blog

Basics of Generating Content Ideas for Your Small Business

Written by Uncle Ron | Sep 26, 2024 3:10:10 PM

Welcome to Uncle Ron's Porch, where we delve into strategies for growing your local business using search engine optimization, technology, and social media platforms. This week, Uncle Ron shared valuable insights on how to create a comprehensive content plan for your website for blog posts that focus on the needs of your target audience. While you are navigating the world of content creation, you need a way to come up with new ideas and stay organized. This week, Uncle Ron will help you to do just that. 

Where Do I Find Ideas for Content?

Uncle Ron kicked off the week by addressing a question many business owners grapple with: How do you find ideas for content? He promised three methods to ensure you never run out of ideas:

  • Ask Questions

    Engage in meaningful conversations with your customers. Great content creators pay attention to understanding their target audience's problems, questions, and experiences.

  • Google Search Data

    Another content marketing strategy is to use Google’s search data to find ideas for new content. This includes using autocomplete and related searches to discover what potential customers are searching for in your business niche.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    Great content strategy also includes the utilization of AI tools like Google Bard to generate content ideas based on common queries. Artificial intelligence can also help you to create social media content ideas as well as a list of content ideas for your website.

How My Current Customers Help Me to Find Ideas

On Tuesday, Ron focused on leveraging customer interactions for content ideas. By recording questions from current customers as well as potential customers, you can dive deeper into their needs and formulate insightful content. This type of content creation has helped Uncle Ron to grow his local insurance agency. His customers have supplied him with a multitude of blog post ideas that have helped to increase traffic to his website. High quality content that is focused on your target audience will grow your prospect list. 

How Google Can Identify New Ways to View Common Problems 

Google's search tools can help you to come up with a variety of pieces of content as well as fresh content ideas. Ron explained how to use Google autofill and the "People Also Ask" section to expand five content ideas into potentially fifty or seventy-five. He also touched on the Google Ads keyword research tool, which can help identify high-traffic content ideas based on search volume data. This method taps into decades of Google’s search data, providing a rich source of content topics for different types of posts.

Using AI to Go Deeper on Topic Ideas

It is important to learn how to harness the power of artificial intelligence to grow your online audience.  Uncle Ron highlighted various chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Claude, emphasizing that AI can help generate extensive lists of content topics. By integrating initial ideas from conversations with happy customers and Google's data with AI tools, you can expand a list of five to ten ideas into fifty to seventy-five. This systematic approach ensures you have a robust bank of content ideas to draw from.

Organizing Creative Content Ideas: Crates, Boxes & Shoes

Wrapping up the week, Ron introduced a systematic approach to organizing content ideas using metaphors of crates, boxes, and shoes. You can plan your content in advance and keep your content calendar organized by employing this technique.

  • Crates: Big main topics or ideas.
  • Boxes: Sub-categories within the main topics.
  • Shoes: Hyper-specific items within sub-categories.

By structuring each piece of content in this manner, you can meaningfully allocate and deploy information on your website. Start with one broad topic, identify three to five sub-categories, and construct specific items under each. This methodical approach helps you organize and formulate a plan to multiply your content marketing efforts.

 

 

Join Uncle Ron's Community

Uncle Ron's Porch offers an invaluable resource for local businesses looking to grow using SEO, technology, and social media. Don’t miss out on the detailed instructions and tools he shares. Join his mailing list for weekly topics and a free Saturday email download with summaries and resources by visiting bit.ly/Porch.

Stay tuned for next week's episodes, where Uncle Ron will provide further steps in content deployment. Until then, keep those content ideas flowing!

If you want help with generating content for your website, start a conversation with Uncle Ron. Sprocket Expert Optimizations offers a variety of services to fit your small business's marketing needs. 

Daily Podcast Episodes for this Week 

Each of our daily podcast episodes is 6-8 minutes long and will give you inspiration for your content creation journey.