10 Easy Ways to Come Up with Ideas for Your Content

By now, you know that I talk about sharing your message and following your dreams a lot. I think I’ve been pretty honest about how difficult it can be to get over the initial fear of putting yourself out there as the example for people to follow, but there’s another difficulty that I haven’t discussed with you yet. 

Whether you decide to share daily — like I do — weekly, or somewhere in between, you’ll inevitably need to be able to come up with interesting topics to discuss in your podcast, blog, YouTube videos, or whatever medium you choose to use.

Of course, the more frequently you share, the more content you’ll have to create, and if you aren’t prepared, you can find yourself scrambling for ideas and creating sub par content. You’ll need to be able to give your audience useful information that they actually want, and this requires some level of preparation — maybe even a bit of research.

Here are 10 ways to come up with ideas for creating your content. 

1. Ask social media. Reach out to people who follow you on social media. If you have a business page or a page that is dedicated to the niche you’ll be sharing about, even better. Ask your followers what they’d like you to talk about in upcoming posts. 
2. Ask family and friends. Even if they aren’t remotely interested in your niche, ask your family and friends what they would want to know if they were interested in it. Sometimes you get amazing questions that you would have never thought of from people who know absolutely nothing about your niche.
3. Ask Google. Regularly use the Google machine and do a search on keywords related to your niche. Peruse the results and allow yourself to go down rabbit holes. Many times, you’ll be inspired by other content you come across. Two quick rules about being inspired by others’ content. 1) Don’t plagiarize. 2) Don’t plagiarize. 
4. Use your own questions. That’s right. You can use questions you currently have about your niche as ideas for content. You can create great content around an unanswered question you have, then do some research to answer your own question and create content around the answer. 
5. Use your own experiences. It’s perfectly okay to create content as you experience something — similar to keeping a diary, or you can create content based on an experience you have already had or will have in the future.
6. Brainstorm. A good brainstorm session never hurt nobody! Take a pen and paper, set a timer for 5–10 minutes and write down every single idea that comes to mind. When your time is up, take a look your list and go with the best ideas you wrote down.
7. Jot down ideas throughout the day. Once you start creating and sharing content, you’ll be surprised at how many ideas hit you at the weirdest times throughout the day. The worst thing you can do is not be prepared when they come to you. Keep a pen and paper (old school) or your phone (new school) around so that you can make a note of ideas as you get them. Trust me, it’s a bummer when an idea hits you at a bad time and you can’t remember it at all when you’re finally able to write it down.
8. Check forums and communities. Watch conversations in forums and join communities related to your niche for discussions around topics that could be inspiration for great content for you. You might notice that a topic comes up a lot or that there’s a particular topic that gets a lot of engagement. Those discussions can be gold for coming up with ideas for your content.
9. Break down complex processes. Think of complex processes or topics in your niche. Can you break them down and explain them in simple terms that help people understand them better? If so, that process or topic may be a great idea to create content around. 
10. Any combination of numbers 1–9. You can use these ideas alone or combine them for maximum fun!

Remember, the sky’s the limit when it comes to ideas for creating your content and sharing your message. Don’t be intimidated by the thought of coming up with ideas. You’ll be surprised at how you seem to be able to come up with ideas even at the 11th hour. Just be sure to weed out topics that don’t really fit your brand and always stay true to yourself. 

If this helped you, feel free to hit me up on Instagram or Facebook and let me know.

Also, listen to my podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play Music for daily motivation and inspiration to pursue your dreams.