While there are many obvious perks to being an authorpreneur where you are working for yourself from the comfort of your own home, there are also obstacles you will sometimes encounter, such as the volume of content needed to satisfy your audience.
Most authorpreneurs do not have a team of individuals helping them with their business – especially not in the initial stages when they are on a budget and just starting out.
Coming up with content ideas on a regular basis is one of the most overwhelming aspects of this career, because it not only requires you to do it once, but multiple times across various platforms.
There’s wonderful advice about repurposing content for different uses (emails, blog posts, etc.), and you can even turn the same piece of content into multiple media formats such as video, audio, images and text.
But one of the problems that’s often not addressed is how to come up with new ideas that your readers will be interested in learning from you. In the early stages, you will have knowledge in your own mind about the niche topic that you want to share, but as that runs out, you may begin to struggle.
Below, you will find numerous ways you can uncover content that will appeal to your online followers. This will keep you positioned as a leader who has their finger on the pulse of the needs of your target audience.
You can use these ideas to come up with a topic for first book, book series, blog posts, emails, social media – basically for anything that requires new content!
Be the Leader Who Delivers Timely Information
Being first when it comes to content is an important factor in whether or not people view you as a leader in a niche. Regardless of what topic you are covering, people will always flock to those who are the ones to break the news to them about something or the one who touches on a specific trend that is happening.
If you are continually ignoring the news or trends in your niche, or waiting until the dust has settled so you can make an informed decision about it, you will be the last person on the list that they turn to.
If you are sincere about guiding your followers, you have to understand what is happening in your industry so that you can report back to your people, even if the news or trend is brand new and the results are inconclusive.
It doesn’t mean that you have to endorse any particular strategy or idea, but you do want to be informing people about what is happening so that they feel you are aware and will guide them adequately as the information unfolds.
In the weight loss niche, there is currently a trend happening where people are using diabetes medication to inject weekly in an effort to help them lose weight, even if they don’t have diabetes.
So as this trend is rising, and people are scouring the Internet for information, you want to continually update yourself about any side effects, insurance coverage, benefits, and other issues that you can talk to your readers about.
Make sure that if you are using news and trends to help you deliver content to your audience, that you don’t simply make one post about it and then ignore it from there on out.
You will need to check back to see what updates have occurred, and you can update the original blog post, send a new email out about it, or even create a product, if applicable, that teaches them how to use this information to their benefit.
In some industries, such as Internet marketing, there might be frequent news or trends that need to be shared with your audience. For example, every time Google has an update for their search engine optimization guidelines, you will want to be on top of that and inform your readers immediately so that they can make changes, if necessary, to avoid having their site buried in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
Create a Comprehensive Mind Map for Your Niche Topic
Mind maps are very beneficial to content creators, because it gives you an immediate visual overview of how your primary topics can branch out into more detailed, narrow ones.
You can have one overall mind map for your niche topic, and then take each bubble and create a separate mind map that branches out from there. To start with, select a main topic for your mind map, such as survival.
Then, have that bubble branch out into multiple subtopics. For the survival topic, you might have branches such as food, water, shelter, self defense, bug out plans, solar, weather, and more.
You will continue adding branches to each of these bubbles until you get to the most narrow possible topic you can imagine. If you take the topic of food, you might come up with branches such as:
- Shelf Stable Survival Food
- Garden
- Canning
- Dehydrating
- Foraging
- Hunting
- Fishing
And for each one of those, you would continue to branch out into the various topics that you want to cover. By having a mind map, you are easily able to fill your future publishing schedule to the brim.
You can use your mind map to easily jump from one topic to another, so that your blog or emails are not too dense in one area. You don’t want to have a blog that should be all about survival, only covering one topic like survival food.
You can keep your mind map color-coded and even change the color of bubbles once you have created a content piece on a certain topic so that you know to move on to a different one next time.
If you use a digital mind map online, it’s easy to rearrange the topics or even add more subheadings or information that you want to cover as they are discovered by you during your online research.
There are free and paid tools that you can use for mind mapping. Mind Meister has a basic plan that allows you to maintain up to three mind maps at no cost. From there, they have a personal, pro, and business plan that range from anywhere from $4.99 per month to $12.49 per month.
