But getting results is more challenging than ever. People get so many emails that it’s tough to cut through the noise. Generic B2B emails go unopened, and anything self-promotional gets increasingly sent to the ‘promotion’ tab or spam.

‍Exit Five is bucking this trend. Its newsletter goes out to 45K+ B2B marketers (growing by the hundreds each week) and gets feedback like: 

• “One of the few newsletters I make time to read when it hits my inbox”
• “The Exit Five newsletter is the only business newsletter I read on a regular basis”

What does it take to create a newsletter people actually look forward to?

We spoke to Exit Five’s Head of Content, Danielle Messler, to break down what makes it work and how you can borrow from their playbook.

The most important part of a newsletter isn’t the news

After three years of publishing a fortnightly newsletter and growing her audience to 45K+, MarketingProfs’ Chief Content Officer, Ann Handley, realized a fundamental truth:

“The most important part of the newsletter is the letter, not the news.” 

Danielle approaches every newsletter with this philosophy. Where other B2B brands use newsletters merely as a distribution channel, pushing out links to blog posts, Exit Five’s goal is to build relationships.

For Danielle, readers come first:

“It’s important to respect your readers’ time. It matters to readers who the newsletter comes from. It matters what you’re saying. It matters that you make it worth reading.”

This strategy has helped fuel the company’s strongest growth driver: word of mouth. 

Subscribers love Exit Five’s newsletter because each one feels like it’s meant for the person reading it. You feel like it was written just for you.

The writing is conversational, fun, and honest. Danielle isn’t afraid to challenge conventions or get confessional. 

For example, here she talks about her shortcomings as a marketer:

Few newsletters talk about struggles. Which makes Danielle’s email feel infinitely more personal.

Her secret? Write with someone in mind. Not a buyer persona, but someone you actually know is reading.

“For example, today I’m writing an email for Chelsea. I know that she’ll care about this topic. Tomorrow, it’s for Amruta, who I know just started a job where she’s managing an 80-person marketing org. How? They told me.”

It’s a simple mindset shift. Create content like a salesperson, and you risk losing personality and perspective. Write like you’re talking to a friend, and you’ll show who you are and how you think in your voice: human to human. 

It’s how you make people care. And how you build relationships that drive organic growth.

Transparency creates trust

Most newsletters are like exclusive clubs. You have to sign up before you know what you’re getting.

The problem with this approach? It’s been abused so many times with irrelevant content that people are skeptical about subscribing. 

As Danielle points out:

“It’s a big ask. Our inboxes are packed with a lot of unwanted senders. To invite someone in, I think they’ve got to prove why they deserve to get in the door.”

The best way to prove value? Get rid of the protective wall and show people what they’re missing out on.

Exit Five publishes previous issues on its newsletter landing page: 

Framing the page as a publication shows potential subscribers exactly the kind of content they’ll receive. It also helps Exit Five attract the right readership: marketers who might go on to become community members.

The “try before you buy” approach adds a layer of trust and social proof. Without any extra work for writers. 

Transparency removes risk. Trust builds subscribers.

Write with a clear takeaway in mind

Danielle’s goal for every newsletter is simple:

“Make sure there’s something in your newsletter readers can learn today. Something they can implement in some way.”

Sometimes, it’s a strategic framework or tactical hack. Other times, it’s tips pulled from conversations or industry research.

Take this breakdown of Mutiny CEO Jaleh Rezaei’s growth strategy:

Rather than write about what makes the strategy great, Danielle shows how it works and how to use it today to improve your results:

It’s this kind of actionable content that makes you want to open next week’s email.

But how do you keep coming up with worthwhile ideas so every newsletter has that golden nugget?

First, turn to your audience. Exit Five taps into its community to find topics B2B marketers care about. You can do the same by talking (and listening) to your customers:

• What common challenges do customers share on customer service channels? 
• Which conversations are trending on social media?
• What matters to people in your industry right now?

Next, look at your existing content. If something has resonated with your audience on a different channel, repurposing it as a newsletter can expand its reach and impact.

Founder Dave Gerhardt labels it Exit Five’s “content flywheel:”

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How it works: A LinkedIn post sparks conversation, inspiring a newsletter. Replies to the newsletter guide future content like podcasts, webinars, or community events—restarting the cycle.

Danielle regularly uses the Exit Five podcast for inspiration, turning interviews into tactical plays:

Not repurposing timeless content is doing it a disservice. However, Danielle doesn’t serve up lazy recaps. Instead, she reframes content for depth:

“It is content repurposing in a way, but I avoid regurgitating information. For example, rather than say: ‘Here are three takeaways from the podcast’ in vague terms, I’ll add narrative and a new angle: ‘Dave talked with this person. Here’s what they said about making sure your positioning is clear instead of broad, and here’s how to do it.’”

The takeaway: repurposing isn’t republishing. Find a hook relevant to your newsletter audience, then use it to bring lessons into the present.

Writing to a large audience? Creating more than one newsletter might be a good idea

Exit Five newsletter subscribers get two newsletters a week(ish):

• The Exit Five Weekly Newsletter: Strategic, long-form insights every Tuesday
• Marketing Snack: Bite-size tactics (almost) every Thursday

Both newsletters go out to the same list, are written in the same tone, and have the same relationship-building goal—not dumping content.

