Content Ideation 101: How to Find Ideas that Bring Traffic and Conversion

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Over 400 terabytes of data flood the Internet daily as of 2024. That’s an ocean of content, and it’s growing by the second. So, how do you ensure your message gets noticed in the waves?

It begins with a great idea that sets your content apart, connects with your audience, sparks their curiosity, speaks to their needs, and compels them to act. 

This will generate traffic, drive conversions, and set your brand apart in the crowded content marketplace.

But, 35% of marketers identify ideation as a critical challenge in creating content. 

In this post, we’ll explore essential techniques to generate content ideas.

How to Find Content Ideas to Drive Traffic and Conversion

It’s time to unlock latent creativity with proven tactics to transform your content ideation process. Let’s explore some effective strategies to fuel your content engine.

Know Your Audience to Tailor Solution-Focused Ideas

Successful content ideation requires a deep understanding of the target audience that uncovers their — 

  • Challenges
  • Information gap
  • Pressing questions

Unlock a wealth of targeted content ideas that resonate, engage, and convert by implementing the following tips:

Use Tools and Techniques

Research by Siege Media found that 71% of marketers use tools for content ideation. 

Explore some of these to identify what content is already performing well with your audience and can be better.

  • Tools like Google Analytics and Search Console help reveal high-performing and engaging topics, formats, and content themes. These platforms track page views, bounce rates, time on the page, and other key content-specific metrics
  • Platform-specific social media analytics tools like Audience Insights (for Facebook), X (Twitter) Analytics, etc., to gain valuable platform-specific data on impressions, reach, and engagement.
  • Social listening tools like Brandwatch, Mention, and BuzzSumo to track conversations around the industry while monitoring sentiment and buzz around your brand.
  • AI-powered persona analysis tools like HubSpot’s Make My Persona, Crystal Knows, etc., help create detailed profiles of your ideal customers by providing insights into your audience’s interests and online behavior.

Leverage Community Engagement

Engage with your readers to understand their preferences and dig deeper into the type of content they’d like to consume.

For this, you can:

  • Run polls on social platforms where the audience votes and shares their opinions via comments.
  • Host Q&A sessions through a live video on Instagram, a Twitter chat, or a forum discussion.
  • Create interactive quizzes or challenges using tools like Kahoot or Poll Everywhere to engage and inquire your audience in a fun way.

Get Customer Feedback

Tap into your existing customer base for feedback through surveys and service calls. Even informal chats (via sales reps) or feedback calls (via customer support) hint about content that can add value based on what answers they seek.

Ideate Content Based on Audience Analysis

Once you have gauged your audience, put this knowledge to execution by taking the following steps:

  • Identify Common Issues

Look for patterns in audience data.
Take cues from — 

  • Challenges they repeatedly mention on social media
  • Recurring customer queries handled by the service team
  • Common misconceptions
  • Any competitor’s content mentioned on social media or their blog to understand content types they appreciate

These are your prime opportunities for content ideation, which requires specific solutions.

  • Ideate Content That Solves One Problem for One Segment

Don’t create content that appeals to everyone. Instead, think through concepts by empathizing with your customers personally. Then, consider which idea would work best for a specific segment of the analyzed audience.

For instance, a fitness company can cater to different audiences and ideate content for separate segments like aspiring athletes, marathoners, and yoga enthusiasts.

  • Prioritize Ideas Offering Actionable Solutions

Great content ideas inspire readers to take action by offering practical tips that solve their problems.

6 Elements of Actionable Content

Source

A part of actionable content marketing strategy is to drive content ideas that address the ‘how’ instead of the ‘what.’ It should persuade readers to implement them immediately.

Spot Industry Trends

Develop ideas that are ahead of the curve by identifying emerging trends. This way, you anticipate ideas that excite your audience, helping you tailor relevant, fresh, and engaging content. 

Such an approach puts you in a position as a thought leader — the one who shapes conversations around industry trends. Blending content recency with quality helps expertise shine through, leading to increased conversions as your audience turns to you for solutions.

Here’s what you can do:

Use Tools

Leverage these content ideation tools to explore trending topics and discussions in your industry.

