How to Generate Content Ideas in the New Normal

by Venchito Tampon Jr | Last Updated on October 24, 2021

We content marketers and SEOs have to adjust to the way we plan out content for the next coming months.

As we become more flexible in other business functions, content marketing is something to be taken care of seriously to address the changing needs of online users.

The new and old problems brought by this pandemic challenge many of our existing content strategies — whether in a form of content ideation, content creation, link building, or content promotion. 

In today’s post, we’ll cover on just one phase of content marketing — content ideation. Let’s learn how to generate content ideas in the new normal.

 

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How to Generate Content ideas in the New Normal

1. Adjust Your Content’s Keyword Strategy

There are keywords in your content calendar that can play out still in the new normal, but there are transitional keywords your searchers may be looking for that you’ll have to create content about.

This means that you have to do some adjustments with your keyword strategy.

For example, you’ll find that relying too much on prominent keyword data tools like SEMRush for transition keywords may not be effective to discover transitional keywords.

SEMRush may not cope up immediately in their data set key phrases that have had good search volume for the past 30 days.

You wouldn’t get much value from it to find any coronavirus-related terms or any industry-related phrases that match that need of searchers in this season.

What you want to do is to use another tool – Google Trends, which can show you trending keywords for the past 30 days.

Go to the Related Queries section to find more related phrases for the keyword you are searching for.

Related Topics section will also give you an idea of content themes you can decide to generate content assets later on.

You may even consider the Coronavirus search trends available in Google Trends today. This gives you top questions asked for the past days and weeks.

Once you have specific queries or keyphrases collected from Google Trends, you can use AlsoAsked to further find questions related to each key phrase.

These questions can be your ideas to consider for your blog posts.

2. Use Maslow’s Hierarchy of Safety Needs

Creating content is serving the needs of its target audience.

In today’s time, human needs don’t change that much. There are only levels of needs that have been more emphasized and more to be taken care of as people go through tough times this pandemic season.

In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people care still at self-actualization as the top-level need.

However, in the new normal, we can see safety as the much-needed topic to consider when creating any transitional content. 

Safety needs can be broken down into more specific areas such as financial, emotional, physical, and social.

When generating content ideas for transition content, you can tie your already mapped out topics in your content calendar to any of the specific safety needs.

For physical safety, this means you’ll look at any topic that may be related to staying clean and avoiding germs.

For financial safety, it could be helping people who’ve just been laid off from work and business owners who’ve been heavily affected by the crisis. Look for topics that help solve current money problems of people.

For emotional safety, content that revolves around managing stress, fear, anger, and any negative feelings people experience during tough times.

For social safety, start with content that deals with people’s interaction through online platforms. Any keywords with remote or virtual may play out to be timely topics.

Match any discovered safety topics to Exploding Topics to see how trending they are at current times.

You may want to set up Google Alerts to track any mentions of the specific safety areas. This could give you list of recently published pages that can help you generate some content insights.

You may want to check out these two guides on finding unique blog ideas and creating link assets in boring niches.

3. Discover Recent Highly Social Engaged Content

Besides trending topics, you also want to look at content themes that gain social engagement for the past days and weeks.

This could be done well using Buzzsumo. Discover any industry topics that received traction on social media platforms.

Create transition content based on topics not only with high search intent but also with high social engagement — as this could run through well in getting traffic spikes for your blog.

If you are blogging for personal branding, using Buzzsumo to find socially engaged content gives you discovery on the latest authors and personalities who are active in pushing out content in this new normal.

Another tool that you can use to search for socially-engaged content is Reddit. We’ve written some guides here at SharpRocket to help you get started with Reddit.

4. Replicate Content Ideation Strategy from Content Hubs

Resource hubs have been dedicated to particular content themes and to specific audience needs.

In the new normal, you can consider creating your own hub of helpful resources for COVID-19.

You can add your latest solid content assets for COVID-19, which includes blog articles on safety concerns.

Even if it’s just a curated list of existing content, as long as it is a good match for COVID-19, create a hub for them.

Be Flexible With Your Content Strategy

You may have a well-planned out strategy for this year, but what separates successful content marketers from a mediocre one is the ability to foresee changes needed to implement right away to better serve its intended audience.

Your mission as a brand is still the same, but the strategy must be flexible to address the needs of your users.

Let me know in the comment section any tips you may recommend to generate more content ideas in this new normal.