Talk to any content marketing professional and she will tell you coming up with topics is the hardest part of content generation. With a few simple mindset changes, you can discover relevant subject matter in record time.
Turning LiveChat into a content topic generation machine
We had a biotech client that struggled to come up with subject matter its pharmaceutical researcher personas wanted to read. That all changed when we introduced “Ask a Scientist”.
Cellero wanted LiveChat installed on their website to answer a myriad of questions that researchers had before purchasing cells. Instead of installing a tiresome tool called “Online Help” or “LiveChat”, we called the feature, “Ask a Scientist” and manned it with technical salespeople.
Cellero’s customers loved being able to get answers online from experts, but the online help tool also came with an unexpected bonus. It gave the content team dozens of topic ideas for blog posts, checklists, webinars, and ad campaigns!
We stored every question asked on the “Ask a Scientist” live chat in a database and shared it with the content strategy and generation teams.
Log the questions that your audience wants answered
Odds are if one prospect has a question about your offerings or use cases, then dozens have the same concerns. When I’m on business development calls, I write down all the questions our prospects ask that I think would appeal to our target market and add them to our content calendar.
More ideas for rapidly discovering topics
- Create an easy way for your salespeople to record and share questions your prospects ask during the sales cycle.
- Record questions asked during webinars or user group meetings.
- Use Google Search Console and study the “Queries” section to see what visitors to your site are typing into search engines.
- Setup Google Analytics so you can track the content most visited on your site. The results may surprise you and generate additional ideas.
- Look for questions asked in the discussion threads of LinkedIn Groups such as HITMC or Inbound Marketers.
- Review the editorial calendars of industry publications and the themes for upcoming trade shows. See how you can tie into these relevant industry topics.
Have the topics, but lacking writers?
Now that you have a plethora of content ideas, you may find you don’t have enough in-house copywriting resources. That’s where Clarity Quest comes in. We have seasoned healthcare and biotech copywriters ready with pens and keyboards in hand.
