Hi there, and welcome to issue #10 of the Outranked SEO newsletter.
In this issue, I’m breaking down how to come up with content ideas that your competitors won't have thought of and why, in this new era of AI-powered search, going beyond keyword tools is going to be key to driving growth.
You’ll learn:
- The sources of content ideas that exist within every business.
- How to go about finding ideas for content that your competitors won't have thought of.
- Why you need to go beyond keyword tools to build out your content strategy.
Let’s get into it.
The best content ideas don't come from a keyword tool...
The usual approach to building out a content strategy starts by doing one of two things:
- Loading up a keyword tool and looking at what people are searching for
- Doing competitor analysis to see what they're publishing content on that you haven't
I'm not saying these approaches don't have their place, but when this is all we do, we end up producing copycat content strategies; writing the same pieces as everyone else.
You need to break out of this cycle and do something that helps you come up with content ideas your competitors aren't having.
Here's two ways to do that...
1. Speak with subject matter experts, sales teams & customer service teams...
Great ideas for content that others aren't even thinking about already exist within your business. But they're not coming to you unless you go out of your way to find them.
Go book in meetings or calls with people within the business who sit outside the marketing team:
- Subject matter experts / the people doing the work
- Sales teams
- Customer service teams
Schedule 30 minutes (make this recurring every month or quarter if possible) and record the conversation.
Have them talk at you, prompting with questions like:
- "What are the hottest topics in our industry right now?"
- "What's coming in the industry in the next 6 to 12 months that's going to be a big deal?"
- "What are the most common objections potential clients and customers have during sales calls?"
- "What are the most common issues we get brought up on customer support calls?"
Don't steer these chats too much; you're trying to have these people talk at you. Listen more than you talk.
The recordings (and transcriptions) from these chats are the seeds of ideas for your content strategy.
I guarantee you that doing this will give you way more content ideas than you'll be able to produce. And the ideas that you come out of these sessions with will be exactly the types of content that your potential clients and customers want to read.
They're also unique to your business.
And that matters a lot right now.
When creating content, you need to ask yourself "could this be written accurately by AI?"
Asking this question gives you a great indication on whether the topic is something that there's consensus on which AI could write without much input from you. If this is the case, are you really adding value to your audience?
Information gain matters a lot right now. But you don't get this by writing the same topics everyone else has written about.
You get information gain by taking information (and data) that is unique to your business and using it as part of your content.
And using subject matter experts and customer-facing teams to come up with content ideas?
This is probably the single best thing you could be doing right now to create helpful content that isn't just based on regurgitating what others have said or done.
Yes, you could go and use your experts to add value to existing topics (and I recommend you do this), but the ultimate win is creating content on things you competitors aren't even thinking about yet; because they're using an outdated playbook.
That's how you win in 2025.
2. Find the hot topics being talked about on Reddit & Quora
Another underutilised source of inspiration for content is platforms like Reddit and Quora.
These give you a raw look at what your target audience is talking, and asking, about. As well as the things they do and don't care about.
Want an example?
At Digitaloft, we work with one of London's leading aesthetics clinics.
I turned to reddit to look for inspiration to feed into the brand's content strategy for the coming months...
Here are a few interesting topics that stood out to me, that I'll be sharing with our strategy team:
These are the questions that the target market is asking and the things they're talking about. And it took me less than 2 minutes to find these examples.
The quick route to surfacing ideas here?
Just replace [topic] with whatever it is you're researching ideas around.
The takeaway…
Everyone has access to the same keyword research tools; but only you have access to your business's subject matter experts, sales team and customer service team.
So use them.
In this new era of search, the brands who win are going to be those who create content that AI can't, because the topics and insights sit inside the heads of the people inside a business.
Start looking for unique perspective to push and new topics to write about that your competitors aren't even thinking about right now... doing these things is going to be how you win over the coming months.
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If you learned something from this issue or it’s made you think about SEO a little differently, please consider forwarding it to someone else on your team.
I’m on a mission to make sure more SEO investment actually has an impact on real business metrics.
Appreciate you making it to the end; same time next week?
- James Brockbank
P.S. If you ever need expert support with SEO or digital PR and want to drive results that actually matter, I’d love to chat. Let’s talk.
✍️ From the Loft...
Fresh from our side of the web; here’s a few things me and other Lofties put out into the world this week.
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📌 This week’s bookmarks:
If I could only send three links to a fellow marketer this week, it’d be these…
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👋 Hi, I'm James...
Managing Director & Founder at Digitaloft.
I've spent the last 10 years building an agency that's perfectly positioned to help ambitious brands to drive real business growth from SEO and digital PR.
You might have seen me speaking at events like BrightonSEO, SMX and the International Search Summit.
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