Oh, you have probably heard this one before: writing good content is the key in today’s search marketing.
Yet, there is a problem with that – coming up with ideas what to write about.
It’s tough.
Face it, it is one thing to churn out blog posts, one after the other. But making them relevant and engaging for the target audience is something completely different.
Sure, you can apply certain business research methods to generate ideas but sometimes your client just doesn’t have any of such research available. And, perhaps you don’t feel confident enough to conduct such research yourself. Moreover, you might simply not have the time and your client might be expecting that first bit of content to get published straight away.
Yet, one often overlooked thing is that your client can be a real pool of content ideas. All you need to know is where to look for them.
7 Ways to Get Content Ideas from the Client
Sales People
Your clients sales people are probably the best source of content ideas you can get. From their sales pitches, which would include every information their customers need in order to decide on a purchase to the ideal customer profile and more, they have all the info you need.
Specifically, ask them for such information as:
- customer profile – who you will be writing for
- customer pain points – what problems does the client solution solves
- how your client solves them
- some specifics about product usage
Based on those you can quickly come up with a lot of useful “how to” type posts covering everything their target audience wants to know more about.
Most Common Customer Inquiries
Sales people, as well as the customer service team can reveal the most common questions and problems prospects and existing customers inquire about. These can be a good inspiration for anything from how to posts, video overviews up to full blown, inbound marketing campaigns.
Most Unique Customer Inquiries
Don’t stop there though. Find out what are the most uncommon, original customer inquiries your client receives about their product or a service. Since these might be quite individual queries, your clients competitor might not even be aware of such content ideas.
Even those such topics might have a low search volume, content covering them might still bring a number of highly qualified traffic to the site as there is a chance for a very low competition in SERPs.
Social Mentions
Quite often what other people say online about your client or their product or service can provide you with great content ideas. From product usage ideas to problems it had solved, the possibilities for content are endless.
Product or Service Reviews
A product review, regardless of whether it’s good or bad, can give you great ideas for content. In fact, rewriting Amazon reviews is one of the ways many content marketers use to generate copy for their websites.
But rewriting reviews is one thing, paying attention to what reviewers say about the product, how they use it and what their opinions about it are can offer an unlimited pool of content ideas.
Testimonials
Generating content from testimonials works in a very similar way to doing so from reviews, however, with one, small difference. Testimonials are usually more personal and reveal more about the user as well. They relate to one persons experience not only with a product but with a brand also, and offer a good insight into your target audience.
With testimonials you can find out what type of language your audience uses and thus expects from you. You can also discover who actual people using the product are and you can use them to build marketing personas to target with your content.
Support Calls
Lastly, the support calls your client receives can provide a plethora or content ideas. Why? Because they can reveal the very problems customers face when using a product.
Naturally, you will not be able to tap in to those calls to analyze them but even a quick chat or a questionnaire sent to the customer service team can reveal everything you need to know in that regard.
Conclusion
Creating content on behalf of someone is not easy, fact. Similarly, creating content for a number of clients can pose quite a lot of problems, from content ideas to style. Yet, what many content marketers often forget is that their clients can be a real pool of ideas for both. All you need to know is where to look for that information.