  • Google Trends To discover rising search terms and popular topics over time. See if any of these correspond to your business, and consider those when brainstorming content ideas.
  • Feedly An RSS aggregator tool that helps you subscribe to different news sources and blogs that keep you updated with the latest developments in your industry.
  • BuzzSumo — To discover highly shared content on specific topics or within your niche to ride the buzz.
  • X (Twitter) Lists and Advanced Search — To create lists of industry influencers using Twitter lists and follow the trend. Also, advanced search can help monitor relevant conversations.
  • Exploding Topics — A paid tool that explores the latest industry topics you can catch before they reach peak popularity.

 

Use Newsjacking to Gain More Reach

Newsjacking is a content idea generation technique capitalizing on breaking news or current events relevant to your industry.

It demands a quick response to the news. Track trending topics in your domain to attract and engage a wider audience.

Here’s how to ideate content through newsjacking:

  • Monitor news outlets and social channels relevant to your niche. Leverage the above-mentioned tools to access breaking news.
  • Identify a unique perspective that relates to your brand or niche.
  • Choose the format best suited to newsjacking content—blog, social media post, video, etc.
  • Act promptly to ideate, create, and publish your content while the news is still fresh.

Brainstorm Ideas before Implementing

Adopt a strategic approach for content ideation through brainstorming tactics. These are aimed at generating ideas to resonate with your audience and driving results.

Consider Key Factors When Brainstorming Content Ideas

Here are quick tips to consider before your next brainstorming session:.

  • Brand Voice and Identity: Keep content ideas in line with your brand’s personality and values. For instance, Adidas shares content, highlighting athletic performance and innovation, while Under Armour emphasizes on their grit and determination. Ensure your brainstormed ideas are consistent to build a strong brand image that fosters loyalty.
  • Content Gap Ideation: Use competitor analysis tools in brainstorming sessions to analyze what content they share and identify possible topics they haven’t addressed. 
    • Diversifying Content Ideas: Don’t limit brainstorming ideas to a single format. Discuss content types like blog posts, videos, infographics, podcasts, etc., to identify the format that’s most engaging for your audience.
  • Past Content and Performance: Use Google Analytics and other SEO tools to analyze your top-performing content. Is there a specific topic they shared most comments on or shared with their social circle? That’s the topic you should experiment with content ideas.

 

Involve Teams for First-Hand Feedback

Don’t brainstorm content ideas in silos. Instead, involve your front-line teams who directly interact with customers. Leverage their knowledge since they know the pulse of your audience, their pain points, and what truly resonates.

  • Marketing Team
    The team can share insights on past content performance, successful campaigns, and trending topics. This helps gauge the potential impact of your ideas and refine them for maximum effectiveness. By default, the content marketing team initiates the content idea brainstorming activity by providing the following inputs.
    • Data Analysis: Uncovering what works (and what doesn’t) through performance analysis of past content ideas and campaigns.
    • Trend Spotting: Identifying emerging trends and consumer behaviors to ensure relevant and engaging content ideas.
    • Messaging Refinement: Ensuring that ideas provide enough room to craft compelling headlines, calls to action, and promotional copy aligning with the brand voice while resonating with your target audience.
  • Sales Team
    The sales team doesn’t just close deals; they are your front-line experts on customer motivations and objections. Tap into their knowledge to understand the buyer’s persona for tailoring content ideas that address their specific needs and concerns at each stage of the buying journey.

    Here’s how you can gain insights from sales teams for readers at the different stages of the buying funnel:
  • Awareness Stage: Identify the initial pain points that drive prospects to your brand. Understand the problems they are trying to solve and analyze questions they ask to shape content ideas that attract and spark their interest.
  • Consideration Stage: Leverage the sales team’s insights into common objections and concerns that prospects raise during the evaluation process. Address these head-ons in your content ideas to build trust and move prospects closer to a decision.
  • Decision Stage: Discover the final hurdles your prospects face before purchasing. Accordingly, brainstorm content ideas to tackle these last-minute doubts that nudgeß potential customers towards choosing your solution.
  • Customer Support Team
    Customer support teams listen to and address your customers’ questions, concerns, and frustrations. Involve them in the content ideation process to access the direct voice of your customers. This helps in ideating content that not only addresses existing customer concerns but also attracts and converts new leads.