So why bother? It makes sense to set up multiple newsletters to optimize for different goals or audiences (e.g., educating one list and upselling to another), but targeting one list with similar content seems like a lot of extra work. 

It comes back to value.

Subscribers get two lots of expertly curated insights for the price of one email address. If one of these emails was promotional, that’s not what people signed up for. You risk losing trust and subscribers. When both are packed with actionable tips, it’s another reason to engage.

Using different formats is a great way to appeal to different reading styles. It also keeps content fresh. 

Subscribers who gravitate towards one newsletter still get the value they expect. Your open rates are still healthy, ensuring you keep a large audience happy.

Plus, you get more data to understand your audience and create meaningful content.

Tracking open rates and CTRs is good, but replies are even better

Open rates and click-through rates (CTR) are core metrics for any B2B marketer, but they don’t tell you much about the person reading.

Replies, however, do.

Danielle values email replies above other key performance indicators for two reasons:

1. From the strategy side, replies boost deliverability. They tell email clients that recipients want you in their inbox.

2. They drive genuine conversation and connection. Exactly what you want when trying to build relationships. 

How do you get people to reply? Ask them.

Danielle does this with value-led P.S. 

For example, in the email below, she asks readers for their thoughts on the topic. Encouraging subscribers to get involved in the conversation helps them feel valued: 

Adding a P.S. captures the attention of readers who may have skimmed through your email. Those extra thoughts or calls to action stand out.

Exit Five’s newsletters get as many as 30–40 replies. Numbers that are almost unheard of in B2B marketing.

However, there’s another crucial reason why Danielle’s tactic works. Dave Gerhardt nails it in a LinkedIn post about how Danielle’s writing is “super unscalable:”

Danielle reads and replies to every email. How’s that for value?

Automation helps streamline transactional emails. But for newsletters, there’s no beating genuine human connections.

Focus on building relationships with the few users who reply to your emails. They’ll become loyal fans who help grow your platform. 

If you want people to open your emails, build curiosity

Most people aren’t looking out for your newsletter when they check their inboxes. Research from Zero Bounce shows they’re more interested in emails from work, friends, and family or brand discounts:

This is what you’re up against. Your emails have to work hard to grab attention.

Exit Five’s newsletter open rate is consistently above the industry average, so they’re winning the battle. 

Sending value-packed newsletters every week is a major factor. Zero Bounce suggests relevancy as the top reason people open brand emails. The next-biggest factor is subject lines: 

To get clicks, Danielle uses a tried-and-trusted storytelling tactic in her subject lines:

“The art of storytelling is withholding information, but you also want to give them just enough that they know it’s valuable.”

Copyhackers founder Joanna Wiebe calls this the “curiosity gap:”

“Your prospects want to fill the information gap. Your job as a copywriter or marketer is to delay filling the gap for as long as you can—without introducing too much discomfort—in order to keep your visitors engaged.”

Consider this subject line from a recent Exit Five newsletter:

• “Here’s what to do when you’re not the subject matter expert”

If you’re not a subject matter expert, you’ll want to know what’s inside that can help you improve your marketing skillset. If you are a subject matter expert, the “here’s what to do” part piques curiosity enough to want to read more.

Here’s another of Danielle’s subject lines:

• “The mindset shift that helps marketing leaders move faster”

What mindset shift? You immediately want to click to find out.

Use the curiosity gap to make your emails enticing. However, be careful not to mislead readers. 

Exit Five’s subject lines work because they never feel like clickbait. They’re relevant to the content. Each email follows through on the small amount of information it introduces.

Rewarding people for their curiosity makes them more likely to open your next email. 

The best way to practice this kind of headline? 

Look at your own inbox. Find subject lines that make you click, and adapt them to your content. 

Tracking open rates over time will help you spot the kinds of hooks your audience engages with.

The perfect time to start a newsletter is now

Email newsletters as a marketing tool are in a good place. Beehiiv’s State of Email Newsletters report shows that newsletters sent on its platform increased by 96.2% year over year in 2024.

You might see that as a sign you’re entering an overcrowded market. Still, revenue and core engagement are healthy, and spam remains low across various industries. 

The appetite for good newsletters is here to stay. 

But when Danielle says the best time to start a newsletter is now, she means not waiting around for perfection. 

“You’ve got to get at least 10 newsletters in before you actually know what the format is going to be and what works, and get into a good rhythm.”

“I’ve done this a ton of times—giving up because I don’t have the perfect format from the beginning. No one’s really going to care if you change it by issue 10.”

Iteration is part of the email marketing process. You can tweak and improve every element over time. 

Start small, experiment, and don’t be afraid to go against the grain.

Will you lose subscribers? People unsubscribe for all kinds of reasons. As Danielle says:

“Don’t take it personally. Just keep getting the reps in.”

A B2B newsletter is the product

A good B2B newsletter isn’t a tool to sell. It’s a product that should offer readers value in a way your competitors can’t.

Focus on what matters to your audience, and show up like a human (flaws and all) with something relevant and helpful to say. Doing this consistently will build trust, grow your following, and ultimately boost business revenue.

