Humans are always coming up with new ideas! Whether we're just laying in bed, commuting to work, or going out for a run, our minds have a seemingly endless ability to generate new ideas. But as natural and easy as this process may sometimes feel, it gets tricky when your job depends on it... That's why in this blog, we're going to cover why Tech B2B marketers need a process to come up with content ideas, where ideas come from, and how to generate ideas for your content creation.

There are four main reasons why every Tech B2B professional needs to know how to generate content ideas.

• Not only do your content ideas need to be good, but they must also be relevant to your Tech B2B buyer personas and in line with your overall marketing and sales strategy. A content generation process allows you to come up with a predictable flow of original, high-quality, and relevant content ideas.

• No matter how inexhaustibly creative you are, you'll benefit from having other people help you brainstorm ideas. Whether it's your colleagues, friends, family, or even your closest competition, you can benefit from the influence and perspectives of other people.

• During the first few weeks or months on the job, ideas will come to you like bees to a honeypot but eventually, "content fatigue" will set in, and you'll find yourself looking at the word processor with nothing to write. Think of a content generation process as your defence against writer's block.

• Content marketing “at scale” requires proven processes so your team can grow responsibly and keep up with the increased demand. Having a process in place also helps new hires ramp up and start having an impact as quickly as possible, which also helps free up managers' time.

In 1940, famed advertising executive, James Webb Young, published the short book, “A Technique for Producing Ideas” which has become a favourite among copywriters and creatives. Young’s thesis is that idea creation isn’t just about waiting for inspiration to strike — there’s a process. He breaks it down into four steps: gathering new material, digesting the material, unconscious processing, and the eureka moment. Let’s dig deeper into each!

• Step 1. Gathering new material
  Be curious. Read whatever you can, whenever you can. And not just Tech B2B content either! Consume history, poetry, or science magazines on top of Snapchat stories and industry blogs. You might be surprised what will come of it. It also helps to maintain a repository for all those ideas - this can be tools like Google Docs, Evernote, bookmarks, or whatever other platform works best for you.
  
  
• Step 2. Digesting the material
  The goal here is to bring those disparate ideas together and see how they fit. You’re looking for relationships, connections, and combinations. The goal is to synthesise those ideas in interesting and compelling ways that resonate with your Tech B2B audience.
  
  
• Step 3. Unconscious processing
  Stop trying to bring those ideas together and do something else entirely — listen to music, go out for a run, or watch a movie — anything to take your mind off the process. Let your unconscious take over. Sometimes you have to let your mind rest and organise itself on its own. Even when you're not actively thinking about a problem, the mind has its own way of processing information and making connections. Leverage it. 
  
  
• Step 4. The eureka moment 
  Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, an idea will pop into your head. As Young says, “It will come to you when you are least expecting it…” You might be brushing your teeth or simply walking to work, and a fully-formed idea will arrive unexpectedly. When that happens, make sure to write it down. Millions of ideas have been lost by people who thought they would remember them. 

This process isn’t anything new or terribly surprising. It’s how all of us come up with ideas. But it’s valuable to be aware of each step so you can work on them and improve.

There are two different ways you can generate Tech B2B content ideas: by yourself or with a group. Experiment with each and soon you'll come up with a process that makes sense for your specific needs.

There are four things you should keep in mind when generating content ideas on your own:

• What are your Tech B2B buyer personas’ reading habits? Once you have a list of websites or blogs, use a tool like Buzzsumo to see which content has the best social media performance. Just type a domain name, and you’ll get a list of the pages, along with their performance on each social media channel.

• What are your competitors doing? If you share a similar target audience, it’s likely that the content that performs well on their site will also appeal to your prospects. So look at what your Tech B2B competition is producing and what’s really resonating. Here again, use Buzzsumo to quickly scan their websites and see what's performing well.

• What are people talking about on Quora? Let’s assume your target audience is people looking to learn video marketing. After searching for “network security” Quora will return a series of popular questions that contain the keyword, like “what's the difference between cyber security and network security?” and “what are top network security tools?” Without even looking at the answers, this tactic provides valuable insights into common challenges and questions based on this topic.

• What can you learn from your search engine optimisation efforts? There are a few search engine optimisation tools and techniques you can use to generate content ideas. Your go-to is the Google Search Console where you should be able to view which queries users typed into Google to find your website, as well as topics you're ranking for. Three other quick ways to leverage Google are the autocomplete functionality, “related searches” section, and the “people also search for” box.

As you can see, there are many ways to come out with content ideas on your own. But what about leveraging others? You could host a company brainstorm which can be an incredibly productive way to generate fresh and creative content ideas. By inviting team members who don’t spend their day thinking about content, you’ll likely get new ideas from a different perspective.

Remember that the main goal of brainstorming is to generate new, unexpected ideas. It might not be the time to refine those ideas or critique them. So if all you get out of them is a dozen or so ideas for you to expand and improve upon — that might be enough.

And there you have it. Now you have a process to help you generate content ideas. Keep these in mind as part of your Tech B2B content ideation process and you’ll ensure a consistent flow of ideas to fuel your content creation efforts.