Mind maps are also a great way for you to quickly outline your content. Each of the branches that extend from a main topic will be covered in your content piece, and you can easily see what needs to be included.
Engage in Storytelling on a Regular Basis
There are many niche marketers who fail to use their storytelling skills to come up with new content ideas. Instead, they merely tap into their own personal knowledge about a niche, delivering facts and information in a very sterile way.
Your readers want to connect with you on a more personal level. Storytelling can allow you to do that. It’s a powerful tool that lets you share the experiences you’ve had and the emotional impact that was gained from it.
Not only can they put themselves in your shoes, but they know from your experiences and storytelling that you understand what they are going through. This opens the door for them to feel safe engaging with you, asking questions of you, and even sharing your content with others.
Instead of sitting down to write a content piece that explains why someone would want to do something, you can tap into your own personal story to share with your audience so that it paints a picture and makes it more memorable to them.
This is a deeper level of content creation than you may be used to. You have to open up to strangers and put yourself and a spotlight, and that can sometimes feel uncomfortable – but at the same time, it’s one of the most effective ways to connect with others.
An example of this might be a discussion of why you initially got into Internet marketing in the first place. If you are trying to ultimately sell products and services to people who also want to work from home for themselves, a storytelling piece about your circumstances, no matter how painful they were at that time, can make people see you in a different light that is more trustworthy.
You can bring dialogue into the mix. For example, maybe your child came up to you and asked, “Can Santa bring me a PlayStation for Christmas?” and you knew you wouldn’t be able to afford that on your old salary.
So instead of saying no, you decided to embark on a journey to be your own boss and be able to afford the kind of life you had always dreamed of. With storytelling, you want to weave a heavy dose of emotion into your content so that you are pulling at their heartstrings, or making them feel the same emotion you felt in that very moment.
Create a Solution-Based Content Piece for Each Problem or Pain Point
One great way to come up with new content pieces is to make a list of all of the problems or pain points that your readers might have, and then connect it with a possible solution that will work for them.
Instead of writing just one overall piece about problems people have, and solutions that might work, create detailed content pieces for each of the problems or pain points. This can not only help people enjoy the content more, but it will possibly rank higher in the SERPs.
So a good example of this would be the weight loss niche. If you ask 100 people why they can’t lose weight, they will have a variety of answers for you. Their problems range from a lack of motivation to hardships sticking to a diet.
Some of them say they have no time to cook nutritious meals or workout, and others blame some sort of physical issue on their inability to shed the pounds they have put on over the years.
So you could take each of those problems or pain points, and create a separate content piece that solves that problem for them. You could even create multiple content pieces for each solution for each problem area.
Here is an example: The problem is a lack of motivation. The solutions might be:
- Setting bite-sized milestones and goals to celebrate after each one is achieved
- Getting an accountability partner so you can keep each other motivated and committed
- Trying new things to prevent boredom and frustration
Your content piece could talk about all three options, or you could develop three separate pieces – one for each topic. For the article about choosing an accountability partner for keeping you motivated, you might discuss:
- Picking someone with similar goals
- Working with a positive person rather than a negative one
- Choosing reliable individuals who won’t flake out on you
- Deciding on the frequency and form of communication
- Embracing the possibility of having more than one accountability partner, or finding a new one if one isn’t working out well.
- Where to go to find an accountability partner (someone you know versus an online stranger)
If someone is looking for options to stay motivated, or more specifically, information about accountability partners, your content can rank very high and help them with their needs.
Take Confusing Topics and Dumb Them Down for All Audiences
Another good content idea, regardless of the niche you are in, is to take topics that often confuse people and dumb them down so that they are easy to understand, and simple to implement into their daily life.
There are many niche leaders who put information out on the Internet in such difficult wording that the person viewing the content is more lost than before they accessed it. They want easy to digest instructions and information.
If you can turn your content into something easier to read or watch, you will attract a bigger audience than limiting it to only those who can understand the more complex ideas.
Start by using basic language. You don’t want to be too technical or use terms that people are not familiar with. If you do have to use any kind of terminology that they may not know, be sure to explain it so that they understand what the word means.
