TRAFFIC
inform your decision. If you use Google
Trends in conjunction with a topic found
in DataMiner, it can help you refine a
question someone has asked to the highest
search volume equivalent.
●●Google Keyword Planner
Google’s Keyword Planner provides
more detail in the average search volumes
for terms over the past year, and provides
a month-by-month segmentation to
enable more accurate scheduling of the
content you produce. It’s important to
aim to have your content ready before the
search volume around that term peaks
to ensure maximum coverage for your
brand’s content.
Creative ideation techniques
Once you’ve collated as much data as you
can around the types of content and topics
your audience want to read, you still need a
creative way to represent those high search
volume terms in your content. So just how
do you turn data into creativity?
●●Mind Mapping
A traditional way of coming up with
ideas, the mind map is often one of the
most useful tools for content creation. Start
with your central theme for the content
and expand outwards with branches of the
different elements that make up the topic;
from here you can add in the mechanisms
you’d use to cover that topic and watch
your idea grow. Pass the mind map
around your team and allow each person
to contribute branches to it to ensure a
breadth in the types of ideas you collate.
●●Free Association/Brainstorming
Open up your brainstorming in groups
to allow for free association. This means
that everyone is welcome to suggest any
idea they like or thought that pops into
their head without logical connection to
the previous thought. By eliminating the
structure to a brainstorm, it allows ideas to
flow more freely and develop far quicker,
helping you access a much broader range
of ideas to work from.
●●Distraction
In order to maximise creativity you need
to understand that there are two sides to
your brain; a left-side analytical element
and the right-side creative brain. Whilst
it’s clear the right-side is the one you need
when developing your content marketing, if
you want it to be most effective you need to
utilise both sides of your brain at the same
time. Find an activity that will distract the
left side of your brain and get you using
more of your mental capacity; such as
playing with Lego, it will keep your hands
and brain busy whilst you think about the
creative element of your marketing.
In essence, data and thorough research
can spark creativity, or at least kick-start
the creative process. However, we have
found over the past five years of content
marketing that there’s no substitute for
experience and a willingness to take risks
and analyse your failures.
NICHOLA STOTT is
Founder of theMediaFlow,
a multi award-winning
digital marketing agency that
specialises in organic search
and content marketing. Nichola has
almost two decades of experience in
digital communications and features in
the BIMA Hot100 Digital People of 2015.
iGB Affiliate Issue 52 AUG/SEP 2015
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