Content Marketing Idea Generation with Hans van Gent @jcvangent #VCBuzz

Content Marketing Idea Generation with Hans van Gent @jcvangent #VCBuzzIdea generation is a constant struggle for content marketers. The task of coming up with new ideas on a continuous basis is tiring.

How to generate great ideas easier? How to keep yourself inspired and avoid burn-out? Let’s discuss!

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About Hans van Gent @jcvangent

Hans van Gent @jcvangent is Head of Growth with Accountable that is making the life of freelance and self-employed people in Belgium a lot easier by taking away the need for an expensive accountant, losing receipts etc.

Hans also launched Inbound Rocket as a way for struggling businesses to generate more leads through their (WordPress) website. And recently he launched Audience Builder that makes creating targeting audience in Facebook hassle free. Optimising them in such a way that you can get better results for your Facebook ads, for lower money spend.

In the past, he worked successfully on various campaigns and online platforms for some of the bigger brands of Unilever, Nestlé, Amnesty International, etc.

Connect to Hans van Gent via his website and on LinkedIn

Questions we discussed

Q1 How did you become a digital marketer? Please share your career story!

Becoming a digital marketer is not something I would have ever thought of when I was a little boy, I guess I just rolled into it. Got a background in computer science, but at one point I started surrounding myself more and more with people who were building companies.

I got touched by the marketing side of things when I started seeing them struggling. Plus the fact that my girlfriend at the time worked in marketing / advertising, might have helped me steer away a little bit from startup marketing into more “traditional” advertising.

Q2 How do you come up with content ideas on a continuous basis?

For me it all starts with getting your definitions straight. What is Content Marketing? >> Content marketing is just solving the same problems that your product solves through media you create and promote.

Take that as a basis and then figure out where people are searching for answers on their problems.

Some tools to use here: and to see what are the most shared posts for certain keywords already. Take these topics, put your own spin on it and start releasing it.

Amazon Book listings is another great one, look for best selling books in your niche. Open up the Kindle version, check chapter titles > BAM great topics to start writing your own content around.

Other online tools include things like by , or to find topics people are searching for within your keyword.

Or using questions that your customers are sending in via email to turn them into blog post is another great one.

Basically there are so many different options you can use to come up with inspiration. There is no reason to not starting to create content.

Q3 How to better record and organize your content ideas?

I’m a big users already since years. All my content efforts, as a result, start in there. For example, I use their web clipper to save all the interesting stuff I find day to day on the web.

When I then start producing content, and I start writing it gives me suggestions for related content, so I automatically have sources I can reference in my articles.

That by itself is such a lifesaver. That you don’t have to start searching for reference sources. Everything available while you start typing!

Interesting. I use Google Docs though with guest writers. Got my guidelines in and it makes it easy to collaborate and finetune the final piece.

Q4 What do you do when you feel stuck? What if life gets in a way? How to never stop generating great ideas?

If I’m really stuck and any of the ideas I mentioned earlier I just go back to Google.

Together with KeywordsEverywhere.com I can always find interesting parts, interesting searches of people to help me get new ideas to start producing content around.

Note from Ann: There’s also a free alternative called Keywords Nowhere (Google Chrome only_

Yups related searches etc. there is so much to be found there!

Q5 What are your favorite idea generation tools? We love tools!

I don’t really have a preference, generating ideas can come at any moment at any place.

Personally, I think those are the best because you bring a ton of wealth from your previous experience to the table, which can give such fresh insights every day of the year!

It is not there yet I think, AI created content starts from the optimisation for ranking not for the user, which as a result gets you lower ranking.

Most important with the creation of the content though is to focus on the visitor and not Google. When you fully optimise an article just for Google, it is not valuable anymore to the visitor trying to fix their problem. Google start to understand this better and better every year.

Our previous idea generation chats:

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