Done right, you can build an engaged audience of loyal fans and customers. The trick is to: 

• Post valuable content consistently—both single tweets and threads 
• Interact with your audience in the comments, rather than scheduling posts and walking away

This strategy will help you build an audience and brand awareness at speed while attracting new leads and users who have problems you can solve.

Here’s why investing in your Twitter presence is effective for growth and lead generation, and how to write content that generates reach, engagement, and leads.

Why Twitter is an audience and revenue-generating machine

When you build a community around your brand (both business and personal), your credibility compounds and improves your brand equity because people see you as a human rather than a faceless entity.

This awareness helps you attract fans that are eager to pay attention to what you have to say because your content resonates with them. 

As you consistently provide helpful content, you’ll build authority and credibility—just like you would from any other content marketing channel. 

The key is to stop thinking of Twitter as a repurposing platform and start thinking about it as a  channel to create original content. It’s a content platform with its own ecosystem and search engine. It’s more than a digital billboard for your latest article, event, or announcement—a mindset that severely undermines its potential for attracting your audience.

You wouldn’t post a blog that says “We wrote a new thread on quality content so go check it out on Twitter” with a link. Yet, that’s exactly what some businesses use Twitter to do. This strategy doesn’t work because it’s outdated, cumbersome, and neglects how people want to digest information on the platform.

Users want content served to them directly on the platforms they’re logged into. Non-native content disrupts the intended user experience and breaks a pattern. Unless given a compelling reason to click away, they want platform-specific content.

Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, coined the term zero-click content to describe that, now more than ever, people crave in-platform content without needing to interrupt their consumption habits.

SparkToro’s data (as well as our own) show that platforms and algorithms favor in-platform content: 

It’s obvious why algorithms prefer it; they want to keep people on their platforms. 

But people also expressly favor high-quality native content because it allows them to:

• Engage with brands where they already are (clicking away can feel cumbersome)
• Experience non-intrusive messaging (CTAs and external links can feel out of place)
• Actually read what’s put in front of them (links are often overlooked or not read)

On that last point, the data is fascinating. A study from Columbia University found that 59% of social media links shared by news domains aren’t clicked on at all.

Furthermore, HubSpot looked at 2.7 million link-containing tweets and found that there is no correlation between retweets and clicks. This means that people will retweet something without even reading it, which aligns with the Columbia findings.

The data makes our jobs as marketers seem bleak, but that's only true if you treat Twitter like a place to simply distribute content. When you tack a link onto the tail end of platform-specific content it will only drive traffic if:

• You’ve spent time sharing native content without links and built an engaged audience on the platform
• You do it sparingly (the 80/20 rule is a good true north for articles)

Not all links are created equal, so the 80/20 rule doesn’t always apply. A link to a blog post is different from a link to a newsletter signup form, for example. The former requires a decent time commitment while the latter is a quick action. 

As such, newsletter CTAs or forms can be tacked onto most posts, preferably a few hours after you share them. This works to:

• Bring your post to the top of people’s feeds again (additional tweets in a thread can trigger the algorithm to ‘reshare’ it)
• Provide a key window of time for native-only content to be consumed 

For example, I created native content almost exclusively in my first four months on Twitter and grew my audience from ~500 to ~14k. 

Because of this, by the time I promoted an article, people were eager to not only click but spend time reading it. In 24 hours, we generated::

• 233 pageviews
• 214 unique pageviews
• 4:48 average time on page

My goal was to build my credibility to a point where people believed me when I said “read this: it's worth your time.” This experiment proved successful and my links now generate clicks, leads, and new clients.

Both threads and single tweets are critical to growth

Single tweets are important and should be incorporated into your content strategy. But love them or hate them, threads tend to have a bigger reach (and impact).

Use threads to expand organic reach

Check out the difference in impressions between a single tweet of mine vs. a thread with only 100 more likes (the higher the like count, the less impactful differences of hundreds become):

These were posted one day apart, which means I was reaching a similar audience. 

While the thread only got 100 more likes, it received ~65,000 more impressions, was shared ~2x more times, and got ~2x more engagement.

Threads generally perform better because they’re educational in nature and help people solve problems. Whether you’re teaching people how to do something or telling a story of success or failure, your audience is learning as they read and taking notes on how to apply the tips to their own circumstances. 

Because of this, your audience will likely be more engaged and keen to retweet and share with their network. Twitter rewards engagement (i.e. comments and retweets), meaning reach compounds.

Think of threads like long-form articles for Twitter, written with a blend of copywriting and content writing styles.

Let’s return to the thread I mentioned earlier that linked to our Quality Content Marketing Matters article at the end and break down why it was successful.

Here are the analytics:

Over 100k impressions and 2k+ engagements is a great result and led directly to that spike in pageviews and time on page referenced above.

I repromoted the same article a few days later in a single tweet with a link and it got 100+ likes but generated nearly 100K fewer impressions than the thread:

The thread drove more engagement, and more readers to my article, generated several leads, and expanded my personal (and subsequently Grizzle’s) brand awareness.

Use single tweets to bolster engagement and show your personality

As for single tweet formats, quick tips, pieces of expertise, or questions to your audience can drum up tons of engagement even if the reach isn’t always as impressive. 

