Never run out of Content Ideas again!
We have all found ourselves stuck, wondering what to do next, what to post next. I have found myself in this situation on many occasions, knowing that I must continue to produce content to engage my community and provide them with valuable insights, but not knowing what to do next.
Well having creative ideas isn’t always easy but taking a more structured approach to content creation might be exactly what we need to make sure that we never run out of anything to say ever again.
In this post we look at how we can create a matrix introduced by Melanie Diezel from Storyfuel that will be a basis for new content ideas.
The Content Matrix
Before writing any content, it is important to ask your self a couple of questions to make sure that the content is relevant and valuable. These questions are: What am I going to say? How am I going to say it? To whom am I going to be saying it? Why am I saying it? After we have answered the “To who?” question, we can look at the Content Matrix to guide our content.
If we sketch Content Types/Formats against Content Focus we can create a matrix where at each intersection there is a possibility for multiple pieces of content.
Every intersection between a Content Type and Focus provides an opportunity for a unique content piece. The matrix gives us a well thought out structure to plan campaigns and all the content pieces we plan to release. Just by creating one piece of content at each intersection will already result in 99 pieces of content. Then when creating various content pieces using the same focus but a variety of topics, we will see that number grow rapidly.
The Content matrix is a brilliant tool to help boost productivity and guide our teams to produce great creative and engaging content.
Content Focus
Opinion
Opinion pieces are great options to position yourself as a thought leader. They provide an opportunity to discuss industry trends and topics and provide your unique opinion on the topics. Opinion pieces show that you are keeping up with industry development and looking towards the future.
Feature
This can include a variety of “features”, from customer or employee spotlights, where a customer or employee is highlighted for their contributions within the community. Features can also include offerings from other companies that compliment your product or industry experts that the company works with.
How To
A How to piece of content is a step by step walk through of how to perform a specific task, use products, or achieve specific goals. This type of content is instructional and answers questions like “How do I…?” or “What do I need to Know to ….?”.
History
History pieces provide an opportunity to create factual content pieces that could include company history, industry history, product history or even just throwback content.
Research
Research pieces can discuss recent research within the industry or can be research conducted by our company that we share with our community.
Product
Product content focuses on a specific product or service offering, listing features, benefits etc.
Deep Dive
A Deep Dive is a “everything you could ever want or need to know” content piece. It tackles a topic and is educational in nature. A Deep dive is a big content piece and takes the consumer through everything they need to know about a topic. It is almost a Beginner to Advanced journey.
Educational
Very similar to “How to Content” the major difference is this can include theoretical concepts that can be explained and will answer questions like “What is …?” or “What does …. mean?”.
Review
Review content can also take various forms. Content from product reviews, customer reviews/testimonials can be posted to establish authority, or content creators can review customers content (ex. If you teach a web development class, you can review other websites to help your community learn).
Conclusion
Although content creation requires some creativity, if we employ tools that help guide our thinking, we can make the process much simpler and produce quality content that keeps our community engaged constantly.
Just remember to answer the four questions (What am I going to say? How am I going to say it? To whom am I going to be saying it? Why am I saying it?) before writing your content to make sure you are writing with a purpose.
