How to Discover Hundreds of Powerful Content Ideas for Your Business

This is a live blog post from #OMSummit, Day 2, in San Diego. Session presented by Arnie Kuenn, President of Vertical Measures.

Gives you a vehicle to post new content
Allows for internal linking
Keeps the search engines coming back – Have 434% more indexed pages (in example)
Have 2X as many back links (in example)
Site gets 55% more traffic (in example)
You have 79% more twitter followers (in example)

1. Start with Research (ask and seek the answer to one question: What question do you get asked most often?)

Use Google “Discussions” tab to get ideas of discussions going on. Address their main concerns and address them in your content.
Use Yahoo, Quora, Twitter and Answers.com to get more ideas and questions around any topic. Do an “exact match” search of your keywords to get ideas.
Use Google suggest to expand your long tail keyword list.
Use the exact words of the inquiry posts in your title, specifically for questions no one is answering and you will absolutely get to the top of Google quickly.
OpenSiteExplorer.org – use this tool to get ideas by searching for competitors – they will give you ideas (in Top Pages) – the results in this search show you the most popular pages listed by your competitors. Use this to generate new post ideas.
Create a content list in a spreadsheet – then spend the time answering these questions. Spreadsheet should include: Title based on research), Content Type (blog post, info graphic, video, etc) and the keywords associated to target in the post.

2. Lay Out a 12 Month Content Calendar using seasons and topics that are relevant, and feeding in content from the research completed above.

Put this into your actual Google or Outlook calendar. This should be planned at least 90 days out. This should be visible in the team calendar and to the CEO.

3. Create Great Content!

Example: Career Guide to Golf. Build it once and it gets thousands of downloads even years later!