For example, this single tweet asking a question about writing and editing sitting vs. standing got ~14k impressions and generated 67 comments:

And this tweet listing my article writing process (that ended with a question to inspire engagement) drummed up over 1,000 likes and 60+ comments:

We recommend replying to most comments because it shows your audience that you’re a real person and not some unreachable entity. 

This is key for both personal and business brands: when you engage and respond, you personalize the experience and build deeper connections. The deeper your connections, the more loyal your audience will be. 

Critically, they’ll also feel more motivated to learn about the business you run or represent and consider becoming a customer. Meaningful connections through personal interactions build trust, and Twitter is a touchpoint along the customer journey (both before and after an initial purchase). 

The more valued people feel, the more likely they are to add you to the consideration set and feel motivated to explore a purchase. As long as you’re delivering value, consistently publishing tweets and threads will generate awareness, leads, and new business.

As for a posting cadence, we recommend the following: 

• 2x threads a week to teach and bolster engagement
• At least 2x single tweets a day to remain consistent and please the algorithm (which rewards daily activity)

Note that if you do miss a day or two you’ll be fine. Quality wins over quantity, and we’ve not seen notable drops in engagement because of it.

How to write valuable Twitter posts that build compounding credibility 

Twitter content isn’t the same as blog articles, emails, landing pages, or ebooks. It’s also not the same as other social platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram. 

You only have 280 characters to work with, so it’s uniquely concise and people scroll and skim at lightning paces.

Let’s look at how to craft engaging threads first.

The most valuable threads capture and hold attention

A great thread starts with a great hook. People want to know:

• Why they should bother reading
• How it will help them solve a problem
• What they will learn

If you don't answer these questions, they won't care or feel motivated to click into it and read.

A great way to capture attention is to poke at a pain point, add credibility via quantifiable proof (numbers perform well), get specific with outcomes, and end with a cliffhanger:

• Poking at the pain lights up emotions and gives readers something to relate to, e.g. “Most people get this wrong” or “I was struggling and wish I had a playbook to follow”. 
• Adding credibility acts as social proof and gives people a reason to care or trust what you’re saying, e.g. “I’ve edited 3M+ words” or “We’ve spent 7 years building systems that have netted $5,000,000 revenue”. 
• Getting specific with outcomes allows readers to picture what they can accomplish themselves by reading, e.g. “ensure your new employee stays at your organization” or “3x conversions in 90 days”.
• Leaving a cliffhanger encourages people to click to find out what’s next. This is especially key if your thread is a listicle. For example, if the crux is “8 ways to X”, don’t include what those are in the hook—make the reader click more to see more.

A bad hook makes it all about you and doesn’t leave anything up to the imagination. 

Here are a few examples of strong hook formats:

1. [Opinionated state of play]. [Data]. [Poke at pain]. What to do? [Opinionated solution]. Here's how:

2. As a/an [personalized descriptor] I [pain point] with [trend]. So, I did [descriptor of event] to learn [outcome]. Here are X takeaways:

3. Hot take. [Thought-provoking opinion on trend]. I've [take on future of trend]:

4. [State of play]. But [pain point]. Why (and what to do instead):

5. [Opinion]. Stance on [bad take]. I’ve spent [social proof + timeframe] to achieve [outcome]. The playbook:

These hooks are intriguing, specific, and open a loop that makes you curious about what’s inside.

Once you capture people’s attention, you need to keep it and make the juice worth the squeeze.

You want readers to:

• Easily understand your points
• Experience zero friction
• Stay interested throughout

To do that: 

• Share unique insights
• Add the "why" and "how"
• Get creative
• Pay attention to structure

Strong content marketing principles apply to thread writing. The best threads set context, add examples, include prescriptive tips, tell a great story, give the reader instructions on how to do something themselves, and leave them with an action item (e.g. click this link, follow me, and/or retweet to share).

On Twitter, white space is critical—especially when using a listicle format that has dedicated headers. Still, even bold, opinionated, and storytelling content benefits from white space on Twitter.

Generally, this format works best:

• Header: Set the stage
• Subheader: Answer “the why”
• Body: Supplement your argument and answer “how”
• Takeaway: Empower them to follow your advice and give them a reason why it will help them help themselves.

Here’s how this format looks with white space separators:

Here’s a meta example of how you could use this format to explain why this advice will help people write stronger Tweets:

• Header: “Answer intent right away”
• Subheader: “This way, the reader understands why what they're about to read matters.”
• Body: “Include data points or personal anecdotes so the reader can picture themselves doing what you’re describing.”
• Takeaway: “Small tweaks like this make a big impact on flow and drive engagement.”

And here’s a simplified version of how we could format a tweet when giving the advice “break up long walls of text”:

• Header: “Break up long walls of text” 
• Subheader: “White space helps skimmers and makes content easier to digest & navigate.” 
• Body: “Try to limit paragraphs to 2-3 sentences max.”
• Takeaway: “The reading experience matters as much as the words on the page.” 

Add your CTA to the final tweet in the thread. Here’s what my thread CTA looked like when I promoted the Quality Content Marketing article referenced above:

This only worked because it was tacked onto original content, formatted for Twitter, and referenced themes discussed in the article.

