Aside from finding time, coming up with ideas for content is probably the biggest barrier to content creation there is for small business owners. But it’s easier than you think. Inspiration and valuable pools of information are everywhere - you just need to know where to look for them.  Here are some places that you should start to look to generate your ideas.

Your Customers

Your customer base is, after all, who you’ll be writing your content for. Assuming of course that you’re already in business, you customers can tell you a lot about their information needs.  All you have to do is listen closely and tune into the conversations you are already having with them on a daily basis. What are they saying? What are they really asking for? How can you help solve their problems?

If you think you need a more direct approach - ask them the next time you talk to them, ask them through Facebook, your monthly newsletter or even ask one of your best customers for an in-depth conversation. What would really help them in business? What challenges or pain points do they have? You might not even need to ask them – perhaps you already know what these are.

Hopefully you’ll now begin to consolidate in your mind the regular ‘pain points’ of your typical customer.  Start writing each of these down. Think of all the times you’ve heard the following statements and questions from your customers:

“I just can’t seem to figure out {x}…”
“I never have the time to do {x}..”
“Where do I look for information on {x}…”
“If only I could get better at {x}…”
“{x} is tough because..”
“There are so many problems with {x}”

Your Market

If you’re an active social media user, you’ve probably already got a lot of insight about what your customers are talking about. Twitter is a great tool for this. If you follow your customers, competitors and related businesses on Twitter, you should have a flavour of what your customers are talking about, what they want to know and what gets them frustrated.

If you already have a Twitter account, you can sign up to twilert.com and receive a weekly (or daily email) alert based on who is saying what in their tweets. You get to decide which keywords you’d like to look for and get some great insight into how those keywords are being used. It does come with a subscription fee, but there is a 14 day free trial that you can take advantage of.

If you’re not already doing so, you might consider tapping into online forums, blogs or any other sites that your customers are ‘hanging out’ online and start paying attention.  Look at what the forum posts are about. Are your potential customers asking questions that you could easily answer? What are they looking for? What help do they need?

After you’ve identified the top five online forums, communities or websites where you can learn more about your target audience, connect with those groups on Facebook. Facebook is extremely useful in spotting which posts your potential customers like, what they are commenting on and how they’re interacting with that group.

Your Good Self

I touched on this in my last article, but don’t forget – as a business owner, you probably don’t realise just how much information and insight you hold yourself. What you may regard as intuition or common sense, most likely represents a gold mine of valuable information to your customers.