Content Generation Idea: Just Brainstorming!

I've mentioned many ways in which to come up with ideas for content for your blog or whatever now. And all of them involve utilising some method or some site to help you with it. And those are great for that reason! But one way of actually coming up with content ideas is to just brainstorming them!

And sure, it's possible that you've been seeking other ways to come up with ideas for content because you can't brainstorm them for yourself. But that might just be because you don't know how to brainstorm up content ideas. Well that's what we'll be talking about here.

How to Brainstorm Content Ideas

The best thing to use to brainstorm with isn't a computer, but rather a simple pen and pad! And if you can just spend 10 uninterrupted minutes with a pen and pad you should be able to come up with some ideas for content just from the top of your head.

But to make it easier for you, what you really need to do is jot down things that are relevant to your business. And things that are relevant to the people that will be using your business and or products etc.

Try to jot down what those things are and then think about some questions to ask about them such as "Is my business user friendly?", "does my business have a Facebook page", "how does my business help people".

Adn do the same thing and ask the same questions for the products or services that your business sells too. By doing this, you'll soon be able to think of some really great questions.

Then from those questions, you can think about how you can come up with and make content from them. That could be by asking and answering that specific question itself or any other questions you asked.

Use the HubSpot Content Brainstorming Key

The HubSpot Content Brainstorming Key is an Excel file that you can use to help you brainstorm content ideas in a visually pleasing and structured way and you don't need to be an Excel expert to use it!

It's really very clever and you can read more about it and download the Excel file for it here.

I sometimes use this myself when I just want to brainstorm things but in a visually appealing and more structured and interactive way.

How to Use This Brainstorming Key:

1. Select a topic relevant to your customers' challenges or questions that your business solves. Write that in box 1.
2. Drag the X according to the instructions in boxes 2-4. This narrows your frame of reference to make brainstorming easier.
3. Using the criteria you've selected, try to write as many potential headlines as you can. (See the examples in box 5.)
4. When ideas run out or you want more variety, simply move an X or two or change the initial topic. Then repeat the steps above.

Another thing that HubSpot has that can help you with content ideas is their Blog Topic Generator tool. With this all you need to do is enter three terms related to your niche and hit submit and it will automatically start putting some titles on the page for you that you can basically just create content from.