Content creation ideas can be a huge obstacle for a content team. Identifying your niche, studying your audience, and serving them relevant content takes a lot of work. Even if your brain is flowing with ideas, sometimes it’s tough to identify which ones are right for your audience.

As a publisher, you have access to an endless number of tools that can help you find your audience and understand what they want. Simply having some titles and ideas can go a long way toward helping you move forward with writing, shooting, and posting your content! Here’s a look at a few tools and how to use them to generate content ideas.

Understanding what you’re looking for

A list of content ideas can appear helpful, but the true benefit comes from knowing how to apply these ideas to your audience. For example, if you want to show behind-the-scenes content, there are a thousand ways to do that. Who on your team relates to your audience? What part of the process does your audience care about? If you’re a television station, your users may not care much about editing or mic-ing up a reporter. However, a soundcheck with your reporter flubbing a headline or some witty banter with a producer may go a long way in endearing them to your demographic.

But how do you know what they want?

First, use your social media analytics. Every major social platform has its own analytics, and if you use posting software like True Anthem, you’ll get an even more robust look at your audience’s demographic and preferences. Do they like local interest stories? Do they respond to political news? Are they largely older or younger? Do they have children/grandchildren? All of these factors can influence how they perceive content.

Second, look hard at which content performs consistently and when/where. What are the connecting themes? Is there a posting cadence they enjoy? Do they engage in the morning when they get to work or scrolling in the evening? These details should inform how you format your content selection and distribution decisions.

The tools to help you get it done

There are so many tools around that can help you get a clearer picture of what your audience wants. Here’s a good list to get started:

• TikTok Creator Search Insights: Creator Search Insights helps you find frequently searched topics. You can sort by category (finding topics within your niche like News or Tech) or For You (Categories based on your existing content). Even cooler, you can search for “gap topics”—frequently searched topics that are underserved with content.
• Moz SEO Keyword Search: This one is a bit different but still valuable. This shows what people are searching for on Google. Creating content to answer the questions can be a great way to drive SEO traffic.
• Instagram Inspirations: This is a bit lower tech than TikTok’s offering, but it could still be incredibly useful. Inspirations shows you content that your audience is loving. See Reels, trending audio, and other accounts that are hitting with your audience!

What do you do with this new information?

Once you have taken a deep dive into what your audience wants, what is already working for you, and what audiences are liking on TikTok, Instagram and search, you can start to develop a plan. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Are you already creating some of this content? How can you develop it even further? Expanding on what you’re doing is step one.
• Where are the opportunities? Try something new. Just because you haven’t done it before doesn’t mean it won’t work.
• Analyze everything! The beauty of social media is that feedback is instantaneous. You’ll know very quickly if something is working or not.

Here’s how True Anthem can help

We are here for you. From helping you deep-dive into your analytics to freeing up your staff to explore new content, we can support you as you make your content creation ideas come to life. Set up your personalized demo now!