SHOWNOTES
In the world of blogging, content marketing, and online entrepreneurship, sometimes one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to figure out WHAT TO TALK ABOUT.
I know I’m not the only one who has spent the better part of a morning staring at a blinking cursor on a computer screen and feeling discouraged. It happens.
When I’m really stuck, I have a go-to list of exercises and resources and I’m going to share those with you today.
💡 Go to Amazon bestsellers section and look in the comments for questions that might help you.
💡 Type on any search query in Answer the Public and discover an untapped goldmine of content ideas.
💡 Enter your subject in Portent Idea Generator and it will give you clickable headlines.
💡 Take a peek at what’s trending on YouTube and Google Trends.
💡 Go see what topics Dummies Research have published books on.
💡 Search through Alexa Flash Briefings top sites by category
💡 Use Social Bearing a search engine powered by tweets.
💡 Explicit searches in Google.
e.g. [topic/niche] + forum
[topic/niche] + discussion
[topic/niche] + community
[topic/niche] + blog
💡Leverage Twitter Advanced Search. Even if you are not a big Twitter user, when it comes to looking for ideas, it’s a gold mine and worth having an account if only for that purpose.
💡Pick up the phone and call a customer or client and ask them what they want to know.
💡Work on something completely different: catch up on that online course you never finished, read a book (fiction, even!), listen to music, organize your workspace and go for a walk and listen to a podcast that is outside of your niche.
💡Use the Voice Typing feature in Google Docs and just start talking about something. Something is bound to come out of that.
💡Write morning pages.
💡Create 3 months of consistent, compelling and strategic content in a few hours with the Front Row CEO Content Planning System.
💡Go into a Facebook group that is filled with your ideal customers, click on the search bar and type in "I'm struggling with" or "I need help with". (Be sure to use quotation marks.) See what pops up and let that guide you in your content creation.
If you aren’t feeling motivated, you might be a little burned out and/or this pandemic might be zapping all of your umph. On days like this, acknowledge what is happening and trust that the fire in your belly will return. In the interim, try some of the stuff I mentioned, or just WALK AWAY for a little bit.
RESOURCES
Amazon bestsellers section
Alexa Flash Briefings top sites by category
Also search on Google:
TRANSCRIPT
00:03 (Gary Vee)Hey guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuk and you're listening to the Front Row Entrepreneur Podcast with our girl, Jen.
00:07 Hey, there. Today we're gonna talk about how to find ideas for content when you're stuck or when you're in a rut or when you're just really not motivated. And I was inspired to do this episode because actually, earlier today in my group of accelerators, it's a private coaching group that I have very small group coaching program. And there were several of our members who mentioned that they were just really feeling kind of uninspired, just kind of in a funk. And no surprise right in the middle of this locked down, inevitably, that was going to catch up with us. Uh, and it comes and goes, At least it does for me, right? Some days are super, super great. I feel like I don't miss a beat. And other days it's just kind of a struggle. Ah, and you know what? Even when we're not in the middle of a pandemic, um, I find that my creativity definitely works in peaks and valleys and some days air, definitely better than others. So there's some things that I turned Teoh when I need Teoh get inspiration. And so I thought I would share those things with you. This isn't gonna be a very long episode. And all the links that I mentioned just don't worry about it, because I'm gonna put them all in the show notes. So don't worry about trying to find those. That's gonna be a jenlehner.com/049. You can just sit back and listen and catch those links later. Okay?
Read more...
01:40 All right. First of all, Amazon. So if you go to Amazon and let's say you want to talk about a particular topic ah, weight loss or diabetes or weight lifting I don't know why all those things were coming to mind, but you have a specific topic going to Amazon. Type it in the search. Go look at the best sellers. Ah, look at the reviews, read the questions or the comments that people are making in the reviews. It's a great place to get ideas for content.
02:11 There's another, there's a website that I love called Answer the public, and I'm gonna click on it right now, so I could sort of give you um, a really good description of what it is. Basically, you type in some sort of search query, and then it gives you this visual representation of that topic all the different ways that it's being searched, like the most popular way, the most popular things that people are searching for as it relates to that topic. So I typed in virtual assistants because very soon I'm gonna be opening up the doors again for my program that teaches people how to hire train an on board virtual assistance in the Philippines. And I mean, that's not gonna be until the fall, but I have to start creating all of my life. Prelaunch content, right? So a typed in virtual assistants and all sorts of things came up, and it occurred to me that, like, one of the main things people are searching for is like what is a virtual assistant, and what sorts of things do virtual assistants do you know, And the two times that I've launched this I've never actually created content that answers that question just very specifically and directly, so that's gonna be a great video for me to create, or a blonde post or both. So you definitely want to check out Answer the public.
03:27 Okay. Another great website is called the Portent Idea generator, and I was so glad to see that this is still around. I haven't We haven't used it and forever. But what you do is you go in and enter your subject into this little box. Okay? So of course I entered virtual assistance. And what it does is it will give you really clickable headlines and give you an idea of, like, a piece of content to create around that topic. Some of them won't make sense. Ah, but some of them are really good. So I typed in virtual assistance, and I got a warning. Colon, you're losing money by not using virtual assistance. Okay, It's pretty good. So I'm gonna click, reload and see what I get. How virtual assistants are making the world a better place. Let's do it again. Um, what experts are saying about virtual assistants? That's kind of weak. Ah, What? What? Mom never told you about virtual assistants. Okay, so go over there and see if that gives you anything.