    Here’s how they can contribute:
    • Providing the Support Data: Review customer support tickets, chat logs, and survey responses to identify recurring themes and questions.
    • Offering Successful Solutions and Workarounds: Brainstorm with the support team about how they address customer issues, the advice they provide, and the workarounds they facilitate.
    • Digging in the Trending Topics and Questions: Leverage the input of support teams to identify the most frequent inquiries or conversations. This will indicate emerging trends or areas where your audience needs more information so that you can ideate content around those issues.

Use Brainstorming Techniques for Content Ideas

Adopt a structure for brainstorming content ideas.

  • Question Storming and Idea Validation
    Brainstorming sessions should begin with asking open-ended questions about the target audience, industry trends, or specific problems you want to address. Based on this list of questions, seek potential answers and validate them through research or internal discussions.
  • Mind Mapping
    Focus on a central concept and branch out to related subtopics, keywords, or phrases. A typical mind map may look like this.
Mind Map

Source

 

You’ll visually organize thoughts to discover new pathways and unexpected relationships that spark innovative content ideas. Explore different angles for content ideas, leading to a richer and more diverse pool of potential topics.

  • SCAMPER Technique

This technique helps transform existing ideas into fresh possibilities. SCAMPER is an acronym for — 

SCAMPER Technique

Source

 

  • Substitute: Replacing elements of your idea with something new. For example, substitute a top-performing blog post with a video or podcast.
  • Combine: Merging different ideas or concepts to create something unique. For example, you can combine a popular trend with a relevant topic from your industry (like newsjacking, as we discussed earlier).
  • Adapt: Modifying your idea to fit a different audience or platform. For instance, turning a short article into an engaging social media post.
  • Modify: Exploring possibilities of changes or tweaks to improve your idea by adding a new perspective, format, or question.
  • Put to another use: Repurposing the same content idea for a different context or purpose, like turning a webinar into an infographic.
  • Eliminate: Removing unnecessary elements from your idea to simplify your concept.
  • Reverse: Reversing the order of steps or changing the perspective to discover surprising breakthroughs.

IV. A/B Testing Ideas

Run A/B tests to measure your idea’s potential impact by comparing two versions of your content (e.g., different headlines, different topic ideas, etc.).

Compare Option A’s content ideation results with Option B’s and pick the one that performs better in predefined metrics like engagement, clicks, or conversions.

A/B Testing Ideas

Source

 

Once you have a few top ideas ready, consider testing them as headlines.

A German publisher in sports journalism A/B tested headlines to witness an increased CTR by an average of 44%.

When A/B testing, you can —

  • Create Different Variations: Create two distinct versions of your content ideas with substantial differences in headlines, ideas, and intent. This will help you identify elements that resonate most with your audience.
  • Preview and Gather Feedback: Share both versions with a small sample of your target audience (through surveys, focus groups, or social media polls, as discussed earlier). Gauge their initial reactions and preferences to gain valuable qualitative insights before investing in complete content creation.
  • Analyze Engagement Metrics: Use your existing platform (like a blog or social media) to publish teaser posts or snippets of each idea and track engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares, clicks). 

See which one sparks more interest using tools like Google Analytics or native social media analytics to gauge your content ideas. 

  • Iterate and Optimize: Based on the results of A/B tests, refine your content ideas to create more impactful variations. Leverage the headline analyzer to get the score and feedback suggesting areas of improvement as well. 

Consider continuous experimentation until you finalize what works best for your audience. And then, tailor your full-fledged content pieces accordingly.

Time to Act

There you have it – your content ideation toolkit for 2024 and beyond. Once locked, go ahead and craft content with confidence.

Remember, the best content ideas to drive traffic and conversions stem from understanding your audience, staying ahead of trends, and embracing a collaborative approach.

Experiment, analyze, and refine your strategies to consistently create content that captivates your audience, ignites action, and fuels your brand’s ongoing growth.

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