Here’s the hook I used:

Nothing was copy/pasted. The best-performing repurposed content on Twitter doesn’t feel repurposed—it feels tailored to the unique Twitter experience.

Here’s an example of a body tweet from this thread where I explain what editorial goals are:

Here’s how we talk about editorial goals in the article itself:

Notice how the examples I picked are completely different. In the article, our target audience is marketers that would benefit from seeing what a relevant content goal looks like.

On Twitter, my audience is a mix of content marketers, writers, and editors looking to improve their written communication skills.

I tailored each example to the audience at hand and structured the content to the format at play. It’s not repurposed; it's reimagined.

Interestingly, I chose to include a second hook in this thread:

And it got 3x more likes than every other body tweet:

That’s because frontloading value, credibility, and getting ahead of objections works well on Twitter. 

In my first hook, I argue that quality content is important but I don’t explain why. To get ahead of objections and prove my point, I used the second tweet to prove:

• I know what I’m talking about
• Here are all the reasons why quality matters
• I’m about to back this up with specifics so keep reading

If the reader wasn’t entirely hooked after reading tweet 1, they certainly are after tweet 2.

This second hook is also a perfect single tweet. Here’s why.

How to write single tweets that drive engagement

The reason why the second hook above performed so well is because it teaches and is uniquely structured for the platform.

Notice how the sentence length cascades from long to short as you read from top to bottom. This is visually engrossing and works to capture attention.

But not every tweet needs to be so obviously structured for the platform. 

This quick tip performed well because it poked at a common pain point (everybody wants to make it big, fast), gave advice backed by years of experience, and spoke truth to unrealistic expectations:

Humorous responses to industry trends or new data are also a great way to start a conversation and let your personality shine through:

What B2B marketer hasn’t seen that infographic by now? It’s relatable and makes you want to run to leave a comment.

In general, single tweets give you a chance to demonstrate your personality. They also challenge you to share valuable advice in a short format—which is excellent practice for cutting fluff and redundancy from your writing.

There’s no “perfect” format for single tweets, nor should there be. As long as they’re tailored towards your target audience, you can get creative, share opinions, ask engaging questions, and have a little fun:

The more relatable and resonating, the bigger chance you’ll strengthen existing connections and attract new followers (that may turn into customers one day).

Ignore Twitter and leave relationships on the table

Since joining Twitter we’ve attracted and converted more leads at Grizzle in a shorter period of time than ever before.

All through organic posts and zero targeted outreach.

Posting daily and providing value has shown potential clients that we know how to create quality content. 

If you’re sleeping on Twitter or annoyed by how clickbaity and regurgitated content there can feel, you’re ignoring its massive potential. When you mute the noise and focus on your personal and business growth, you build strong relationships that lead to new business opportunities. 

Of course, if the idea of doing it yourself is too painful or you don’t have time, you can also work with experts to write social content for you.

In this article, you’ll learn how to strategically choose content topics that align with all of your business goals; whether that be lead generation, acquisition or retention.

We’ll share content ideation methods used at Grizzle, as well as those used by content marketers at companies like Databox, ConversionXL and Braze.

1. Tapping into sales and customer success teams

Does your marketing team work in a silo, away from sales and customer success teams? You could be missing out on an array of content ideation opportunities to support prospects across the entire buyer journey.

Below are some tips to help you collaborate with sales and customer success teams:

Supporting your sales teams and generate leads

Lead generation is, of course, a key sales metric. And most sales teams would be grateful for content that answers common queries they hear from leads on a daily basis.

This will enable them to spend less time answering repetitive questions, and more time closing deals!

Here’s how to generate a pool of content ideas that help support your sales team and generate leads at the same time:

Interview sales managers and SDRs

Interview sales reps and managers to understand the sales cycle, their biggest goals and common pain-points or questions they hear from prospects. You can get rich, honest insights by interviewing sales members.

Pro tip: Record and transcribe these interviews and repurpose quotes in future pieces of content. This will help you collect deep, qualitative insights you can refer to when expanding your buyer personas, while positioning your salespeople as experts at the same time.

Here are some questions you can ask sales reps to elicit insights for your content ideation process:

• What are some common challenges prospects bring up again and again?
• Which part of our product/service makes prospects light up?
• Which content would you find most helpful to provide prospects?
• What are the main sales metrics you need to meet?
• What are the common queries you get from prospects?
• What are common sales objections you get across the sales journey?
• Are you happy with current sales materials?
• Can you explain the internal sales process? E.g from first point of contact to closing
• Which sales questions do you struggle to answer the most?
• Which sales materials do you most regularly send leads?

Audit and optimise your sales material

Ask your sales teams to send you the content they use on a regular basis. This can include:

• Any white papers, case studies etc. they regularly send to prospects
• Email outreach templates
• Template responses used for FAQs

Add these to a spreadsheet and note at which stage of the sales cycle materials are used, the traffic to these pages (if relevant), and quality of the content.

This exercise should help you notice obvious gaps and content that needs refreshing. For example, case study pages may get high traffic, but be thin in value and show low “time spent on page”. Refreshing case studies may be a priority area.

Sit in on sales calls (or request recordings)

Sitting in on sales calls will let you grasp objections from the perspective of a potential customer. You may pick up blind spots that weren’t picked up by speaking to the sales team alone.

