How To Map Out a Year’s Worth of Content in 1 Hour

Writer’s block.

It’s happened to the best of us, it’s happened to the worst of us… it’s happened to all of us.

For whatever reason, we just can’t seem to find something engaging to write about.

We troll our favorite news sites, peruse a blog or two, perhaps even Google “what should I write about” before giving up and grabbing a snack or scrolling mindlessly through Facebook telling ourselves we’re looking for inspiration…

As with most spur-of-the-moment decisions we have to make, a little prep and planning would do us a load of good.

Which is exactly why I finally forced myself to sit down and come up with a strategy for never running out of content ideas.

Ever.

So here it is, my gift to you:

How to Map Out a Year’s Worth of Content in 1 Hour.

First, you need access to this handy dandy spreadsheet.

Then, you’ll want to list out all your products and services at the top.

This is where things get juicy. Pull up the following sites:

• Quora.com
• Amazon.com
• Answerthepublic.com
• Soovle.com
• NeilPatel.com/ubersuggest
• Adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Standalone/Home
• Spyfu.com & SEMRush.com
• Facebook.com

Now that your armed with the world’s best ammo for finding out what people are searching for, it’s time to dig in.

Quora is a goldmine of questions about specific products or services. Let’s say you teach other people how to create online courses. Simply type in “Online Courses” in the search bar and when the drop-down appears select the topic that matches your search.

There’s page after page of questions related to online courses. Simply take the pertinent questions and add them in rows 3-20 (feel free to make more room if you need to) and add those questions.

Now you have a blog post, FB post, article, email, etc… to create from these questions.

Do this for each product or service and then move on to the next amazing tool.

Amazon.

Here you’ll want to search for books related to your service/product. Try to find books with a lot of reviews both good and bad.

The good reviews will explain what questions were answered by those who read it and the negative reviews will tell you what questions they wish were answered. Write these questions on your Content Roadmap.

Answerthepublic is just plain fun. Not only does that dude crack me up, but there are so many things you can do with this site.

Let’s say you’re a health coach and one service you provide is meal planning. Just type in meal planning and voila!

You can click on any of these links to be taken to see what shows up on Google. It could take an entire year just to touch on every question in this one tool!

Soolve doesn’t have all the questions listed like the previous site, however, you can still find a lot the top searches for major sites related to your product/service. In the following image, I typed in HIIT which would be a service provided by a personal training or fitness coach (high-intensity interval training). You could easily see how to craft content based on these top search terms to build traffic and authority in your niche.

NeilPatel.com/ubersuggest is a GREAT keyword research tool and can be handy for developing content for highly searched terms.

In this example, I searched Facebook Ads (this is one of my services) and found a ton of keywords people are triggering with their related searches. A great hack here is to find search terms that start with “how”, “can”, “what”, “which”, etc… to see the specific questions and their search volume.

 

Google’s Keywords Planner is another great tool for prioritizing topics based on search volume. You do have to sign up for an account, but it is free.

You can find search volume for specific geographic areas, topics, keywords, etc…

It’s highly powerful, plus you can create a list and export it right to your sheet!

Spyfu.com & SEMRush.com are both packed full of data related to what your competitors are doing and relevant, highly searched search terms and questions.  You only have a limited number of “free” searches though, so use them wisely!

And finally, my absolute FAV.

Facebook groups!

There are Facebook groups for everything known to mankind. Want to meet other people who like prepping for the end times? There’s a group for that.

Want to meet other mamas who just had a baby? There’s a group for that.

Want to meet people with the same weird last name as you? Yep, there’s a group for that too!

All you have to do is find a group that is home to your ideal prospects, ask to join and use the search bar in the group to find questions. You can just type in how, what, why, etc.. and see what pops up, or you can put in specific topics like I did in this example with “grow my group”.

 

Alright, now that you’ve found a gazillion questions related to your products or services and listed them in your sheet, you can also write in the most highly searched keywords or search terms for each topic so you know what to highlight to rank well with your content!

While you’re at it, you might as well notate any of your competitors as they pop up and add any messaging/ads related to similar content and create a swipe file.

Once you’re done, your sheet will be packed full of relevant and in-demand content ideas…

And I’ll bet you’ll feel a giant weight lifted off your shoulders as you realize you no longer have to be Johnny-On-The-Spot when it comes to your content strategy.

Whew!