Next, take information that people often gloss over, and break it down into bite sized bits of information. For example, in the Internet marketing industry, people often tell their audience to “start a blog.”
This might be a very simple instruction for those who have been in this industry for a long period of time. But for someone who is brand new to Internet marketing, these instructions are overwhelming and confusing, so they cannot get any further with your information after that point.
You want to look at the instructions or information being provided, and ask yourself if it needs to be broken down even further. In this case, you could go through all of the steps about starting a blog, which may include things like:
- Finding the right domain name
- Setting up a hosting account
- Installing WordPress
- Going through the settings on their blog dashboard, etc.
Being the type of niche leader who doesn’t leave your audience stranded at any point can help elevate you in the eyes of the consumer. They know that you will guide them every step of the way.
Track the Content for Your Top Competitors and Fill the Gaps
Even if there are thousands of competitors in your niche, there will be places where they have either neglected to cover certain topics, or not covered them in a way that consumers in your niche would prefer.
Sometimes, you will find that certain topics have not been covered very much at all. That means there is a lot of room for people like you to step up to the plate and rank well with that content.
Other times, you’re going to find topics that have been covered at a very surface level, and simply adding depth and more comprehensive information can set you apart from your competitors so that you appeal to the target audience on a more broad scale.
You want to take these opportunities to create very high quality and valuable content for your readers. In fact, Google has specifically said that they are elevating comprehensive content such as pillar blog posts to the top of their SERPs because it serves their users better than thin content.
In order to use this method for your content creation, you want to first conduct some research about specific topics. For example, you might pull from your mind map one of your branches and then research what is being discussed on the first one or two pages of the SERPs.
Go through each of the posts that are ranked high to see how thoroughly the competitor has discussed the topic. Jot down some ideas that you feel are lacking in the information.
You might also consider who the competitor has targeted with their content. For example, they may only be targeting men for survival or women for cooking. You can flip the script and craft your content to a new target audience so that it’s more relevant to others.
Using this method, you might take an overall topic such as canning food for survival and go to Google to see what is already being discussed by competitors. You might see that they’re covering things like:
- The best foods to can for emergencies
- When to can food from your garden
- Recipes for canned foods
- How to can food
- Supplies you need for canning food
But then, you notice certain things are missing that could be covered in more depth, such as:
- Sterilizing your equipment before use
- Choosing the right sized jars and correct lids
- Labeling, organizing and storing canned goods
- Checking and rotating canned goods over the months and years
Most content creators in your niche are probably covering the main ideas listed in the first set of bullet points above. By adding more detailed information, yours will become the go to link that Google and others want to share and consume.
Scour Social Engagement to Pick Up Topics People Need
One of the best things about the Internet is that it allows your audience to speak up and interact with you and others that you are competing with. This gives you a direct line to the people you want to lead to find out what they feel is missing in the marketplace and what they still need help with.
This is very different from the days when the only way consumers could find out new information was by reading a book that they purchased or checked out from the library. There was often no way to get in touch with the author or expert if they had any follow up questions or concerns.
You can use social media platforms (either your own or someone else’s) to see what your audience wants to know. If you don’t have a following yet, simply go to various platforms and type in your niche topic to see what people are commenting or asking.
For example, let’s say you are in the keto diet niche. You can open up three platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube and type in the phrase or hashtag starting a keto diet.
If you click on the very first video on YouTube, you will see people talking about the benefits they experienced, but you’ll also see areas where people struggled. For example, one person talks about how they nearly passed out the first time they tried to immediately go into ketosis, and years later they weaned off of carbs, allowing it to be easier for them.
You want to make sure that you’re not just looking at the initial comments, but clicking on the replies so you can see what questions people are asking to those individuals. In this case, someone asked the question, “Do you have trouble feeling full on the keto diet?”
That might be a good question for you to cover in a piece of content. Others on that same video also discussed the difficulty of the first week. A public post on Facebook simply asks, “My husband and I are starting keto next week. Any advice?”
There are 167 comments with advice – dozens and dozens of topics you can create content about including hair loss, meal prep, understanding labels, staying hydrated, and more.
Join groups on social platforms and simply lurk and watch to see what people want to know. You’ll also be able to see the engagement of those questions to get an idea of how prevalent the lack of knowledge or desire to understand the topic is.