As Emily Byford, B2B Content Marketer, says:

“Listen to your customers, listen to your sales team. If possible, get your sales team to record their calls, and make a habit of listening to a couple a week. This will help you understand what matters most to your potential customers – the problems they’re *really* looking to solve. What are the questions they ask most often? Use this to prioritise the content you’re planning.”

Once you’ve captured all this information from the sales team and your audits, present a shortlist of topics to the team about which you’ll be prioritizing for the next quarter.

Supporting customer success teams to boost retention (and prevent churn)

Customer success teams want to delight customers and prevent churn. Content can help support customers during this journey.

Below, similar to the section above, is an approach to help you generate a pool of content ideas for your customer success team.

Interview members of the customer success team

Just like you did with sales, fresh insights can be yielded from customer success teams. They speak with customers on a daily basis, and they can bring a different perspective than sales teams.

Some example questions include:

• What do clients love about our product/service?
• What are the common woes (both product and non-product related) that customers talk about?
• What are the customer success team’s goals and success metrics?
• What does the customer onboarding process look like?
• What is the big problem our customers are looking to solve by using our product?
• What are the most common reasons customers churn?
• What are the most frequently asked questions from clients?
• What content would be most helpful to send new customers?
• Best customer success stories?

Compile an audit of current customer success materials

Request to be sent all the current customer success materials in use and create a spreadsheet listing all of these.

Sit in on an onboarding call and a customer check-in call

Listening in on customer calls will help you empathise with customers and uncover content topics that you may not have thought of by talking to internal teams alone.

Agree on topics that will empower customer success

Once you’ve captured all this information, present a shortlist of topics to the customer success team about which you’ll be prioritizing.

I spoke with Todd Grennan, Managing Editor at Braze, who explained how he uses a similar process of interviewing different department representatives to plan each quarter’s topics:

“We operate on a quarterly schedule, aligned with the rest of the business. A month before the end of the previous quarter, my team starts having 1:1 meetings with representatives of other departments in the organisation. We basically sit down with them for half an hour each and talk through what their focus is for the next 3 months, what their business concerns are, what they’re seeing in the market etc.

Often, one of the biggest signals regarding whether there’s a topic we ought to take on is when we hear from disparate departments that a particular topic is a major topic of focus for them. This is usually a sign that this is a topic worth diving into that hasn’t caught on our radar yet.

Usually we take the raw material from these interviews and take that in concert with any demand generation information we have for the quarter. We don’t want to have tunnel vision when it comes to serving internal needs but we also want to make sure that any insights various teams have seen in the market are cared about, particularly if they have relevance for our audience.”

2. Finding SEO-driven topics to increase organic traffic

Below are some tactics to help your content rank on Google; an SEO-first approach to content ideation.

Chris Newton, Inbound Marketing Manager at Klaviyo, explains what we mean by an ‘SEO-first’ approach to support users looking for answers through search engines:

“Content ideation at Klaviyo used to follow an “SEO-second approach” but I’m establishing an SEO-first approach. People would often come to me with a blog post and say ‘can you optimise this for SEO’ after the fact. I find those don’t always tend to perform as well as posts where we identified the topic we want to write about first and then write the post specifically around a certain keyword that we’re trying to optimise for. I call that the SEO-first approach.

I think that as the year goes on, we’re going to be taking more of an SEO-first approach to content ideation.”

How to discover keywords for SEO-first content

When it comes to uncovering SEO-friendly topics, it’s important to begin with some keyword research.

Start by listing keywords you think your target audience would be searching for.

If you’re not sure where to start, have a look at blogs of your competitors. Input their URLs into a tool like Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, or SEMRush and you’ll see which keywords these posts rank for, as Automate.io’s Sr. Content Marketer, Archita Sharma suggests:

Use a tool like Ahrefs to check out your competitor’s keywords and get an understanding of what worked well for them! A simple lookup in Ahrefs’ Content Explorer would show you which keywords, which links are already ranking and how competitive these keywords are. Target these hot keywords and set up your content pipeline accordingly.

Next, punch your chosen keywords to an SEO tool like Ahrefs, which will show you will show you keyword ideas and similar keywords, allowing you to build upon your initial keyword list:

You can even use Google and look at the ‘searches related to’ terms that come up:

Make a note of the average monthly search volume for each keyword, along with the difficulty:

Next, use a tool or a simple incognito search to see which content is ranking on page one of Google’s SERPs:

Note down the content titles, assumed search intent per result (are the topics mainly step-by-step articles? News articles?) and the quality of the top 5 SERP results.

A tool like Clearscope will automatically give you this information to help you see areas to outshine the competitor content. Check which other keywords the top domain rank for: Input the domains for the top 5 results into a tool like SEMRush, Ahrefs or Ubersuggest.

Once you’ve gathered all this information, utilize this data to choose SEO-first topic opportunities. You may choose a buffet of topics. Perhaps a couple of 10x pieces to outshine the competition when it comes to high traffic, high competition topics.

You could also sweep up a bunch niche topics that you’ve identified as having low traffic, low competition.

Focus on niche content hubs to rank a new blog

It can be difficult for newer blogs to compete with content from authoritative sites when it comes to organic search.

