise, which is an incline dumbbell press. And he says worst with an arrow pointing to it. And you're like, what? That's the worst one? That's something common that I would do. So it makes you want to click on it so you can learn more about what he's talking about. Okay. But that's just one example of me looking at someone who has a big channel, even if it's not related to my niche and looking at the style and the way that they're approaching their, their titles and their content ideas. But you can also do this with different content ideas in general. Okay, if you think like, if you find a creator that has like all these different ideas that could be or could not be related to your niche and you're seeing the different ideas that are working and some are working better than others, you could just tell by the amount of views they're getting and the time that they're getting those views. So for example, if someone has like 250,000 views in the first month or 2 months compared to their other videos that are only getting like a couple thousand views in the first 2 months, you would be like, okay, that's a big hitter topic. Maybe it's the title and the thumbnail. It also depends on watch time. Okay, there's things to consider. But basically what we're doing is you're finding topics and ideas from other people that are working and you're giving your own opinion or voice to these different topics because nobody has your voice. It's important to pay attention to. Nobody can, can talk like you and your voice is going to cut through the noise for certain people. My voice cuts through the noise. From other people teaching the same topics that I teach online as well. I'm not the only guy who teaches this, okay? I'm just one guy who has my own experiences, my own opinions about things, and I'm sharing that with you right now. So do the same for you, for your audience and your niche. But basically, how can you take the ideas that are working for other people, tweak them, and then make them your own and make it your own? Just add your personality. By you doing that, it's going to be original. Okay. Because again, nobody has your voice. So that's number 2. Number 3 is to pull ideas from customer research. One of the best ways to do customer research online is to look at online forums. So things like Reddit or Quora are 2 of the biggest online forums, and there is a lot of BS on these. But bottom line is that you cannot deny that people are sharing personal information and asking personal questions on these forums because they're popular forums, Reddit and Quora. So easy to get stuck in an internet rabbit hole on this. But basically what we would do is you would just type in something like your keyword and then forum or your keyword and then Reddit. Okay, so you could say starting a business forum and you're going to get different options or different articles on maybe like top entrepreneurship forums that you can look at and you can click on that and then go on to those forums and dig through. You could say starting a business on Reddit. And when you click on that, the first thing that comes up in just the titles alone for starting a business Reddit, it says, how can I start a business when I'm not sure what I want to do? What is that? It's a piece of content right there. It's a question that somebody has, and I guarantee that they're not the only person who has that question. I know for a fact that they are not because I was there at one point myself and everybody is there when they're like, I don't know what to build my business around. So what am I going to do? All right. So literally any topic you can type in the keyword and then Reddit or Quora following it. That's literally it. And then dig through these different articles and you're going to find people asking questions. Another great way to do customer research online to find the questions that people have is blog and YouTube comments. The thing about like forums online and blog posts and YouTube comments is that this is a place where people can share their ideas and share their, their pains and frustrations online or their hopes, dreams and desires or the things that are frustrating for them, their frustrations, because they can share them anonymously. It's not like you're in a room full of people that they know and they're all standing out or one person standing up and sharing like really personal stuff. Like it's difficult for people, but online they can type in whatever they want. Because it's something personal. Like nobody knows that I'm doing this. It's my search results. It's my search engine. Okay. But using things like search bars, looking at forums online, digging through blog and YouTube comments, people are asking these questions. Okay. It's just a matter of us finding those questions and then creating attractive titles around that. Okay. To answer those questions. But yeah, YouTube comments are amazing. A lot of YouTube comments, when you dig through different videos, you want to look that there are actually quite a few comments going on inside of it, but you want to find more discussions. That's really the idea here. So some big videos are going to have great discussions. Some smaller videos with like 20 comments are going to have even better discussions. It's going to take digging. Okay, this stuff doesn't just happen, but you want to find the real frustration that people have, the questions they're asking, and questions get left unanswered all the time in YouTube and blog comments. Sometimes a creator can't always get to them, which is where you come in and create new content around those. If one person is asking a question, chances are many people are asking that same exact question as well. So create content for your target market, and that's you understanding them. The other thing that you can do is to pull ideas from customer research. Literally have conversations with people, do customer research with your target audience, have conversations, whether it's Going to a live event is a great option of people who paid to attend an event where they talk about the same things, like a content marketing