Create Content That Helps Them Pinpoint Their Problems and Next Steps
Sometimes it helps to ask your audience questions in your content so that it makes them reflect on their own issues and clearly identify and communicate them to you for your future content needs.
You can do this in the form of a quiz or survey, but you can also simply create a blog or email post where you pose a question to your readers and allow them to engage with you and respond publicly or directly via email or private message.
You can make the questions broad, where you simply ask what topics they would like to hear or see you create content on. You can also pose it as a question about their personal challenges or problem areas as well as their goals.
You don’t have to leave it open-ended, either. You can and ask about their solutions. For example, if you are writing a blog post about choosing a niche, you might ask your audience how they decided to come up with the niche they are pursuing.
You will usually get a mix of people who share their own journey with you and those who are still struggling. Some people might respond that they chose their niche based on their own struggles, such as trying to make money online.
Others might say that they are still having trouble deciding, and they don’t know whether to go with what will earn them the most money or what they know the most about. This answer could give you an idea for a content piece about prioritizing information before making your decision on which niche to choose.
Expand Your Single Content Pieces Into a Series
Usually, some of the advice you’ll see about doing more with one content piece is to repurpose it into something different. This might include a different media format or using it for a different reason, such as taking a lead magnet report and turning it into a pillar blog post.
But you can also take an initial content piece and develop it into a series based on the topic or theme that it is covering. A theme might be something like solar survival options.
A topic series might be how to live off the grid using solar gadgets under $100 each. Readers love a series, as do people who tune into video content. You can either upload the series all at once so they can go from one piece of content to the next, or you can drip it out over a period of time.
Make sure you have your content series mapped out ahead of time so that you know that you can deliver on the promise of an ongoing series for a certain period of time. If you are in the weight loss niche, then your series might be something like, healthy meal prepping on Sundays.
Then, every Sunday you would upload a new piece for the series that would discuss what the meals for the week would be, and how to prepare them. It could also be something like, eating healthy for under $5 per meal.
You can start with one broad topic, and break things down into a topic that will be covered in the upcoming series. For example, if you are an Internet marketing, you might have a series about how to succeed as an email marketer.
In that series, you may want to cover a variety of topics from choosing the right autoresponder system to developing subject lines that convert well into a good open rate, split testing your content, and more.
When you are creating a series of content pieces, you want to make sure that you link back to the previous part in the series, the first part in the series, and (when it’s ready) the next part in the series.
You can share your series to your subscribers or to your social media followers, and drive traffic back to the first part in your series. At the end, you can then repurpose the series into a lead magnet or info product if you want.
Let Numbers Make an Impact on Your Audience
There are times when information and storytelling doesn’t have as much impact as sheer data. When combined with the other strategies, this can be a great way to convince your target audience that you are the go to leader with the information they need.
You can look up statistics and data for your niche topic along with research that has been done by others and share it with your audience to emphasize or support a particular viewpoint that you are sharing with them.
You can also create visual elements such as a graph or chart or even an infographic that can help them digest the data that you are presenting to them. This can illustrate your points better than simply restating facts.
Instead of just hammering them with numbers, you want to present it to them as a support for your overall message and instructions. Using this data along with storytelling is a great way to enhance the message and make it more memorable.
For example, you can find many statistics about diet culture, including how much people are spending, a breakdown of the demographics for who is trying to lose weight, the diseases and complications people have and the number of people who are suffering from them, and even the basic beliefs about whether or not they will succeed or fail at their diet.
So for instance, in 2020, Statista reported that a mere 24% of Americans think that sugar is most likely to cause weight gain. If you are leading people on a journey of ketosis, you might want to address that statistic and challenge your audience to go one month without sugar and see how it impacts their weight and overall health.
Consider a Content Collaboration with Other Top Leaders in Your Niche
You may have heard of collaborations online, and these are often done between social media influencers in a way to help build exposure for a brand. But you can also have content collaborations with other experts and influencers in your niche that are different from simply paying someone to tout your brand to their followers.
This can help you tap into a new audience and bring fresh perspectives to your content. You can base your collaboration on the platform that you are using, such as TikTok. You can find other influencers or competitors on the same platform and simply agree to duet or stitch each other’s content so that you are sharing advice and good information with one another’s followers.