Derek Gleason, Content Lead at ConversionXL, explains the ‘hub-and-spoke’ strategy that newer sites can utilize to create content that ranks in Google:

For newer sites, content ideation is pretty simple: Pick a topic that’s:

1. Relevant to your company or product

2.For which you can claim authority

3. For which there’s search volume

Then, cover the core topic and its tangents—a hub-and-spoke strategy, essentially.

For example, in my previous work at an agency, a client managed several pediatric urgent care centers. While anything relevant to healthcare could qualify as a potential topic, we wanted them to narrow the focus to their deepest expertise.

Ultimately, it made the most sense for them to answer the question, “Should I take my child to urgent care or the ER?”. We identified about a dozen posts on topics like “When is a fever dangerous?” and “Can you get stitches at urgent care?”

Google rewarded the narrow focus of our mini-hub, and – despite being a small site with unremarkable domain authority – they rank highly on Page 1 for several “Your Money or Your Life” queries that receive added scrutiny from Google.

When users come to any page, we want them to:

1) Know – know what the page is about

2) Feel – feel that the page gives them the right solution

3) Commit – commit to one single action

In terms of the ideation stage, Chris Old from IG suggests using KFC to get a ‘bucket’ of actionable ideas in the following way:

• KNOW – Leverage the expertise of subject-matter authorities in your business. Ask them to post-it note all the key things your company offers.
• FEEL – Once they’ve done that, expand on all those key concepts with anything you could write about on those topics. Udemy is another good resource for expanding on topics – check their table of contents for courses on given subjects. Or do it the old-fashioned way – have a look down Waterstones for books on the subject and see how they structure the content.
• KNOW/FEEL – Once you have all the ideas, categorise them into content clusters and run them through a keyword research tool to see where demand is. That means the keywords you’ve considered, any similar keywords you find, plus keywords the current ranking content is showing up for.
• KNOW/FEEL – Re-categorise your clusters based on demand. You should have one ‘blockbuster article’ or page for each topic, with off-shoot shorter articles expanding on it where there is demand. Have a super-interesting idea with no search volume? Add it to the hub article.
• COMMIT – For each topic cluster, what is the one thing you want users to do? Expand on that for every page within the cluster – what’s the one action you want them to commit to? This should be the first consideration when briefing the content.
• KNOW/FEEL/COMMIT – Now you have everything in place, it’s time to brief the content. That means the usual stuff – H1, H2s, title tag, keywords, Schema markup etc. But we don’t want to lose site of our KFC. Start with the ‘commit’, as above, then also brief in what you want users to ‘feel’ and ‘know’ from each page.

This approach ensures both Google and users see clearly organised content and a sound internal linking structure for each content cluster.

Including the ‘commit’ ensures you give users what they want at the endgame, and coax them into taking that action. And the ‘feel’ ensures they are comfortable to so and more engaged with the page. That, in turn is good for engagement metrics Google may be measuring, while also boosting semantic relevance around the topic.

The only pitfall to avoid: do not create too many off-shoot articles if there is limited demand or overlap between the content. You don’t want Google’s robots to be confused about which pages to rank for what keywords.

Steps to hub and spoke topic ideation:

Here’s a step-by-step approach to help your new website rank well in Google:

1. Select a main keyword that will act as your main hub topic for your target audience . Using Derek’s example above, this could be the keyword “should i take my child to urgent care or the ER?”. This will be your hub topic that spoke topics will branch out from.
2. Choose niche keyword topics that supplement the main hub topic. For example, spoke topics that relate to the initial query of “should i take my child to urgent care or the ER” could be “when is a fever dangerous?” and “can you get stitches at urgent care?”. These “spoke” topics expand on the hub topics. They can be separate posts that are also internally linked to from the hub post.
3. Connect the hub and spoke topics with a URL hierarchy. Ensure there’s a logical URL hierarchy such as blog/urgent-care for the main hub topic and then  blog/urgent-care/fever, blog/urgent-care/stitches for the spoke topics to increase your chances of ranking.

Huge content backlog? Create a comprehensive content inventory

On the other end of the spectrum, if you have a blog with a huge backlog of posts, the content ideation process should begin with a comprehensive audit of all your content.

Derek goes on to explain the process he uses at CXL:

“When I started at CXL a year ago, the content ideation process was quite complex. We had over 600 posts that we’d published over seven years. We had already covered the most relevant topics, often more than once (leading to “keyword cannibalization” issues). To succeed here, I started by building a comprehensive inventory of all content—a taxonomy that grouped posts into categories and subcategories.

The taxonomy has made it much quicker to help authors identify a topic that’s new to the blog and, ideally, covers an obvious content gap. For example, we recently published a post on how to identify SaaS metrics; we’ve written posts for SaaS companies many times before (and written about analytics dozens of times, too), but we’d never dedicated a post exclusively to SaaS metrics. I doubt we would’ve spotted that opportunity so quickly without an on-demand catalog of our existing content).

