Ideas and tools for great social media content
It’s that time. You’re looking at an increasingly empty content marketing calendar, and you have no inspiration. You’re stuck. What are you going to come up with for the next couple weeks or months?
You are experiencing a content brain-freeze. Content brain-freeze happens when you’ve written so much, that you’re not sure what else you can possibly say on the topic. Everything thought up is stale.
So, how do you find fresh, new content that inspires you to begin creating again? Here are a couple of ideas to help you find new ideas.
Ask other people
If you’ve been writing for a while, you’ve most likely gotten into a routine. Maybe you’ve written many blogs with a similar topic and viewpoint. Find someone else in the industry and ask them their opinion. What ideas can they give you for new topics? Perhaps you could even convince them to write a guest blog for you. They will have their own unique views, and your audience will enjoy a fresh perspective.
You could also plan to have a pow-wow session with your marketing team or those who are actively using social media platforms. Together you can collaborate to come up with fresh ideas, find ways to better execute what you have been working on, or determine what things are missing in your content. Go over past campaigns and see if there are any you can redo with improvements, so you see better results this time.
Try out new techniques
The benefit of the internet is that there are always new methods to try. At NOW Marketing, we’ve been talking about live video for a couple of months now. Video is a huge trend lately that has been gaining traction and getting lots of views. If you’re having a hard time coming up with new ideas, try looking at current social trends and adjusting accordingly.
Maybe you’ve been on board the blog train for awhile. You’ve written lots of pieces on your industry, and now writing is getting cumbersome. You’ve run out of things to write. Why not try
something new? Take what you have been doing and move it to another medium. Turn blogs into videos and live stream your thoughts and ideas.
Look to others in the industry
While you never want to actually copy someone else's ideas, you can find inspiration from what others have done, and it’s pretty helpful to look at those who are in similar fields to you. You can look at competitors or people who are in different, yet parallel, industries. It’s about seeing things differently so you can break out of your brain-freeze.
Optimize evergreen content
If you think your audience has seen most of the content you’ve put out there, think again. That’s why evergreen content can be so helpful. When you feel like you have nothing to write, you can always go back to your old content and revitalize it. Check which pieces of content have been your most viewed and popular, and see if you can continue them. Maybe write a part two or update the piece for today’s standards. Get more into depth and write a white paper or download.
You can always redo old content as well. You’re probably a lot better than you were a year ago at creating content. If old blogs or downloads aren’t up to par, go back and redo them.
Breaking the brain-freeze
To sum everything up, ask others for ideas, try new things, look others in your industry or out of your industry, and optimize older content to reshare. There are several things you can do to eliminate content brain freeze, the only thing left to do is actually doing something about it!
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