Content Generation Idea: Ask Leaders and similar Businesses Questions

Content Generation Idea: Ask Leaders and similar Businesses Questions

If you're looking for more content generation ideas that you can throw a stick at, and ideas that will be sure to be on subjects and topics that your targeted audience would pay to know about. The Crème de la Crème of content. Well to get that cream of content, as cream always rises to the top, the best way is to go the top! By asking those leaders in your industry, even your competitors and rivals, their CEO's, managers, even sales reps and receptionists etc some questions about the product or service you both already provide can reveal some excellent things to make content on for your blog, newsletters, website material, social media posts, videos and more.

And all it really takes is asking! It's so simple on the face of it that it's something you might not even have thought of. Or perhaps you've thought that you shouldn't approach your competitors and couldn't learn anything from them anyway. Well you can! By asking them questions that could be turned into content of some kind.

And if you're wondering who you should contact and how. And what you should ask to who. Depending on who they are which might seem daunting. Don't worry! I'm going to tell you about who you should be contacting and why and how and some of the questions that you should or could ask each of them to get you started!

The good thing is, once you've learned these questions, you may be able to ask them in your own way, and you may have your own as well so the more you can throw in and ask, the more information you can gleam from them the better! But you don't want to just inundate people with too many questions! Especially if they have a hint you're a competitor as they'll shut you down (ie; hang up / not respond).

So you want to ask the right questions to the right people. And you'll need to find those people too. What you really want to do is aim for the people at the top as they are the ones that will be more likely to tell you something more valuable and on the nail.

• To find these people, research those top competitors in your niche/industry. To do that, literally go onto their websites and find any emails for the main CEO's, managers, owners etc. Then send them an email with your questions, ask for 5 mins of their time and keep them short and sweet.
• You can use social media too and in fact it's easier as sometimes they'll be online and you can just chat to them. You can send them a message as well asking them if they have 5 mins to answer some questions you have. If they think you're a potential buyer, they will likely tell you what you want to hear but you can learn a lot from this.

The trick is, not to let them know you're a competitor, although that doesn't always matter, if you're doing it for business reasons, some other similar or related businesses to yours wont even mind if it means they can get some publicity or advertising about it.

You could even tell them who you are and what you're doing, that your company is gathering ideas for content for the official company blog or something then say that you'll give them a shout out or a link on your post when it's live and mention and shout on social media as well which most businesses will go for if they're shrewd enough.

But generally, you have to carefully tread ice when doing this as if you ask the wrong question or ask to many and take up too much of peoples time in answering them, they'll just not bother and lose interest. That's just human nature though.

If possible, keep it light hearted, professional but casual. Keep it in a positive light like it's something they'd enjoy doing rather than an actual chore as let's talk clearly, you are basically interviewing people and fishing for information and you don't want to let them start thinking that so they always have to think, yeah, this could work out for me anyway.

20 Questions to Ask for Possible Content Generation Ideas

1. How are you doing today? (Always good to see how people answer this!)
2. Who are you and what is your business about and who is it intended for?
3. How did you get started in the business of x x product/service/business?
4. How long have you been in business for selling x x product/service/business?
5. What questions do you get asked the most buy your typical buyers?
6. What questions should the people you target ask but don't?
7. What are some of the benefits to using your xx product or service and are there any side effects?
8. What inspires and motivates you the most to drive your business forward into the next 10 years?
9. Where does your business trade from and do you have any offices, premises, shops anywhere else?
10. Who is the intended age group, ethnicity or geo of the people that your business/product etc targets?
11. How does your business/product/service etc help me and or just anyone else in general?
12. Does your business provide telephone support or free after care support in any way?
13. Do you hold any social events like at public gatherings, tradeshows, drop ins or anything like that?
14. What was the last professional event your business attended and what did you learn from it?
15. What are some of the tools software, services etc you use everyday to run your business with?
16. What industry or trade blogs and leaders to do you follow, read and subscribe to?
17. What are some questions those in your industry really want to ask but don't?
18. In what ways do you advertise and market your business - are any of them unethical?
19. Is your company Green Friendly and actively tries to reduce its eco-footprint?
20. What's one tip you could give to anyone that wants to buy your product/service?
    

And that's 20 possible questions you could ask those leaders and other sites and businesses in your niche. And by doing so, even if you asked just some of them, you could probably gleam some great content generation ideas from all the answers!

Of course, you might not want to ask all of these questions and more to everyone. Depending who they are. Some questions only the CEO's and top guys will know the answers to and the rest may just forward you to them or pass your question or questions on to them if you're polite enough lol. So just pick and choose the right questions to ask, with your own thrown in for the right type of person you're contacting.

The best thing to do really is put your own questions together like these based on your own niche, industry or business, product, service or whatever. Put together some questions that ask things about your niche that you'd be able to come up with content ideas from the answers of them.

And who'd have thought, asking questions could be so powerful? Well after all, knowledge is power isn't it. And if you don't ask, you don't get! And what's the worst that could happen? At the very least you wouldn't get any answers. But there are usually quite a lot of businesses in any niche and it's a numbers game where the more you ask, the more that'll answer.

You could outsource all of this by the way from just these questions alone, although I suggest modifying them a little for your own use, business, product or service etc. Just get someone to find people to contact in your niche, your competitors, those rivals and leaders etc in the field. And have them feed all the answers back to you which you can use to extrapolate some content from.

To do that, create a WTB on here and hire a freelancer for it.

And that's Content Generation Idea 22: Asking Leaders and similar Businesses Questions.

Is this something you've ever done / do?

Something you think you could do but never knew how or how valuable it could be?

Well now you know!