VIDEO: Get Inspired: 5 Effective Brainstorming Ideas for High-Impact Content Marketing

Some of us are a lot like Socrates where we’re not as good at coming up with our ideas as much as we’re good at helping people define and think about the ideas that they have. (Aside) I’m not sure if any of that is true, I may have made that up. I’m not a historian… But when I was brainstorming an opening to this script I decided to go with it. In this video, we’re going to go through 5 brainstorming ideas to inspire you to create impactful content!

Our expert muses here at TechnologyAdvice, see that was another Greek reference, want to motivate you and your marketing team to create content that will get people clicking, sharing, and converting on your websites. The main way we can do that is by doing brainstorming activities. They’re like Zip-Zap-Zop (an acting ensemble exercise) for writers but with less movement. Here are a bunch of them. First up, the Run-On Story. You and your group of marketers will write a story idea, pass a pen around and write one sentence at a time surrounding it.

You could also use Google Docs which would be a bit more modern. The idea is to formulate a story as a group that relates to your task like what’s a day in the life of your customer’s life, what do they do to solve problems? Etc. This exercise helps you think on your feet because even if you have an idea of your part of the story, the person before you can just throw you off completely by writing whatever they want. It helps you think on your feet.

There’s a very similar acting exercise and you do it standing up called “the typewriter.” Thank you Jill Wadsworth formerly of Carnegie Mellon for teaching me many of these things. Brain Writing is similar to the last where everyone writes down their ideas but in this instance, you get to write down your whole idea. Then you pass that idea to another person who gets to expand on it. By the end, if you have, say 5 members on your marketing team you come up with 5 fully thought-out plans.

In Shuffle the Deck you look at your blog’s analytics to generate a list of your top-performing content. Then you break down each title into its main components and write down each on a separate index card. So “The Ultimate Guide to SEO” would be “Ultimate Guide” on one card and “SEO” on the other. Take all your index cards and shuffle them then lay them back out, remixing them into new titles. So you’ll have your top content plus top keywords, you pickin’ up what we’re putting down?

In this one we’ll create a brainstorming matrix. Thanks to Hubspot for this. Start with a blank spreadsheet and write the main topic in Box 1. In box 2 write out how much of an expert your target audience is on the subject so beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Then select the type of content you’re looking to produce so a list, how-to, news, definition, etc. Now pick your format: blog post, infographic, checklist, etc. Finally, write as many headlines as you can for what you’ve selected from this combination.

I think it’s a really neat and organized way to generate topic ideas. Remember the TV series, “Win, Lose or Draw?” Sometimes the best tactic isn’t to write down your ideas with words but instead you should draw them… and I don’t mean a mind-map either. Give your team a topic or keyword and then have them draw what they associate with it. Not only will this serve as comic relief but this can lead to some awesome creative thinking using the visual rather than linguistic part of your brain.

Oh! And don’t forget the traditional ways of doing market/audience research, and mining keywords or previously successful content. You can read more about that in the original article that you will find on our website: technologyadvice.com. So over the past couple of minutes we’ve run down several awesome ways to brainstorm content just remember… To see a world in a grain of sand…, hold infinity in the palm of your hand…, and eternity in an hour.

Ideas are all around us at all times. The best way to capture them is to open your mind, observe and play. We hope we’ve given you some ideas of ways you and your team can do that. For more articles on topic feel free to head on back to our website at TechnologyAdvice.com. If you’re not subscribed yet now’s a great time to do that. If you like the video we’d love it if you hit the like button and finally, if you want to watch more videos then check out a playlist we made just for you. We’ll see you next time.