Everyone’s been there. You know you need to get a post, or at the very least a tweet, out for your business but you just can’t seem to come up with anything. You aren’t ready to come out and admit to yourself or anyone else that you are completely stuck, but you know you need some inspiration from somewhere. So where do you turn?

Creating quality content can sometimes seem harder than it really needs to be. Inspiration is everywhere, you just need to know how to decipher it and how to turn that inspiration into captivating content that your audience will enjoy and benefit from. This is where the three C’s come into play. Use these connections correctly and you will have more content ideas than you do open spots on your editorial calendar.

The Three C’s for Content Inspiration

1. Culture – The very first place you should go to for inspiration is your culture – topics trending in your industry. This is the easiest place of the three C’s to stimulate quality content ideas. Trending industry items are things that good marketers are always reading about and researching so they can bring the same ideas to their own audience.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with this one. Even something as simple as retweeting news out can start a conversation about a trending topic. If you are looking for a complete blog post on recent news, take a topic that interests you and give your opinion on it, or discuss how this news can impact others in your industry. Customers always want to know how things are going to impact them. Sometimes discussing the positives and the negatives help customers connect and really appreciate your voice on the matter.

2. Customers – Since everything you are doing is centered around them anyway, why not find out what they are talking about or interested in and create content around that. Put together a list of the most common questions that you get asked over and over again. Think through your response and how you could have made it better, maybe more elaborate. That’s it. Perfect content that your customers want to read about.

Using your customers and their common questions is a gold mine for content marketing. Since most industries are always changing and evolving, the answers to these questions are going to evolve as well. That means updates to blog posts or changes in opinion as time goes on will be in order. Bam. More quality content without having to wreck your brain for hours. It’s such a win-win opportunity.

3. Colleagues – The final “C” is use your colleagues. These are the people you interact with daily in some way, shape or form. Though you may not physically see them in the office on a daily basis, chances are you are communicating via the phone or email. Think about something you discuss time and time again. There is a reason you are discussing it. It could be because things keep changing or because there isn’t enough information out there. Whatever the reason behind it, it’s a perfect content opportunity. If you are talking about it, 9 times out of 10 so is someone else.

Also consider topics that are brought up during meetings. Although the actual content may be sensitive information, the general theme is most likely not. Take a piece of that and roll with it. This could also be a great time to toss around the direct question to your colleagues of “what do you want to hear more about.” Coming out and asking can get you a variety of answers and a whole host of content topics.

You May Not Have it All, But You Have Something

Not every topic you come across is going to be something you can create a 500-word blog post on. However, it may be something you can create a 140 character tweet about. Creating content is not just about creating blogs. It can be a Facebook post, a tweet or even an image on Instagram. Anything that gets your clients interested and talking is what quality content is all about.

At LeadsPanda we are all about growing your company and dominating your online business and providing quality content is at the forefront of every online company’s success.