“The more traffic we get, the better.”

Sound familiar?

If you’ve ever been in a meeting where this sentiment was uttered, then you’re in trouble. 

Someone on your team is prioritizing high-volume keywords and search engine algorithms in your company’s content creation, and that’s a dangerous game to play. 

Why? 

Because if you’re not careful, you can easily end up ranking and getting lots of traffic, but none of those readers is calling you or scheduling demos. 

Yes, good SEO is important. But even a #1 spot on Google won’t generate sales if your content isn’t interesting, useful, or hyper-relevant to your audience.

So, how exactly do you create content that both ranks well and generates leads? 

Simply, you take an “outside-in” approach where you let customers bring the ideas to you, rather than you forcing your ideas on customers.  

Let’s take a look at how it works.

Step #1: Figure out what your customers are really saying

Marketers are really good at writing content briefs. But they’re often really bad at speaking to customers because they rarely have direct contact with them. 

So when a marketer hands off that brief to a freelance writer or your in-house team, there’s a good chance it’s built around a generic topic that everyone is talking about or contains only a “best guess” about what the customer wants and needs.

And best guesses won’t cut it when you’re trying to stand out in a sea of content. 

The reality is, your customers are a goldmine of content ideas. 

And you want to hear those ideas straight from the horse’s mouth – or at least, from their fingertips, social media posts and the mouths of the people who talk to your customers every day.

The next time you’re tasked with coming up with content ideas, start by talking to your customer-facing teams: sales, delivery and support. 

Better still, hold a quarterly brain squeeze. Ask everyone to share their top conversations with customers – what has them fired up? What are they struggling with? What’s the one thing they want answers to again and again? 

You might be surprised by what you learn.

Questions to ask your sales team:

• Which questions do your prospects ask most often? 
• What are the main challenge/s your prospects are trying to solve?
• What objections do your prospects raise about your product or service?
• What do your prospects say about your competitors?

Questions to ask your delivery or support team:

• What part of the service are your customers most happy with?
• What are the most common questions your customers ask?
• What advice do you give most often?
• What are the most common use cases that customers use your service for?

Once you have the answers to these questions, brainstorm and look for patterns. What topics keep coming up?  These are the things you should be writing about.

Remember, your goal is to write content that is not only ranking well but also helping your audience solve their challenges and achieve their goals. 

So, when in doubt, always err on the side of creating something useful over something that will just get a ton of traffic.

Step #2: Look at what industry influencers, experts, and competitors are talking about

Chances are, you’re not the only one in your industry talking about the topics that come up in customer conversations. 

So, once you have a list of ideas from your customer-facing teams, it’s time to see what the wider industry is saying. 

You can then look for gaps that might not have been covered – or come up with a controversial take on a popular topic.

A great way to do this is through BuzzSumo. BuzzSumo crawls 8 billion online articles to identify the most popular topics for a particular niche. 

Simply enter your topic or the domain name of a competitor and voila! Buzzsumo will find the most popular articles about that topic. You’ll come away with a ton of ideas for blog posts, including viral topics and evergreen ideas that could be approached in a new way.

LinkedIn is another great place to see what’s being talked about in your industry. 

Big industry names get a lot of engagement on their posts and people are very happy to share their opinions. Often, you’ll see a whole thread with questions, discussions and red-hot takes emerge from these posts. 

This is a fantastic way to feel the pulse of your industry and uncover fresh ideas that you might not have come up with on your own. 

Step #3: Hang out where your customers hang out

Another powerful “outside-in” approach is to explore what your customers are saying in the online communities where they hang out. 

Members often use these groups as a place to get help with a specific problem or share their experiences with solutions. 

They’re basically writing their pain points for you – and you’ll often get a sneak peek into where competitors are going wrong. 

To find these communities, do a quick Google search for “{industry} + forum” or “{industry} + community.” And don’t forget to check out:

• Industry-specific Facebook and LinkedIn groups
• Reddit
• Quora
• Paid communities or roundtables

Topics that have a lot of engagement are usually a good place to start. 

You’ll see what the major conversations are about and can find content ideas that are truly aligned with your target audience.

Step #4: Take the best ideas forward

By this point, you may have more content ideas than you can handle. That’s okay. 

The goal is to have a solid list of stories that you can use for the next three to four months. After that, you’ll want to repeat the above steps to keep your ideas fresh and make sure you’re staying ahead of new trends.

For now, your job is to choose the best ideas to take forward. Ask these questions to help you prioritize:

• Influence: Will this article convince your target audience that your company is worth their time, attention and trust?
  

• Unique: Is there a unique, provocative or controversial angle you can take on a particular topic? How will your article add to what’s already out there?
  

• Trending: Is this a timely topic that needs to be shared right away?
  

• Validity: Can you make a really strong argument on this topic? Do you have access to experts who can give you the proof or information you need?
  

• Alignment: Is this idea aligned with your company values and product or service offering?

The best ideas come from the outside-in 

Gone are the days of generic SEO content that make your readers run away faster than Forrest Gump. 

The tech market is crowded, and your content has to hit the bull’s eye to stand out. 

With an outside-in approach, you’re just about guaranteed to come up with ideas that are not only fresh and interesting, but genuinely useful and relevant to your customer. 

So what are you waiting for? 

Start exploring what’s being said by customers, influencers and communities, and see what topics you can add your voice to. Your readers – and your bottom line – will thank you for it.