Another way you can collaborate with others is by developing a partnership for a product. When two experts are collaborating to release a new product into the marketplace, it double s the value for the consumer.
If you don’t want to partner up with someone, but you still want to build your list and use your content to gain exposure for your expertise, you might want to host or participate in a giveaway event.
By doing this, yourself and other competitors will all come together to drive traffic to a single page where each individual has a gift that people can download when they sign up to their list.
You can also approach other content creators to do a guest blogger exchange with you. They will create a post for your blog, which links back to their site, and you will do the same on their blog.
You can also create an interview with another top niche competitor. When you interview that person, they will be driving traffic to your blog so that their followers can see that their expertise was sought for a content piece, which gives you the opportunity to put these individuals on your list.
Keep a File of All Questions That Come in So You Can Create Content for Them
As time goes on, you are going to have people contacting you via private message on social platforms and even emailing you directly through the contact form on your blog. you may have the urge to quickly respond to these requests and then delete them, but you need to use them to your advantage for content in the future.
You don’t want to wait until you are struggling to find new content ideas to start using these questions to your advantage. Even if you have your content publishing schedule mapped out for the next three months, if a question comes in, file it away so that you can address it whenever you are in need of a new concept or idea.
Your followers will also appreciate it whenever they ask a question and you create an entire blog post that answers it in depth for them. You never want to put them on the spot and use their name in the content, but you can give an anonymous quotation to show that you are being the kind of leader who listens to your target audience and then helps them with whatever they need.
Create a Comprehensive Resource or User’s Guide for Your Readers
Another type of content page you can create for your readers it would be a comprehensive resource guide. This can be a list with detailed information and tips for all of the tools and various resources they may need to succeed with your niche topic.
These may include websites where they can buy items, digital downloadable tools and other items. You can either link to items you sell or created or those you promote as an affiliate – or that are simply helpful.
For the resources, you might have a large resource guide that covers everything, or individual ones that cover smaller topics. For example, one might be a resource guide for everything an online marketer needs or another might be just resources for the best private label rights providers.
You can also develop a comprehensive user’s guide as part of your content. It can be published publicly or put into a PDF downloadable format or video compilation they can use.
People love step-by-step guides that are comprehensive and detailed and most importantly, that help them with some type of goal or issue that they have been struggling to understand.
Release Actionable Content They Can Apply to See Results
Too few marketers include actionable steps in their content. Instead, they just inform, educate and inspire. But your people – even though they may love your insight and guidance, want to be led through the exact steps needed to accomplish a goal.
Your action-based content could be a template they can use to fill in and make progress on their goals or it might be a checklist or cheat sheet they can print out to ensure they don’t miss a step in the process.
You might also create content that is delivered in the form of a challenge. Challenging your audience to do something motivates them to push forward, through their obstacles until they reach the finish line.
Start with an issue many are struggling to complete and create a challenge that extends over a period of time. It might be two weeks or 30 days – whatever it takes to allow them to accomplish bite-sized tasks.
For each day of the challenge, discuss the reason they’ll want to do this task, how to do it and what the results should be. You can also invite them to share their experience after completing the task so that each person can gain support and experience camaraderie within the challenge.
Showcase Success Stories Besides Your Own
Success stories are great motivational tools and it can serve as a wonderful method to generating new content when you’re out of ideas. Usually, marketers share their own success story.
It ends there. But there are more success stories at your fingertips. You can talk about amazing things others have done or achieved. You can also showcase the successes your followers have had (with their permission of course) whenever they apply your advice.
Sometimes people will create reviews and testimonials for your products or services, and those can be the basis for your content. For example, if someone says that your guidance gave them the shortcut they needed to succeed faster, your content might discuss the long struggle most people undergo.
Allow Your Case Study Content to Prove That Your Advice Works
Sometimes, people don’t just want you to provide them with information. They want you to prove that what you are saying will work for them. This is especially true in niches like Internet marketing where there are many scammers prevalent who prey on unsuspecting consumers.
You can create case studies to work as content pieces that will support your ideas. Case studies can be public or they can be private, gated content that your subscribers need a password to access.