institute. If they had an event, I could go there and that would be a perfect place for me to sit down with people and get to know them because they're interested in starting their business or creating content online, which is a topic that I will talk about. Okay, but basically what you want to know is like, where's this person at? Where do they want to be? And what's getting in the way of them getting there? Those are the big 3 areas or buckets that you want to find answers for and just ask people that until you get to like, what's really bothering this person? What are the— what's the real excuse that they keep coming up with that is preventing them from getting the thing that they want? And what is it that they really want? This is how we understand our customers. It's just a matter of doing this over and over and over again. And this is the work, just like creating content that never ends. And what's really important is to put anything interesting onto a Google Doc. But when you do this, when you're pulling up like literally what people are struggling with, what they want to achieve, what's getting in the way, now you can create not just better content idea topics, but the content itself is going to be better because you know the BS that people keep telling themselves that's getting in the way. Okay, another great idea is to go onto YouTube, or you can do this on Google as well, And when you just type into the search function, you can find content ideas. And this is also great. Remember, we're putting these content ideas into our content buckets, that one worksheet where you have like your 3 to 5 different areas or buckets, sub-buckets, if you will, subtopics. But go onto YouTube, go to the search bar and you can type in like, uh, lose weight. And if you type in lose weight, Google and YouTube, because Google owns YouTube. They're both the biggest search engines in the world and people are constantly throwing ideas and asking questions to these every single day, pouring their heart and soul out into this. So you can use that to find different content ideas. If you go onto YouTube and type in lose weight, it's going to auto-populate other ideas of questions and things that other people, the majority of people are typing into the search bars as well. So there's like lose weight in 2 weeks, lose weight, without exercise, lose weight fast, lose weight workout, lose weight fast exercise at home, lose weight while sleeping. These are all content ideas that you can create. And you can literally just turn that into a piece of content. And just this alone, I have what, like over 10 different content ideas right there, 15, just from typing in lose weight into the search bar. Literally, that's it. Create content around that because people are interested in losing weight. If that's what you help people do, they're going to, they're going to be interested in all those different topics as well. You could say like how to get a six pack and then right there, how to get a six pack in 5 minutes, how to get a six pack in one week, how to get a six pack fast in 5 minutes at home. So people want to get a six pack fast. That's the bottom line. All right. So these are all ideas you can create content around. The, the, uh, what number we want? 4. Tip number 4 is to revisit old content with a fresh perspective. You are constantly growing, and I mean, you should be in your business and as an individual, and you're constantly growing and improving. So share the new stuff that you learn, even if it's a topic you've already touched on in the past. Okay. I have changed the way that I time block. I used to teach productivity in particular, and my channel started growing when I taught about time blocking because that's what people were interested in, like their Google Calendar, all that kind of stuff. And I actually look back at one of my old videos because I've changed the way that I time block things and it was so busy and I didn't like it. For me now, I'd be like, no, I don't— I would not teach that anymore. But the piece of content is up and it still brings leads to my business and people say that they like it. So now that I've grown, I've matured in the sense of time time blocking and being more productive with my time, I can create a new piece of content around that. And I probably will about the way that I time block now and just how it's simplified. And because it's simplified, it actually makes more sense and it helps me be even more productive and make my life easier, which is what productivity is all about. Okay, so find your most popular content that is working. If you've been creating content already, this doesn't really apply if you haven't been creating content. But if you have been creating content, look at that most popular content that's pulling in the most views and engagement and comments and all that, and recreate that idea or that topic in a new way with a fresh perspective. Maybe you'll realize, shoot, I talked about that 6 months to a year ago and things have changed. The game has changed. I've learned so much more related to that, or I could just teach it in a better way. Create content around that because you already know that it's working. Okay, so it's totally okay to revisit old content and reteach it with a fresh perspective. Also, I mean, if you're promoting content to, to like your email list and you're growing your email list, doing the things that I teach where you're offering your lead magnet, your content and everything, then you're going to be getting new people on your email list and you're going to be getting new subscribers if you're posting YouTube content as well or creating new blog. Like there's always new people discovering you and coming through. So if you posted something from a year ago or 6 months ago and you haven't talked about it again, you could do another version of it and just teach it to the new people that are following you, whether it's new email subscribers or just podcasts or blog or YouTube subscribers as well. Okay, it's totally okay to do that. Number 5, the 5th tip that I have for you is to keep a notepad for inspired