Beating Creative Block After 4 Years of Content Production

Do you create content? Do you often struggle to come up with ideas?

If so, you’re far from alone.

I recently experienced three months of creative block. Three months back-to-back during which I just couldn’t manage to come up with any new ideas.

Initially, this was hard to handle. Sure, I’ve suffered from creative block before, but never for so long. Creative block on that level was alien to me.

In fact, I was once writing up to three articles a day. Even when this number dropped, it wasn’t because I was short on ideas, but because I was busy working on other things. However, after 4 years of creating content, something switched and I realized … I was out of good ideas.

To be honest, I should have seen it coming. Creating content at the rate I was just wasn’t sustainable. At the same time, I realized that only a small amount of the content I was creating was still actually getting results. Pumping out content used to work, but I knew I needed to make a change.

So, I decided to stop worrying about quantity and focus on quality instead.

Unfortunately, that came with a consequence: I became overly critical of my ideas, which, in turn, triggered creative block.

Getting Stuck in a Rut

There were warning signs before creative block really hit – I was getting deeper and deeper into a rut. I was still managing to come up with ideas, but the quality was dropping.

My ideas felt increasingly mediocre (even though in reality they probably would have seemed like good ideas two or three years ago). They were just a bit behind the times, and I was finally starting to realize it.

If you can feel a rut coming on, I’d advise you to do what I failed to, and react fast. Don’t wait until all your ideas have been sucked dry. Figure out what’s going wrong and what you can do to change things now.

How the Landscape Has Changed

While I was writing multiple articles a day, the landscape for content was changing right in front of me – I was just too busy to notice.

Standards kept getting higher and higher (at least, in terms of content that gets any attention) – but it’s not as simple as quality over quantity. You really have to know what you’re doing, and create something great to stand out these days. There are few, if any industries that aren’t so saturated with content that this doesn’t apply.

Unfortunately, it took me longer than I would have liked to realize what was happening, and by the time I did, I had a lot of catching up to do.

I had to entirely rethink how I approached content creation, all while battling (what seemed like) a never-ending case of creative block.

These are some of the things I did to help overcome my creative block and get a new outlook on ideation and creation.

Taking a Break

One of the first things I did when creative block hit was to give myself a break – figuratively and literally.

First of all, I decided that I wouldn’t beat myself up for my creative block. I then made a promise to myself that I’d actually stop trying to come up with ideas.

This made a big difference. Once the pressure was off, ideas started to come to me naturally.

Even if you don’t want to stop producing content altogether, scaling back can help.

Changing Your Approach

For a long time, a key part of my strategy was to create super long-form articles for my own blog – usually 3000 words+.

This worked – at least in terms of getting people to my site. This makes sense since there’s plenty of evidence to show that longer content is correlated with better rankings.

However, my content doesn’t just exist to get people to my site. I want people to read it, engage with it, and ideally, I want it to generate leads.

As a result, I’m now making a conscious effort to write shorter articles that simplify topics and make them more digestible.

I’ve also tried to do more of something that’s always worked well for me – personalizing my content through my own experiences.

Other steps I’ve taken to switch up my approach and come up with better ideas more easily include:

• Figuring out why my blog exists, what it offers readers, and what I want it to achieve.
• Establishing a unique angle for my content that will help me stand out from the competition (even when my ideas aren’t entirely new or original).

Revisiting Old Content

Do you analyze the traffic your blog drives?

If you’ve never looked at which posts people are landing on, you might be surprised at which ones bring you traffic and which ones don’t.

You might assume that traffic would be spread pretty evenly across all your content, but this is rarely the case.

The majority of blogs get most of their traffic from just a handful of (often older) posts. This means that revisiting your best-performing content and updating it based on keyword research can get big results fast, without the need to come up with new ideas.

Note: If you’re not sure where to find this information, you can access it in your Google Analytics by going to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages:

Then, filter the data according to the location of your blog (i.e. /blog). Make sure to change the date range too. You’ll probably want to look at data from the last year.

When I first did this, I picked four or five blog post that were performing well, and made them better. That immediately doubled my daily, weekly, and monthly visitors – just from search traffic.

To take this technique further, once you’ve updated your best-performing content, you can work back through old posts in order of performance and do the same thing.

But what should you do about content that’s barely driving any traffic, or none at all?

You could do nothing with it. Alternatively, you can audit it, and prune it accordingly.

By that I mean figure out why each post isn’t performing, and decide what to do with it. For example:

• Is it an outdated or irrelevant topic?

