How to Stop Scrambling for Content Ideas
You’ve been writing captions. You’ve been filming reels. You’ve been creating graphics. Aaaaand you’re all out of ideas. Content creation can be hard, especially after you’ve been doing it for a while. Over time, it can begin to feel like you’re repeating yourself…like you’re not offering your audience anything new.
What a lot of business owners don’t realize is: you’re supposed to be repeating yourself. There’s a saying for this: “If you’re starting to feel like you’re repeating yourself, your audience is just starting to understand what you do.”
In this blog, I’m going to explain how to “repeat yourself” (share the same cohesive message) without literally just creating the same piece of content over and over again.
#1) Analyze your competitors.
First of all, you have to make sure you’re not just repeating the exact same content as your competitors. If you both sell cupcakes but you’re both just sharing reels of applying icing, there’s no way for your audience to tell the difference between you two.
Check out 3-5 of your competitors’ social media accounts and websites and write down what makes each of them a super strong choice for consumers. (Continuing with the cupcake example: maybe it’s the colors they have. For the next competitor, it’s the ingredients they use. For the last, it’s the flavors they have available).
#2) Find how you’re different from them.
By now, you should be staring at a list of your competitors’ strengths. Now, it’s time to find out how you’re different from them.
Maybe your process results in cupcakes that are fluffier. Maybe your cupcakes stay fresh longer. Whatever the case may be, find what makes your product or service unique. (This will help you to stop blending in with your competitors on social media.)
#3) Figure out why your audience should give a shit.
This is where a lot of marketers drop the ball: simply displaying why you’re different from your competitors isn’t enough for your audience to care. You have to translate your differentiators into value for them.
For example, if your cupcakes are fluffier, they will enjoy the feeling of biting into a cloud. If your cupcakes stay fresh longer, they get more bang for their buck.
#4) Develop repeatable content ideas.
Now that you know why your audience should give a shit, you can develop some content ideas that will draw their attention! To continue with the cupcake example: let’s say they’ll enjoy the feeling of biting into a cloud. Your repeatable content ideas can be:
Close-up videos showing just how fluffy they are
Customer reactions to their texture
Behind-the-scenes glances at your baking process
Posts discussing why texture matters just as much as flavor
Your favorite cupcake + frosting combinations for the ultimate cloud-like bite
See what happened there? You’re saying the same thing over and over again: our cupcakes are really fluffy. But the content itself isn’t repetitive.
Conclusion
The secret is: stop asking yourself, “What should I post this week?” and start asking, “What do I need my audience to understand about my business?”
Your differentiators (and more importantly, the value they create for your customers) give you a set of messages you can come back to again and again. From there, you can change the angle, format, example, etc without changing the core message.
That’s how you stop scrambling for random ideas every week.