ideas that come through. This can be digital or physical, it depends. The most important thing is that this is easily accessible. How many times have you been hanging out and maybe you fell asleep and you woke up in the middle of the night and an amazing idea struck you and you're like, holy crap, that would be awesome, but you didn't write it down. Then you woke up later, you fell back asleep or whatever, and you're like, I'm going to write it down, but you totally forgot what it was. Happens all the time. When you have a digital or physical notepad that is easily accessible, you can write down those ideas. I recommend doing it digital because I feel you can organize it better and it's just more convenient. That's my personal opinion. Some people like to do the pen to paper. You can just get like these tiny little notepads, super simple, and its one purpose is to jot down inspired ideas. That's it. But keep it on you. That's the most important thing. And just always have it on you. With a digital notepad, I have like my phone. I could just pull it out. The two tools that I use are Google Docs, the app and I have my Google Drive on my phone as well, or I use Apple Notes. With Apple Notes, I can say, "Hey Siri," and then she'll create a new note for me and I don't even have to write it down. So if I'm driving and it comes up, I can say, "Hey Siri, create a note," and then boom, and I'll organize it later. Google Docs, I'll actually, if I have a content idea, I will pull up my content buckets, the little piece of paper that I have or the document that I told you about. And, um, I'll just add to it whatever the section is. If it's like, ooh, that'd be a cool idea for starting a business, then I would add that to my content buckets, little worksheet or little document that I have. Okay. But that's so important is just to have this some way to capture these ideas fast. And that's easy for you and that makes sense for you. And it's always on you. It's always easily accessible. So those are my biggest tips. Okay. I'm going to recap. Again, the purpose of content marketing is to just get in a problem-solving state of mind, to find the problems that, and the questions that your target audience has, provide them with answers and solutions in a fun and engaging way. That's literally all content marketing is. And now just do it for 10 years plus. Okay. But the 5 tips that I shared with you are first to create and cycle through those content buckets, come up with 3 to 6 subtopics. On your big topic that you teach and just cycle through those week after week. The other idea is to remix content, find the content that's really working, whether it's in your space or not, to find different ideas and think about how can I apply this to my core topic of whatever it is that I teach. Look at their titles, look at their thumbnails, the length of their content as well, and pay attention to what's working and think about the thinking behind the style that they have. Okay? Just remember that you're teaching in your own voice because nobody has your voice. Even if you're talking about the same thing, the way that you teach, the way that you speak is going to resonate with different people. Number 3, pull ideas from your customer research. Research forums, blog, and YouTube comments. Have conversations with people. Put anything interesting into a Google document. Remember that you're finding where, where people are stuck, where they at right now, where do they want to be, and what's getting in the way. Of them bridging that gap and getting there. Okay. And then you can also revisit old content with a fresh perspective. And then lastly, keep a notepad for inspired ideas. If and when you do these 5 things, you will never run out of content ideas. I can assure you that because when you realize this and just kind of cycle through this, maybe you focus on one of these right now, one of these tips, uh, but you come back to this, this piece of content, you're going to realize like, wow, there's, there's endless ideas. There's endless things to talk about because there's more and more people showing up on the internet asking questions, and now you know how to find those questions and create content around that. So again, if you're interested in starting your online business and you want to create passive income in your life around the things that you love to teach and you love teaching things, you like coaching people and things and, um, different topics, whatever it is, or maybe you don't even know what your idea would be yet, then do check out my 5-step action plan because again, it's going to walk you through step number 1, by the way, is how to find that idea and that target audience. And then we're going to go over how to get discovered online, bring people over to your website to discover your business, and then what kind of products and services you can sell to them and how much to sell them for. I'll walk you through all that. But the biggest piece is that we're going to make it automated. Okay. And if you follow the 5 steps, you will start building an automated business. It's short, it's actionable, it's free, and it's in the description. Or you can go to profityourknowledge.com/guide. My gift to you. All right, if you got value from today's episode, please like this video or this podcast episode in some way, share it. That's really my biggest thing is if, if you got value from this, you think this would be helpful for somebody else, please just share it with them. That would mean the world to me. That's all I have. The biggest thing is just start creating content, be consistent with it, and start getting discovered online and bringing people over to your website. This video or this lesson, this episode coupled with The 5-step action plan is going to set you up for success. And that's really what I care about more than anything. So that's all I got for you today. I hope you have an amazing day. Happy Halloween, by the way, at the time that I'm recording this. Um, but yeah, take what you learned here, get out there and start creating content. I will see you in the next one. Brrr!