10 Ways Break-Through Mental Barriers & Come Up With New Content Ideas

7 Simple Ways To Break Through Mental Barriers & Come Up With New Content Ideas

Out of ideas for content?

Join the club.

Coming up with new content ideas is a challenge. It’s especially hard to do it regularly for multiple platforms.

But that’s our job as content marketers. If we don’t produce fresh, compelling content, traffic will slow, conversion rates will drop, and sales will suffer.

So what do you do?

You can break through the mental barrier you’re facing with some simple content-generation strategies. The kind of strategies that’ll blow a hole in that idea dam and get your creative juices flowing.

So get ready.

Here are 7 simple ways to come up with new content ideas:

  • Repurpose Old Content
  • Tap Into Trends
  • Subscribe To Newsletters
  • Join Marketing Groups
  • Explore Your Competitors
  • Know Your Audience
  • Brainstorm In Batches

1. Repurpose Old Content

If you’re truly having a complete mental block, this is your go-to move. There are three straightforward ways to turn your old content into fresh pieces.

In order of difficulty, they are as follows:

  • Break up a listicle into a series of individual posts
  • Refresh and republish old posts
  • Create an infographic based on an old post

Breaking Up Listicles

A listicle (list + article) is a blog post in list format (like this article).

A phenomenal way to develop new content ideas is to take one of your existing listicles and convert it into a  series of individual pieces of content.

For example, you could write a whole blog post on repurposing old content, going into much greater detail than we are in this post.

Breaking up listicles is also great for SEO because it uses the pillar and cluster content marketing strategy that Google loves to index.

Refreshing & Republishing Old Posts

This gives you another boost to SEO. Here’s how to do it:

Find one of your older articles and edit it to ensure there’s no outdated information (especially stats and anything with a date).

Then, add about 20-25% more info. For example, if it is a listicle with originally 8 tips, you add at least two more.

Make sure you change the date of the post and reshare it across all of your social media channels.

Create An Infographic From An Old Post

This tactic takes a bit more effort, but it pays off. Here’s what you do:

Find an existing article (it doesn’t have to be your own) that presents interesting statics.

Take those stats and turn that info into an infographic post, ensuring your new infographic article has at least a 500-word intro and a 300-word conclusion.

Don’t have an in-house graphic designer to make the infographic?

No worries.

You can use one of these DIY infographic-building tools or use Fiverr to hire a cheap designer.

And just like that, you have some fresh, engaging content.

But aren’t infographic’s dead? Maybe, so here’s what you do. You can turn that infographic into a video and post it on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube shorts. Here’s a free no-code tool that can help.

2. Tap Into Trends

See what’s trending on X or search for popular hashtags on LinkedIn.

Explore Quora to find the burning questions your target audience has on their minds.

Or, if you want to know what customers are talking about in a given niche, use BuzzSumo. It shows you what content receives the most attention online.

If you want to know the hot topics are, BuzzSumo has you covered.

And, of course, there’s Google.

You can start typing a topic into Google and see the search bar finish your phrase with search suggestions. Those suggestions represent popular search variations of the topic.

Finally, for a treasure trove of ideas, you can dive into Google Trends to see what topics are popular across the web.

3. Subscribe To Blogs

One of the best ways to develop new ideas is to see what other great sites are writing about. The easiest way to do that is to subscribe to newsletters and blogs.

So go nuts.

Subscribe to every quality (and relevant) blog you come across. Do this, and great content will find you.

Here are some great blogs to start with.

Worried about flooding your inbox?

Create a special Gmail just for subscribing to blogs and newsletters. Or use a tool like Unroll.Me to instantly see a list of all your subscription emails and easily unsubscribe from whatever you don’t want.

4. Join Marketing Groups

Online groups can be your secret content marketing weapon. They’re a place to connect with like-minded people, build valuable professional relationships, and chat with industry experts and influencers.

And, of course, groups are another great place to stay on top of industry trends and breaking news.

If you’re looking for new content ideas – join an online community in your field.

Where do you start?

Here are the 25 best content marketing groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, and Reddit.

5. Explore Your Competitors

Don’t ever plagiarize content. Don’t steal your competition’s content, either. But you can use your competition’s content as inspiration to create something even better.

The first step is to see what content is working for your competitors.

You can use a tool like Moz’s Domain Explorer to identify your competitor’s best-ranking content.

(Source: Moz)

Once you’ve identified your competitor’s best content, it’s time to sky-scrape it. More specifically, use the Skyscraper Technique, a strategy Brian Dean of Backlinko.com developed.

How does The Skyscraper Technique work?

First, you find your competitors’ best content, which we’ve just done.

Then, you take the topics you see performing well on your competitor’s site and make an even better version.

Your new-and-improved post should be longer, more thorough, more up-to-date, and better designed.

By creating a longer, more in-depth blog post, your article will naturally become the most helpful resource on the web. And that almost guarantees that your post will outperform your competitor’s original content on the same topic.

6. Know Your Audience

One of the best ways to develop new content is to identify who your readers are and what problems they want to solve.

To accomplish this, you have two tools at your disposal:

  • The Buyer (Reader) Persona
  • The Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework

Buyer personas, or in this case, ‘reader personas,’ are essential to your content marketing efforts because they define who your target audience is. They allow you to tailor your topics and tone of voice to what you know will resonate with your readers.

Using the Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework is usually done when selling a product. It entails understanding the “job” for which customers “hire” your product or service to do.

Understanding what jobs need to be done allows companies to develop and market products more accurately, tailored to what customers are already trying to do.

In the context of content marketing, people hire information as well. It’s why we read blogs, buy books, and watch how-to videos. It’s your job to figure out what your readers are struggling with and write content that provides a solution.

7. Brainstorm In Batches

Creativity comes in spurts of inspiration. It’s just how our brains work.

Therefore, if you’re going into brainstorming mode, you should develop content ideas in batches. That way, you can reference a huge list of topics later when facing that mental barrier.

How do you go into brainstorming mode?

If you plan to brainstorm by yourself, create an environment where you can stay focused and free from distractions.

Turn off your phone, close your email, stay off Facebook, and start writing.

The hardest part is to start.

You’ll be amazed at how writing anything sparks new and better ideas.

Another approach is to brainstorm with your team.

Hold a meeting where you throw around ideas, go over your readers’ personas and jobs to be done, review trends, and talk about what your competition is doing.

Your colleagues are filled with new perspectives you can tap into and use to break through that creative wall.

Still stuck?

Get inspiration from one of these AI content generators.

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Editor’s Note: The article is part of the blog series Grow Your Business brought to you by the marketing team at Unitel, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.