Struggling To Come Up With Great Content Ideas? Try This.

Your ideas are worthless, but you still need them.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I started to write online in 2018. Back then, content was an asset.

I wasn’t early to the game, but compared to today, capturing and keeping attention, growing an audience, and monetizing your work was a lot easier.

In 2024, we’re not only competing with an absurd amount of new content being released every second, but we’re also battling robots who are able to create better content than most beginners.

So the question is: How do you stand out?

Thankfully, it’s not impossible, and you have different options. So let’s dive into one of them: Unique ideas.

Your best ideas are mashups.

They’re mysterious, and you don’t really know where they come from or how exactly you develop them. And as if that’s not funny enough, we quickly forget our best ideas, which leads to the first crucial lesson: You need a reliable method to capture your ideas — no matter how good or bad they are. But more on that later.

Everything is a remix

In his viral video series, Kirby Ferguson claims that everything is a remix — music, arts, technology, and anything else that surrounds us.

Ferguson defines remixing as follows:

To copy, transform and combine existing materials to produce something new.

We’re all familiar with remixes in music, but most of us never pay attention to the fact that pretty much anything we’re surrounded by is a mix of things that have existed before.

Today’s most popular examples of remixes are short-form videos: Most TikToks and Reels are of popular sounds or ideas.

You take something someone has already created and produce your version of it.

But it’s true for any other type of content too. Just think of what you are consuming regularly: blog posts, podcasts, videos. All of them are opportunities to create remixes and add your own spin.

Instead of starting from scratch, you identify elements that resonate with you and transform them into something new by adding your own touch and insights.

Looking at content as a remix makes idea generation a lot less daunting while still ensuring that you stand out through your unique voice and perspective.

Your best ideas are created by your subconscious mind.

I work with thousands of writers per year and help them start writing online so they can share their message with the world.

One of the things we do in the first weeks of working together is to ensure they find suitable ways to constantly generate great ideas.

Here’s why: If you have to come up with an idea every time you sit down to produce content, you’ll be doomed to fail.

Ideally, your creation process will look like this:

• You constantly come up with new ideas (these are mostly developed by your subconscious mind — we’ll talk about the details in a minute).

• You have a huge library of ideas you’re curious to explore.

• When you sit down to write or create, you pick one of the ideas from your list and get straight to creation.

Without these three steps, everything will take much longer, and you’ll waste a huge chunk of your time thinking about what to create.

As mentioned above, standing out as a creator is harder today because we have higher expectations of content.

You can’t just summarize what you read or heard and expect it to go viral.

Today, most popular content is a mashup of the creator’s experiences, expertise, and unique point of view.

Everything you see, hear, talk about, and experience eventually leads to your ideas, which are formulated in your subconscious mind by connecting different dots.

The harsh truth is that we rarely create something unique. We just reshape what already exists and add our own spin to it.

Most content starts as a copy of something else, is transformed into something slightly different, and becomes unique by being combined with different aspects or a fresh context.

Here’s a bold example of what this can look like: I’m Swiftie and a content creator. This has led to an article about how to use the “Taylor Swift Effect” to build an audience of raving fans, which is a mashup of different things I saw, heard, did, and learned over the past few years — combined with something I’m deeply passionate about (Taylor Swift 💅).

Usually, your subconscious mind splits out ideas because you feed it with information and experiences.

If you spend most of your time on the couch, you can’t be surprised when you lack ideas or feel uninspired.

The best advice to come up with interesting ideas is to get out and live. Explore, have conversations, read, listen, and ask questions.

Tap out of your comfort zone to challenge your body and mind.

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Pick your domain

Alright, here comes the advice that you don’t want to read: To come up with great ideas, you’ll have to think within certain boundaries.

I’m trying very hard not to use the word “niche” here because new creators hate it.

If I received a dollar every time someone told me, “I have too many interests and passions, I can’t just stick to a single niche!” I would have a lot of extra dollars right now.

Don’t get me wrong: I know that sticking to a niche can feel limiting. And I understand that you want to get into content creation as a career because you actually want to be *creative*.

That’s all fine.

BUT I will still challenge you to define a scope around your work:

• Why do you create?

• Who is your work for?

• Why would they care about it?

• How does your work make a difference?

• How IS your work different?

If you can answer some of these questions, following my next suggestions will be a lot easier.