Listen, Then Validate 🗯️

Hello Reader,

This week, a client asked me a great question: "How do you come up with your ideas for content?"

They were specifically referring to public-facing content such as blog posts, LinkedIn posts, get you the picture—content meant to be discovered by people generally unfamiliar with our brand or who have only had minimal contact with it (ie, they've seen my name somewhere). Basically, not you all! 😉

I've danced around this topic previously, including this email from several years ago when I just had a few hundred people on this list (if you got that original newsletter back in the day, hit reply and let me know—seriously), this one from about a year later, and this more recent newsletter from last year about the nuts and bolts of creating a search-first blog post.

But I haven't previously taken my content creation process all the way back to the earliest stage: ideation.

There are typically two tracks that spark initial, "Let's look into this for content potential" actions:

1. I practice active listening (something I did actual training in when I worked in public sector PR), so anything that pops up to me as a trend or an insightful question, I make a note of it (literally in my phone's Notes app—I have a tag in Notes for this so it's easy to find).
2. Each quarter, I take a look at our Aligned Authority™ framework and evaluate any content gaps in it. I ask what areas have been neglected and make a note of that (again, in the Notes app at this stage, but it's not Notion-worthy in the ideation stage).

Looking at these notes, I keep an eye on trends, themes, or anything that seems particularly aligned with my message or unique/unexpected. I also consider whether or not we've got existing content that can be updated to include that idea.

With that baseline of information, I trust that there's some level of value there, but I verify that it's worth turning that idea into public-facing content.

At that point, that's where research comes into play. I'll dive into Keywords Everywhere (while I also use other software, this one is particularly useful for preliminary research because it's right there in the search engine results) and are investigating what's out there.

This is where bots can't compete with humans: I not only look at the numbers I see in the search results, but I read the content and see what gaps exist and where the topic is overly saturated.

I make a note of different opportunities and assess, again, if they make sense for my marketing. At this point, I often toss a lot of ideas!

However, this is also where some bits of pure gold inspiration come up.

For example, I saw that we'd never written an article about SEO specifically for coaches. When I did my ideation research that I just outlined, I saw a lot of content that was very similar and highly focused on technical or instructional themes. This was an opportunity—so I developed this article that focuses on the questions coaches need to answer before investing in search engine optimization. And while it's slowly creeping up in rankings (it's finally around 15-20, ticking up each week), it has already resulted in one new client in the few weeks since I published it.

The hard truth is that if I had simply gone with my initial idea of a guide for coaches to understand or implement SEO, it likely would have not resulted in new clients because it didn't differentiate from others out there. Sure, someone may have clicked with my voice or liked my branding but I didn't want to leave my business strategy to chance—I like to engineer my own luck!

Furthermore, that approach would have been a missed brand awareness opportunity because I talk about the foundational elements of marketing and how they connect to SEO in that article, which is a core part of my brand and framework. Again, another checkmark in the yes column in my ideation process.

Obviously, I've been doing this a long time and this process is nearly second nature for me at this point. It likely won't be as quick and instinctive for you to tackle on your own at first.

However, there's a lot that you can borrow from this process. The biggest being that trusting your own knowledge of your field (you are a subject matter expert, after all) and identifying where "competitors" (another work I have issues with) are leaving gaps open that you can fill.

Many of us have been subtly taught (thanks to some of the loudest voices on social media) to disregard our own ability to discern opportunities and if you learn nothing else from me, I want you know know that you've got more intelligence in this regard than you realize.

Listen to your gut, and use your smarts (trust but validate) to develop your content marketing ideas.

Warmly,

Sarah

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