04:25 You could always look at what's trending on YouTube. You could go to Google trends. That's always a great place to start. It's showing you, like in real time what people are searching for like right now and not a terrible idea to create content that people are like actively searching for, because it's a great way to get more eyeballs on your content. Now you don't want to make it too much of a reach. So here I am, looking in, um, Google trends right now, and Taylor Swift is trending, as is Kim Kardashian. My guess is that's probably like training every day. Ah, what else here? Memorial Day is trending. So, yeah, I knew Memorial Day is right around the corner, but also I kind of forgot about it. So, um, not a bad idea for me to think about what kind of content I can create around Memorial Day, because a lot of people are searching for that.
05:25 Remember the dummy? Siri's well, of course you do, because they're still around. So, like, you know, sewing for dummies. Golden Retrievers for dummies. Did you know they have a website with all the dummies books? There's like thousands of dummies books listed there. Go and see what topics they published books on and see if anything of their, um floats your boat and you could go to Amazon and look at the Alexa Flash briefings, um, or look at their top flash briefings by category.
05:54 Here's a site you're guaranteed to love, and I bet you don't know about it's called social bearing and that socialbearing.com and what you dio is you type in a keyword or hashtag or a website, Um, and just click search and it's going to give you, uh, tweets, timelines, Twitter maps. Ah, you're gonna be able to sort tweets out by people engagement, influence, locations, sentiment. So many things just go and take a look at it. It is, it's a trip, and then, you know, they're these ways to do these very explicit searches on Google, and I honestly don't use this nearly enough, but it's a really smart way to do searches.
06:36 For example, if you go and put in and I'll put this in the show notes, but you put in brackets topic / niche, but you would write like Weight Watchers Okay, plus forum and then you click example or then you click. Search and it's going to pop up. I'm looking at the Weight Watchers message boards. Okay, if I go back and do the same thing, but do instead of plus four, you could do plus discussion plus community Plus Blawg. That's gonna really help you find some very specific discussions and content around anything you're thinking about researching mawr or creating. And, of course, Twitter in and of itself is an amazing place to get some ideas. Just look at what's trending there or go into Twitter's advanced search and see what questions people are asking of the experts who are serving an audience similar to your own.
07:37 But you know the very best way to come up with great ideas to just ask your audience. Even if your audience is very, very small. Just pick up the phone and call a customer a client and ask them what they want to know. What they want you to create content on if you have a list of ideas, but you just start feeling motivated, you might be a little bit burned out, and it happens to the best of us. And no matter how passionate you, maybe about your business some days or just blue days, and it's hard to get excited and on days like this, acknowledge what's happening and just trust that the fire in your belly will return and in the interim, just walk away for a little bit, work on something completely different, like do something creative like, um, cross it or painting or a puzzle or, you know, just something that is completely out of the norm of the kind of things. That kind of ways. That you entertain yourself is also a great time to just catch up on Samy learning to catch up on the online course that you never finished. I love to go for a walk and listen to a podcast. It is completely unrelated to marketing. Just I'll find some random podcast. It could be about juggling.
08:45 And next thing you know, I've got my brain is firing in all sorts of directions and I come home completely inspired. And then, of course, there's Ted talks. You know, Ted, talks have been around now for well, like 12 15 years longer and oh my goodness, like they've just got an entire library of every topic and you can choose to listen or watch a Ted talk by subject matter by length by, uh, the way it's gonna make you feel like if you want a funny one or a serious one and you pick the subject all the things, or just listen to music like, When was the last time you just you just played some music, you know, like so even your old CDs if you have something to play the CDs on, I can't remember the last time I I just listened to a bunch of albums that I that I love. How about just reading a book and again let this be a book outside of your niche? I mean, dare I say Fiction cannot remember the last time I read a piece of fiction, and then just good old, like organizing, cleaning up your workspace. Sometimes that helps the motivate motivate me.
09:55 And you know, when I'm really, really stuck, a lot of times I'll do this with a podcast is I will go over to Google docs and I'll just click under tools. There's the dictation where you just start talking to your computer and Google dictation has gotten really, really good at this, and it just turned your voice into text. So it transcribes everything that you say. And so I'll basically just have a conversation with my computer and let the computer do all the hard work for me. And after I'm done talking, I stopped, and now I have something to work from. I've got the beginning parts of a block post or a podcast. It's super helpful.
10:34 And finally, I just want to tell you about this some great little website. It's called 750words.com, and the person who created it was inspired by the artist way. You know that talks about morning pages, which I do morning pages every day. But, morning pages or you're supposed to do them like first thing when you wake up, you're not supposed to really worry about writing anything good or for any kind of purpose. It's just about just getting words on a page. The minute that your eyes open and filling up three pages toe have that discipline every morning. And this person who started this website figures that three pages is basically 750 words, so she turned it into sort of challenge and you'll come over here and see um uh, the her spit on this, but it's really fun. And again, just something different to add into the routine if you need a little bit of operation.
11:31 So actually, the last last thing that I want to tell you about is my favorite way to create content is with my content creation system. It's called the front Row CEO Content creation system, and I've got I've got online tools for it. I've got um ah, hard cover, Beautiful, luxurious journal. You can order that gets delivered to your front door, not journal Planner. That's frontrowceo.com/planner. There'll be a link to it in the show notes, but that's a really strategic way of creating content. Um, and you can read all about that at that link. If you want more information, that's it for today's episode. I hope you have a great week and I'll see you next time.