You might want to use one of your own products to create a case study or you can use someone else’s product that you purchased, as long as you are not giving away the information unless your reader has also purchased the same information.
There are different ways you can conduct a case study. First and foremost, you want to select a problem or obstacle that people are trying to overcome, and then find a solution or info product that addresses that need.
You’ll want to have a discussion within the content that explains why you chose this particular product. Your case study will usually unfold over a series of posts on your blog or in emails, but you can also update a single post if you prefer.
Start by going over the promises that were made on the sales page so that you can adequately evaluate whether or not the product lived up to the hype once you have completed your case study.
If the product that you have purchased has 10 chapters or 10 video modules, you can make 10 different posts of content where you absorb and implement the advice in each individual chapter or module, apply it, and discuss your results and thoughts.
Once you have completed the case study, you can give your overall opinion about whether or not the product is a viable option for whatever particular problem you sought it out for.
If it’s your own product that you are creating a case study for, then you will be providing additional hand holding to your buyers. But even if it’s one that you are promoting for another vendor, going through it alongside them is a great way to ensure their loyalty as a follower of your recommendations.
Talk About Changes and Evolutions in Your Niche
Another great content idea you can use for your niche is to periodically discuss how things used to be, what’s happening now in your niche, and any future predictions that you have about where things are going.
This is a great topic for almost any niche. For example, there are both etiquette and guidelines as well as tools that have evolved in the Internet marketing industry. Everything from Google Webmaster rules to the tools that we use to build websites and pages has evolved into something better.
Even in the weight loss industry, you can talk about previous fads that have died out, outdated ideas that even doctors used to embrace, and how the industry is changing with things such as wearable fitness trackers, apps, and even healthy meal delivery services.
You can also discuss the future of your industry. That might be the use of AI, any type of regulations that are poised to be implemented in your niche, or even trends such as the development of survival communities that people can move to and live among like minded people.
You can even look back on your own content for ideas of this nature. You might be in Internet marketing and have lots of content about SEO strategies that have been banned, or social platforms like Squidoo that went under.
You might discuss the old post and share any thoughts about how and why that happened, and where things stand now or where they’re headed in the future. Consumers love to follow the niche leaders that they trust for guidance about how they need to prepare.
Consider Live, Interactive Content Where Your Audience Can Participate
Don’t forget that content doesn’t have to be created in a stagnant space. You don’t have to simply push publish for your text-based blog or video content and call it a day. Your content can be interactive and eye opening for your niche followers.
Consider coming up with a good idea for a webinar that you can host by yourself or with co-hosts to entertain and cater to the needs of your followers. Pick a topic that your subscribers would be willing to show up for and announce your webinar far enough in advance that they can clear their schedule to attend it.
Tell them that you’ll be accepting questions from the audience so they can take time to form some questions and either send them in or have them ready to ask when the live event occurs.
Schedule it at a time when most people would be able to attend based on where most of your followers are located. Your webinar will be attended by more people if you’re solving a problem for them or sharing expertise they need.
Instead of going it alone, try to find a co-host or even an entire panel of individuals that can participate. If you have a panel, make sure it’s not too large so that each person has the chance to give advice and answer questions.
If you have something like a challenge or task that can be completed in a 1-2 hour time frame, then you can turn your webinar into a workshop or training session where people are learning and applying a skill along with you.
Another interact piece of content you can use is a live stream on social media platforms. Live streams can be done on sites like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok (to name a few).
You can simply go live and be available for questions while talking about a variety of topics within your niche – or you can plan it out similarly to how a webinar is planned for a topic.
If you go live, you might want to have a moderator onboard who can filter questions for you to answer, and ban disruptive trolls who often land on a live event and want to wreak havoc.
The live content that you create doesn’t have to be lost forever after it’s completed. You can record it using a screen capture software and use the content at a later date. You can sell access to it or use it as a lead generation.
Coming up with fresh content ideas may seem like a big task initially, but you’ve just discovered 18 simple methods to expand your strategies significantly. You can use one or all of them, and do more of what your target audience responds best to.
That might be something like the live content, or it could be gated case studies. Seek their feedback and listen to their needs and you’ll be the kind of niche leader your followers are loyal to.