Content Marketing: Overcoming your Creative Block

Content marketing isn’t losing any steam as we race ahead into 2018 – prepare yourself for another year of blog writing, video production, white papers, and social media campaigns. This is news has a huge impact on business owners, marketing departments, writers, and creative professionals as all will continue to be in high demand. But, if you’re investing (either time or money) in content marketing, you’ll eventually run up against the problem a creative block: you’re out of stuff to say.

What can you do when your content stream dries up like a spring creek in the desert? Often the temptation is to give up, but that’s a misguided notion –especially in a field like content marketing that relies on long-term dedication. Every creative will fill this pain – there are some days and weeks where you just don’t feel a single shred of inspiration. So, what do you do? Today I’ll go over my six favorite ways to re-light that creative fire.

Offline Sources

Often, when I’m struggling to get out of a creative rut it helps to get a fresh stream of content blowing through my stale brain. And, in our digital world, we can get stuck in the echo chamber of blogs and Facebook. Get a fresh perspective – and hopefully some ideas, by turning to offline sources of information. I know it sounds risky, but read a good old-fashioned book like it’s 1995.

Hashtag Research

The beautify of social media is how fast it moves. When it comes to the world of Twitter and hashtags, I’m usually a solid two months behind. When I’m struggling to create fresh topics for the blog, I’ll turn to social media (especially Twitter) to conduct some hashtag research and get back on top of the latest trending topics.

Rework Popular Posts

This method might not scratch your creative itch. But if you need to get some content done while you wait for your muse to return, then consider reworking some popular content from the past. Anything that’s older than six months is a candidate for reworking with a fresh spin. And if that is too much for your struggling creative soul, you can also do a blog post round up where you cover your best posts over the last year.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is bread-and-butter of the SEO world, but it can also be a huge help for content creation. There are plenty of free tools out there to gather keyword data. My favorite way to use the Moz keyword tool, type in a topic I’m interested in and filter down to the keywords that are questions. This will show you what people are searching for and should provide a direction for your new content.

Ask on Social Media

The goal of content marketing is to answer the questions that people are asking. And one of the best ways to determine that is just to ask. If you have an active social media following, consider asking them what they would be interested in reading or watching. This method has the added benefit of engaging your customers and developing brand loyalty.

Hot Takes

Hot takes have gotten a bad rap this year – because many people are sloppy in their execution. If you’re writing about trending topics just to use the hashtag, it will probably be low quality. But if you can find topics that you are genuinely interested in weighing-in on – then do it! Be a part of the great conversation that is the internet by keeping a finger on the pulse of your industry and turning that into content.

Create, Create, Create

Sometimes we don’t feel like creating – it is hard work and takes some fight. But the key to successful content creation is to continually be creating. Not everything will be gold. In fact, a lot of it will end up in the trash can but that’s ok. In all that half-rate content, you’ll find some solid gold nuggets.

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