Usually the answer here is to remove the content and implement a 301 redirect to a suitable post (if it exists). If no suitable alternative exists, serve a 404 or 410.

That said, before removing a piece of content, check if there are any live links to it. If there are, avoid serving a 404 or 410. Redirect the content if possible. If not, leave it live – you don’t want to lose that link equity, even if the post itself isn’t driving traffic.

• Is it poor-quality or too short?

If this is the case, you might be able to update the post. If the content is beyond saving, follow the strategy above.

• Is it competing with another post on your site?

Blogs that have been around for a long time often end up with multiple pieces of content covering similar topics. If this applies to you, remove non-performing content and implement 301 redirects to similar posts that are getting results.

Bonus tip: When you’ve updated a piece of content, you should be treating it like new content and promoting it.

Repurposing Content

There’s so much more to digital content than what you publish to your blog. Sure, when it comes to creating online content, you might be tempted to stick with the format you’re comfortable with. That’s understandable, but you’re going to massively limit your reach.

You may even be making life harder for yourself by forcing yourself to come up with new ideas when you don’t have to.

Repurposing existing content into other formats bypasses the need for you to come up with new ideas.

• Try turning blog posts into videos (or vice versa).

• Take slides from talks you’ve done, and turn them into blog posts.

• Embed YouTube videos on your blog and include an accompanying transcription.

If, like me, you’ve got a few years of content creation behind you, you’ve probably got a huge library of articles and other resources that can be repurposed. This could potentially keep you going for months before you’re forced to dig deep for new ideas (though that’s not to say you shouldn’t create new content in the meantime if you have a great idea).

Outsourcing

Sometimes it can be hard for bloggers to take a step back and let someone else take charge, even if it’s for the best for their blog and business.

However, if you’re struggling to come up with ideas (or you’re seriously strapped for time) a fresh face could be exactly what you need.

You have three choices:

1. Employ someone to take over managing your content calendar completely.

If that doesn’t appeal (or is unaffordable), you could:

2. Employ writers on an ad-hoc basis to generate ideas and/or create content.

And/or:

3. Fill out your content calendar by inviting others to write for you.

Bonus tip: ProBlogger jobs board is a great place to find skilled writers and content managers.

New Ways of Generating Content Ideas

Adopting the tactics above will keep you covered for a few months – maybe longer. However, short of hiring someone to take the reins, at some point or another you’re still going to need to come up with new ideas.

Don’t make the mistake of reverting back to old habits. There’s a reason that creative block hit, and a reason you needed to change how you approach ideation and content creation.

Here are a few suggestions for things you might want to try (if you haven’t exhausted them already).

Note down what you’re qualified to write about

It’s easy to forget how much we know until we see it, in plain writing, in front of us.

Take some time to make a list that includes every single subject you have knowledge on.

The more detail, the better. Don’t just say “SEO” or “sales.” Note down all the areas within those disciplines that you have experience in which you could use in a blog post (or other content piece).

Pay attention to your customers

Talk to them. Ask them what they want to read about. What their biggest challenges are. What they’re trying to learn more about.

In addition to this, look at things like your on-site search data and if you have it, live chat history.

What are people searching for and what questions are they asking that you’ve not covered in your content?

Analyze your most successful content

Look at which of your posts drive the most traffic, have been shared the most, have the most comments, or have gained the most links.

Try to figure out what made that content so successful, and use these findings to inspire new ideas.

Leverage keyword research tools

Free tools like Answer the Public and Infinite Suggest are invaluable for coming up with new content ideas.

If you use them, pro tools like SEMrush and Sistrix also feature “suggested keyword” sections that show you keywords you’re not ranking for, which you might want to target.

Another “tool” well worth using is Google’s People Also Ask section.

Search for a question, and the SERPs should include a box containing other questions people have asked on that topic.

You can get even more questions when you click on one of the initial results.

Pay attention to what other people are publishing

Use a tool like Feedly or visit communities such as Growth Hackers and Indie Hackers to stay on top of content from other publishers.

You can also use sites like Buzzsumo to view the top-performing content on a subject of your choice, or on a particular domain.

Pay close attention to what’s doing well, but make sure to consume content that interests you and is educational, too.

Don’t expect to get a constant stream of ideas from doing this. Just keep reading. Ideas will come to you.

Do you have any other tips for overcoming creative block or generating new content ideas? As always, it’d be great if you could share your thoughts – comments are below.

Image: Pixabay