Writing Content That Your Audience Needs In 2022 - Content Ideas That Uplift & Excite

Kirsten Back Author

Now more than ever, people need content that counterbalances the negativity that is permeating our daily lives. Tips to create uplifting content

The world definitely doesn’t need more news like this:

People are tired of doom, gloom, and negativity. They are exhausted from struggling and navigating challenges with grace and a positive outlook. Many have lost too much and with it - their positive outlook. They have accepted that it’s going to be tough and that their efforts might be joyless.

But this doesn’t mean that people don’t want or need positivity and joy. Quite the opposite!

After two years of unpredictability and negativity dominating the news, people, now more than ever, need positivity…

And this is where you can make a difference and change perspectives, minds, and the way how people feel and deal with their challenges. You have the power to bring your audience positivity, joy, and hope.

How?

With your content!

Why?

Because people need encouragement and positive energy to counterbalance the negativity that permeates their lives.

As a positive side effect, you will also profit from this process and see how spreading positivity will let you stand out, make a better contribution, and grow your audience.

Bringing joy and positivity lets you stand out

The wonderful thing about bringing other people joy is, that it brings you joy at the same time.

Even if you hate content creation – with the right mindset, processes, structures and writing habits, you can turn your content drudgery into amazing periods of personal development and growth.

And, honestly, don’t you believe that the world could become a little brighter through your (content) contribution?

Let’s start off with a few questions to steer you towards finding joy in creating content.

• How good is your content?
  Be honest – how valuable, helpful, and well researched is your content? Are you excited and proud to post it? Does your audience send you amazing feedback because your content shifts or develops their way of thinking?
  
  
  
• Delivering quality gives you a sense of achievement and the creation process is an amazing opportunity for reflection and personal development. It is a time where you can develop your thoughts, create new concepts that will, with time, pave your path to thought leadership
  
• What is making your content different?
  Being different and thinking differently doesn’t only make you stand out – it also challenges your audience to think and start a conversation with you.
  
  Think about your intention and why you are creating content. Is it just for your SEO or is it for your and your audience’s benefit?
  What do you want to achieve with your content? What do you want your content to be known for? And how authentic do you allow yourself to be?
  
  Allowing yourself to be authentic and speak your mind can be a big relief. Choosing topics and language that comes from deep within you allows you to create refreshing content that breaks existing patterns and “tested” blueprints. And that lets you stand out and helps you to find your authentic voice.
  
  
  
  Especially think about how you are going to make your content different this year. Think of what your clients have gone through and what they need most at this moment. Encouragement, acknowledgement, belief in them, empathy?
  
  
• How can you bring joy to creating content?
  For many, content creation is a tedious but necessary task and they cannot imagine finding any joy in the process. I believe that this is due to having a poor content creation process (you can check out a process that works really well for me here) and not entering the creation process with positive intentions.
  
  
  
  
  Feeling miserable about content creation is a choice! You have the choice to acknowledge the negative emotions that are triggered by you starting your content creation process – but then you should let those emotions go and intentionally enjoy the creation process.
  
  You can choose how you want to feel while creating content. Whether that’s excited, free-spirited, deeply reflective

• How are you going to find topics that uplift and excite your audience?
  Earlier, I said that people need encouragement and positive energy to counterbalance the negativity that permeates their lives. The topics you choose and how you write about these topics define how your content is going to affect your audience.
  
  I am aware that finding topics is stressful for many entrepreneurs. They believe that they have either no interesting stories to tell – or their minds blank out when trying to fish content ideas out of thin air..
  If that’s the case for you, then look into the following:

How to choose topics that uplift and excite your audience

The major requirement for creating content that is relevant for your audience is to know your audience and understand their situations, desires, and their needs.

Over the last few years situations, desires and needs have changed significantly. Only a while ago gaining financial freedom was a desire that many entrepreneurs were working towards. That was replaced with a desire to thrive during times of uncertainty – and now I can detect a desire for acknowledgement, encouragement, and positivity.

People want to feel good again. They want to go through their days with positivity and feel that they are supported and that others trust in their abilities to make this world a little better. They want to belong and serve a cause that makes them feel good. And your content can help with that.

So, the first thing to do is to actively listen to your clients and listen to their conversations. You can do that by either talking with your clients, reviewing their feeds, checking out discussions and posts in your favourite groups.

What are your clients talking about? What are their greatest concerns and desires?

When I think of my clients, there are a few things that shine through quite strongly:

• A desire for self-development and becoming the best version of yourself
• The need to contribute to the well-being and improvement of others
• Dedicating yourself to a purpose that aligns with your values and beliefs
• Enjoying life and bringing others joy (despite all that’s going on in the world)
• Creating communities, supporting, and encouraging each other to move forward

What do you see in your clients’ conversations?

What conversations do you have with your audience? You are not living in a vacuum and topics and stories are all around you. You only need to spot them!

It could be a thing your partner said to you, something you saw at the grocery shop, a conversation you had with a client, a photograph you’ve come across…

Our days are filled with so many story cues – stop for a few seconds and see them.

Spotting stories becomes even easier when you create content pillars. Content pillars are topic areas that are related to your business.

As a coach – look at your coaching process. What phases are you coaching your clients through? Each of the phases could be a content pillar.

My content pillars are based on the four phases I am working through with my clients:

• You
• Your avatar
• Your offer
• Your brand

And as an add-on – I also write about writing (a lot).

Only the first pillar of “you” has a few angles I could look at:

• Personal strengths & personality traits
• Self-development
• Experience and expertise
• Values and beliefs
• Personal stories
• Achievements
• Past struggles and challenges etc.

It’s important that your content pillars relate to your business and services. With that, you ensure that you create content that is relevant for your audience.

The third thing you can do is brainstorm (with your content pillars in mind).

You could do that based on an experience inventory that lists all your qualifications, experience, and interests.

One of my clients is a doula and one of her qualifications is being a massage therapist. We outlined what she learned during her qualification and how that learning could benefit her clients. And – boom – here we were with at least a dozen topics on mum and baby massage alone…

• Partner massage during pregnancy
• Foot massage for pregnant women
• Lower back massage to ease pain
• How to massage a sore back
• How to massage for better sleep
• Getting started with baby massage
• Massage techniques for baby’s indigestion
• Massage your baby to sleep…

And the fourth and last thing I am going to suggest in this post is something I have picked up from Brendon Burchard. He suggests jotting down the letters of the alphabet and then writing down a word that is related to your topic for each letter.

A = Audacity, Authenticity, Authority…

B = Beliefs, Buyer’s journey…

C = Client persona, clarity, confusion…

D = (Client) Dreams, daily routines…

If you only choose one word per letter, you can come up with more than 20 (depending on which language’s alphabet you are using) topics in one go – and all of them related to your content pillars.

And as a bonus tip…

Think about your audience’s stage of the customer’s journey. Are they in the early stages and need information about their problem or are they making a buying decision and need information on why they should work with you and not someone else?

At any given time, you’ll have prospects in different stages of the customer’s journey (awareness stage, consideration stage, decision stage) and need to create content for each stage. That means that you could write about any given topic with a different intention and thus a different focus.

I hope that I have sufficiently fired you up for content creation. But don’t forget what your audience needs right now regardless of your topic: Create something positive, encourage your audience to hang in there for a little longer, and let them know that they’ve got this and can trust in their ability to figure things out.

If you think that this is a lot of work and want my support with this, then send me a message and we can talk about how I can help you best!

The contact form is right below!

Categories: Content Creation, Contentwriting, Storytelling