Five quick ways to find inspiration for your content marketing

Content marketing is a superb way to engage with existing supporters but it’s also an effective route to uncovering new audiences. 

Simple, right? But often, the most difficult part of content creation is coming up with ideas and inspiration. With so much content out there, it can seem that every blog topic has been covered, every social media trend has gone out of fashion, or you have run out of options to produce content that engages with your cause.  

So, we’re here to offer you some creative stimulation to help you have that lightbulb moment – for free! Here are five places to find inspiration for your content marketing: 

1. Reddit

We’ve all heard of it and may even use it ourselves, but Reddit is not always associated with work.  However, there is a reason why Reddit is one of the most popular websites in the world. It is a vast and varied place filled with a wide range of communities (called subreddits), that cover any topic or niche you can think of. This makes it an ideal place to search for your area of work or related topics that you can use to inspire blogs or insights that drive your audience. 

Top tip: When you find an interesting or relevant post, filter the comment section by ‘Top’ or ‘Best’ to find some popular, engaging, or unique takes and opinions from Redditors – they may have some ideas or thoughts you’ve never considered before. 

2. Quora

Quora is a social question-and-answer website. It’s a bit like an online Agony Aunt (with less agony) that covers all sorts of topics. Users can ask questions to the community and can expect a wide range of in-depth and interesting responses.  

You can see what questions and topics are trending on the website, which acts a great resource for inspiration. Is there a question related to your work that a lot of people are asking (and in turn, searching for) online? Why don’t you have a go at answering it, from the perspective of your charity.  

Top tip: Ask your own question! If you want to understand how people think about topics that are relevant to your charity, ask the Quora forum. Whether you’re looking for something niche or a general census, creating your own question could give you some inspiring insights for new content. 

3. AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic is a tool that uses keywords and phrases to generate content ideas, topics, and data. Simply enter a word about your work or niche to find out what the public is searching for or asking about this topic, including prepositions and comparisons. It will provide a visual graphic of related words and topics to give you inspiration for your next post! 

Top tip: Search for your area of work and check the prepositions AnswerThePublic provides you with. Every ‘Can’, ‘What’, and ‘For’ could be the title of your next blog or social post. 

4. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is an SEO tool that generates content ideas and topics based on keywords. It shows related words that have been searched on the internet in the last month, with a range of data, questions, and prepositions too. Click on these will give you suggestions as well as the sites that are most visited when the topics are searched – which can be used for content inspiration. 

Top tip: When searching for a relevant keyword, click the ‘Content ideas’ tab on the left to get exactly that! Ubersuggest will show a range of pages and articles that focus on that topic, and rate their popularity, making it easier for you to prioritise ideas for new content.  

5. Repurpose your own content

Reuse, recycle and repurpose!  

Although all these tools we’ve listed above are brilliant at helping you find new topics to create content around, there is absolutely no harm in reusing and repurposing your existing content.  Don’t be afraid to turn that case study into a Twitter thread or that news piece into a TikTok story. You can break down bigger pieces into smaller posts, re-examine old pieces and update with new insights or simply reshare existing content to new followers – those you might have gained since the post was first published. If you think about how you frame content differently to make it relevant to the here-and-now, and are sparing with how often you repost, you can create and re-use engaging content without reinventing the wheel.  

Top tip: Is there a topic trending in the news that relates to a blog piece, case study or piece of content you’ve created in the past? Re-share it with a comment that indicates it’s topicality.