Content Ideation

Content Ideation for B2B Marketers

Overview

This skill covers how B2B marketers can systematically generate, source, and validate content ideas — moving away from guesswork toward signal-driven ideation. It addresses mining customer conversations, extracting internal expertise, using social listening, leveraging AI tools, and building repeatable systems for capturing ideas. All practices are sourced exclusively from Exit Five podcast guests across 25 episodes.

Mine Customer and Sales Conversations

Customer-facing conversations are the richest source of content ideas available to any B2B marketing team. Prioritize extracting signal from these interactions before looking elsewhere.

Pull from sales call transcripts. Extract real questions customers ask, the language they use, and the concerns they raise. Cluster these questions by topic to identify content gaps and opportunities. This can be done manually by copying and pasting from Gong or similar tools, or at scale by connecting MCPs (Model Context Protocols) to Claude or ChatGPT to automate extraction and clustering. (Source: Eoin Clancy, Episode #336)

Analyze transcripts for objections and turn them into messaging angles. Use ChatGPT to analyze sales call transcripts and identify the top 3–5 unresolved objections or hesitations prospects express. Then prompt the AI to generate marketing hooks and messaging angles that directly address these objections, turning them into campaign themes. (Source: Pranav Piyush, Episode #285)

Mine transcripts for ad hooks and campaign ideas. Feed real sales call transcripts into a ChatGPT Project and prompt it to extract ad hooks, campaign themes, and messaging angles that reflect actual customer conversations and pain points. Repeat this process weekly or bi-weekly as new sales calls occur to maintain a fresh pipeline of validated campaign ideas. (Source: Pranav Piyush, Episode #285)

Derive LLM prompts from recorded sales calls. Analyze recorded sales calls and customer conversations at scale using AI tools to identify common themes, objections, and questions. Use these insights to generate a prioritized list of prompts that LLMs are likely being asked about your product category. Cross-reference with Google Trends, competitor rankings, and paid search keyword data to validate and expand the list. (Source: Clare Schmitt, Episode #324)

Use meeting recordings to identify repeated talking points. Record and transcribe CEO/founder sales calls using tools like Fathom, Gong, or Granola. Feed these transcripts into ChatGPT and ask for patterns: What stories does the CEO repeat? What points come up in multiple calls? What customer pain points are mentioned frequently? These repeated patterns signal content-worthy topics that resonate with your target market. (Source: Finn Thormeier, Episode #317)

Extract thought leadership from founder/CEO customer conversations. Have the founder or CEO regularly speak with customers (e.g., 20+ conversations per week). Extract insights, patterns, and observations from these conversations that would be valuable to share with the broader market. Package these insights as content that demonstrates thought leadership without being overtly promotional. (Source: Dasha Shakov, Episode #317)

Monitor Gong calls, social media conversations, Reddit threads, and other customer touchpoints to identify what buyers care about. Use these signals to inform content strategy and campaign ideas. This is more efficient than guessing what content to create. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #164)

Extract Internal Expertise and Data

Every company has unique internal knowledge that competitors cannot replicate. Systematically surface and package it.

Identify and leverage internal data sources. Every company has unique internal data that can be used for content: sales calls and transcripts, internal chat channels and knowledge bases, software engineer insights, sales enablement decks, product-level data (transaction data, usage patterns), and team expertise. Start by identifying what internal data you have access to, then extract and format it for use in content creation. This doesn't require building new tools — it's about recognizing existing data sources and using them strategically. (Source: Eoin Clancy, Episode #336)

Interview engineers and subject matter experts daily. Engineers solve customer problems at 1 AM and understand nuanced pain points. Record voice notes from subject matter experts and use AI to enrich and structure them into drafts. Listen to sales call recordings and customer conversations, which contain the richest context for understanding how customers think about problems. Content grounded in real expertise performs better (measured by traffic and engagement) than content generated from generic information. (Source: Eoin Clancy, Episode #326)

Apply the Experts Paradox when working with founders. Founders often don't recognize their own insights as novel or valuable because they're too close to their thinking. The marketing team's job is to mine and extract this brilliance by asking probing questions, listening for patterns, and reflecting back what the founder is saying in a way that makes it clear and shareable. Use interviews, podcasts, or structured conversations to pull out the founder's unique perspective, then package and amplify it. (Source: Katelyn Bourgoin, Episode #344)

Systematically identify content opportunities from executive activities. Actively monitor and flag content opportunities from the CEO/founder's regular activities: internal presentations, investor meetings, all-hands meetings, customer calls, advisor conversations, and written communications. Train yourself and your team to recognize moments that could become content. This requires rewiring your brain to see everything through a content lens and being proactive in surfacing opportunities to the executive rather than waiting for them to generate ideas. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #317)

Mine internal communications for content. Systematically convert internal work communications into posts. When you write Slack messages, internal memos, quarterly updates, or answers to team questions, identify sections that could be repurposed as content. For example, if you answer 20 questions from a marketing team in a Google Doc, chunk those answers into individual LinkedIn posts over the following weeks. This ensures you're writing about topics you already know deeply and have already articulated internally. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #275)

Establish a dedicated system to capture content ideas from company conversations. Use Google Tasks, a Slack channel, or similar tools to capture content ideas as they emerge throughout the day from customer calls, internal meetings, and team conversations. Record ideas immediately when they occur rather than trying to generate them on demand. Examples include a Slack channel like "stuff customers say" where employees post customer insights, or using meeting recorders to identify repeated customer pain points or founder talking points that signal content-worthy topics. (Source: Emeric Ernoult, Episode #317)

Conduct Direct ICP Research

Go beyond passive signal collection and actively interview your audience.

