5 Creative Sources for Customer Centric Content

You're wondering about Donald Van Gogh and what he has to do with creative sources of customer centric content. This is a painting in the lobby of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and I thought of it as a nice complement to a post about creative ways to ideate content topics. 

Because you know the drill these days: Content. Content. Content!

Even the best of content marketers and executives tasked with creating thought leadership content are feeling the pressure to get ever more creative in their ideas for compelling content. 

Outside of working with an editorial plan, I like to look at trends, conduct experiments, talk to my team at TopRank Marketing and our clients as well as research competitors to get new ideas. I also look at what we've done in the past, because, sometimes what's old is new again. 

In fact, here are 5 Content Sourcing ideas I have used many times that you may not have tried. But maybe you should. 

1. Visualize Topics. 

Wouldn't it be great to tap into a resource and find out in aggregate, what your audience is thinking? What are the topics they are most interested in relevant to your products and services?

Rush the competition. Use a tool like SEMRush and search for competitors or websites in your industry. Look at the organic keywords they rank for on Google. Export that list of keywords to a CSV file.  Then sort that list to find the most in-demand and relevant topics. Bring that list of search queries into a tool like Wordle to see the most frequently occurring keywords larger than others in a word cloud. 

You can do something similar with ubersuggest keyword suggestions too.  

Be wise and visualize. I find that visualizing keyword data can sometimes inspire new ideas for topics. Plus trending this kind of data over time can also give you insight into what's changed - up or down - topically. 

2. Mine Your Own Website.

Right now you're probably sitting on all kinds of data about what topics customers care about, relevant to your business. The question is, are you using it?

Search your search. If your website has an internal search engine, logged search queries can provide very useful topic triggers for focused content buyers really want. 

We have contact! Another area of your site rich with relevant customer insights for content are the contact forms. If your form allows visitors to write comments, that combined text from weeks, months or more can be mined for topic themes that are literally an expression of what people want from your brand. Sometimes that can be a little unnerving, so just ignore those. 

Google it. You can also look at search query data from Google Analytics (what there is left after Not Provided) and Google Search Console.

3. Talk to Humans.

Imagine that, a digital marketer talking to sales and customer service staff. These invaluable people are answering customer and prospect questions every day. Many of them (or these days most of them) are doing so via email. 

Are you down with the BCC? Pro tip: Inform sales and customer service what kinds of Q and A you are interested in and ask them to BCC marketing with replies. That way there's visibility to the actual language used by prospects and customers, as well as an answer, that can inspire relevant content. 

4. Look at the Media.

Editors and Publishers of magazines, newspapers, social networks and websites that sell advertising often publish editorial calendars and media kits which show planned stories. If a publication, especially those that are niche, has a close-match audience to your brand's target audience, editorial calendars can be great sources of content ideas for your own content hub. 

5. Customer Journey Questions.

I hope most marketers are already doing this, but just in case: All buyers have questions about whatever they're researching a solution for.

• What is it?
• How does it work?
• How can it help me and solve my problem?
• What are the best practices?
• Who has had success with it?
• Which solution provider is right for me?
• Which of those services/products is the best?
• How much does it cost?
• Where can I buy?
• How do I make it work after I buy?
• Is there support available?  

You get the idea. 

Content payday with Q and A. From awareness to interest to consideration to purchase, there are questions your brand can provide answers to that will be useful for the customer's buying experience. The topics within those questions are invaluable for everything from keywords in SEO to the content topics you write about on your blog, content marketing campaigns, emails and advertising. 

If you like to visualize keyword or topic data, there's a chance other content creators in your organization might too. Take it for a spin and see whether something compelling reveals itself to you. Be sure to make use of the resources right in front of you too, from your own website data, data from competitors, your own employees and customers. You might just uncover something clever that your customers will enjoy. 

For even more useful advice on all things digital marketing (especially content) check out our team's blog over at TopRank's Online Marketing Blog. 

Also, be sure to connect with me on Twitter @leeodden and at one of these upcoming speaking events in March and April 2016:

March 23rd: Webinar with Uberflip
Secrets of B2B Content Marketing Success with Influencers

April 5-6: Clever Content Conference - Copenhagen, Denmark.
A Winning Formula for Content Marketing Success

April 17-19: Social Media Marketing World - San Diego, CA
Influencer Marketing Playbook: How to Identify, Qualify and Recruit Effective Influencers

April 26-29: Oracle Marketing Cloud Conference - Las Vegas, NV
The Power of Influence in B2B Marketing