Admittedly, we’re very focused on organic search—it accounts for the lion’s share of our traffic. The content ideation process is different if you’re angling for social shares or links (although high-ranking content earns many “passive” links by ranking at the top of page 1. The takeaway is that your distribution strategy should inform your content ideation, not the other way around. You might have an incredible idea for a post, but if it requires a paid social media budget that you don’t have or an army of outreach specialists that you haven’t employed to get visibility, it will fail”

– Derek Gleason, Content Lead at ConversionXL

3. Product-Driven Content that Attracts Buyers

For many marketers, converting readers into leads and customers is a core content goal.

Which is why creating challenge-driven content, based on the needs and pains of your buyer persona, can be a great source for content ideas.

These are simple topics that dive into customer pain points that your product or solution solves.

Here’s a step-by-step approach to product-driven content:

Step 1: Identify which landing pages you want to drive traffic to

If you’re unsure which landing pages to prioritize, start off with an audit of your current product pages.

Gathering this data will give you an informed decision regarding which product pages to prioritise and let you see whether your new content has had the impact you hoped for down the line.

Product page data you could gather:

• Current traffic for each product page:

• “Previous page path” for current product pages via Google Analytics: Which pieces of content are already driving readers to your product pages?

• Conversion rate for current product pages: If you’ve setup Goals in Google Analytics or a have CRM like HubSpot, you’ll be able to see the conversion rate of each product page (whether that be free trial sign-ups, demo requests, or purchases).

Use this data to shortlist the product pages that need more traffic. For example, if there’s a highly converting product page with low traffic, you may want to prioritize content topic ideas that link to that page.

Step 2: Identify which pain points are solved by your product

Next, have a deeper look at the product pages you’ve identified. Note which pains are solved by the solution described on each product page:

Choose content topics about the specific pain points you’ve identified. Add a CTA to the connected product page that illustrates how you solution solves that pain point.

For example if your product page explains how your app relieves the manual effort of exporting spreadsheets, choose content topics like “tips to stop spend hours manually processing spreadsheet data”. Your solution solves this pain point so it would be natural to include a CTA to the matching landing page. Ensure you blogging efforts work with product pages.

4. Generating Product Demand with Top-of-Funnel Topics

Let’s look at choosing content topics to drive top of funnel engagement and traffic. Top of funnel content refers to posts that address problems experienced by your target audience.

Interview your target audience

Interview your target audience about their challenges to collate a buffet of top-of-funnel content ideas. You’ll uncover nuanced topics that are difficult to pick up through online research alone.

The most recent posts (including this one!) on Grizzle’s blog have come into fruition from this interview method:

1. Contact a bunch of people belonging to your target audience that you’d love to interview
2. Organise 30-minute calls with 3-5 of them
3. During the interviews, ask about their goals, biggest challenges and approaches to problems. Ask lots of follow-up questions to get to the nitty-gritty!
4. Make a shortlist of commonly mentioned pain points from your interviewees. You should begin to notice a pattern of nuanced pain points and topics that have emerged

Target audience interviews give you the added benefits of developing long-term relationships with your sector, a deeper understanding of your audience, and quotes you can inject into blog posts (or even a podcast) too.

Crowdsource ideas from your target audience

Databox have a super-organised way of collating ideas from their target audience, as their CEO, Pete Caputa explained to me:

“We collect 100s of content ideas from our writers and readers every month. For most of our content, we are sourcing contributions from experts. We do this by asking 25-50 experts one question, then weaving the best answers together into a long guide on the subject. At the same time, we ask them, “What articles would you like us to write next?” We also invite our freelance writers to pitch us ideas. We review the suggestions and pick the best 5-6 each week”

– Pete Caputa, CEO at Databox

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Refresh old content ideas

Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to great content ideas! If you’ve got a backlog of old content, refreshing old posts can do wonders, as Chris from Klaviyo explains:

“I’m a huge fan of going through old posts and re-optimising them with new data and new insights for a new audience. We have a ton of posts going back from 2015, 2016, 2017, and, with just a few optimisations and edits, we can give them new legs. That’s a big goal of our managing editor.”

– Chris Newton, Inbound Marketing Manager at Klaviyo

Identify sharable topics using BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo can help you identify topics that thrive on popular social channels like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook (Quora isn’t currently included).

Let’s say you want to write about topics around the general theme of “social media marketing”. You can run that search term and see the most socially shared posts via Buzzsumo’s ‘content analyzer’ tool.:

You can identify from this list which topics tend to be more widely shared than others.

You can take that a step further and click ‘view sharers’ for each post:

Not only will you identify influencers for certain topics (who you can contact to share your own posts) but you can also look at other content shared by those influencers for further topic ideas. Read more on connecting with B2B influencers here.

Conclusion

As covered, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to content ideation. It’s important to get clear about your goals before choosing a framework for topic ideas.

Here’s a recap of which content ideation frameworks you can use depending on your goal:

Organic traffic goals: SEO-first ideas using search tools and keyword research should be the base of your content ideation. Hub & spoke approaches are ideal for new blogs.

Conversion goals: Run an audit of your product pages and then choose content topics around pain points that your product solves

Target audience engagement goals: in-depth interviews with your target audience will help you identify nuanced pain points and patterns

Social sharing goals: Use a social sharing tool like Buzzsumo to identify which topics are frequently shared across different social media channels

Supporting your sales and customer success teams (lead generation and retention goals): Interview your sales & customer success teams and run audits of current materials.