Schedule regular ICP interviews to source content ideas and understand audience humor. Schedule 15-minute recorded interviews with 2–3 ICPs per week (mix of customers and cold-outreach prospects). Spend the first 7 minutes asking selfish questions about what podcasts they watch, what makes them laugh, and recent funny workplace moments. Record these interviews and extract clips and ideas. Offer interviewees edited clips in return for their time. (Source: Chris Cunningham, Episode #347)

Attend in-person industry events to identify content topics and audience pain points. Walk the floor, observe which booths draw crowds, talk to attendees about their challenges, and take detailed notes on the topics and problems people care about most. Use these insights to generate 15–20 content ideas for the year ahead. This is especially valuable for marketers in niche industries where online communities may be limited. (Source: Matt Carnevale, Episode #155)

Source thought leadership topics from research, real conversations, and observed pain points. Build thought leadership content by combining three sources: (1) research on workplace trends and emerging topics (using outlets like Morning Brew, industry studies), (2) direct conversations with employees and people outside the company experiencing specific challenges, and (3) real-life observations and pain points. This approach ensures content is timely, relatable, and grounded in actual problems people face. (Source: Arielle Gordis, Episode #166)

Listen to Social and Community Signals

Social platforms and communities are real-time research panels. Use them systematically.

Engage daily in your target community to identify trending topics and patterns. Commit to daily engagement in communities where your target audience hangs out (e.g., commenting on 10–12 posts per day in a Slack community, Discord, or LinkedIn). Over time, this consistent engagement trains your brain to recognize patterns in what topics people care about most. (Source: Matt Carnevale, Episode #155)

Lurk in niche communities (Reddit, subreddits, forums) to identify content gaps and audience pain points. Join and passively observe communities relevant to your target audience. Don't post; just read and observe which posts get the most upvotes, which questions get answered, and which topics generate the most discussion. This reveals what your audience cares about and what content gaps exist. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #155)

Use Reddit site search to identify content market fit in your industry. Search Reddit for your company URL or competitor URL using the format "site:reddit.com [your-domain.com]" and sort results by top posts. This reveals which content topics resonate with your audience on Reddit, since only posts the community finds valuable gain traction. Use this data to understand what types of content have proven market fit before deciding what to create and distribute. (Source: Ross Simmonds, Episode #200)

Use social media engagement signals to identify high-performing content topics. Spend 15–20 minutes daily scrolling through your target audience's social feeds and identify posts with high engagement (comments, likes, shares). Note the topics, themes, and questions that generate the most discussion. Use these signals as proof points for content ideas you should create. (Source: Matt Carnevale, Episode #155)

Mine LinkedIn comments for high-performing post ideas. When you write a comment on someone else's LinkedIn post that receives more engagement than the original post, save that comment as a future post idea. Copy and paste high-performing comments into a backlog (Apple Notes, Notion, etc.) and repurpose them as standalone posts when you need fresh content ideas. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #225)

Use LinkedIn comments as prompts for longer-form posts. When you write a thoughtful comment on someone else's LinkedIn post that resonates, save it. Later, expand that comment into a full 500+ word post for your own LinkedIn profile. This approach turns engagement into content creation and ensures you're writing about topics that already have demonstrated audience interest. Maintain a document of high-performing comments to reference when planning content. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #317)

Build a LinkedIn swipe file to identify content themes that resonate with your audience. Create a spreadsheet tracking the most engaged LinkedIn content in your niche. For each piece of content, record the number of likes and comments. Sort the spreadsheet by top comments and top likes to identify recurring themes and topics that resonate with your audience. (Source: Ross Simmonds, Episode #200)

Spend one month observing and analyzing high-performing LinkedIn content before creating. Before launching your own LinkedIn content strategy, spend an entire month consuming LinkedIn daily and documenting posts that resonate with you. For each post you like, save it and note: the topic, angle, tone, format (story, lesson, product launch, etc.), and why it worked. This builds pattern recognition and taste, which informs your own content strategy. (Source: Emeric Ernoult, Episode #317)

Mine community discussions for content and product ideas. Actively monitor your community for recurring questions and discussion threads. When you see the same question asked multiple times or a thread gaining significant engagement, that's a signal that the topic is valuable to your audience. Use these signals to inform your content calendar, product decisions, and marketing priorities. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #225)

Use community platform analytics to identify popular topics and inform content strategy. Regularly review your community platform's analytics (e.g., Circle's built-in analytics) to see which posts and topics generate the most engagement. Use these insights to inform both your external content strategy and your community programming. If members are asking many questions about a specific topic, create external content on that topic to attract more audience, and consider hosting a community event on it. (Source: Matt Carnevale, Episode #233)

Source thread ideas from community comments. Monitor communities (like Exit Five, Reddit, Slack groups) where your audience discusses topics relevant to your industry. When you see a comment mentioning a company or strategy worth exploring, save that idea. Batch these ideas and assign them to your writing team to research and write as blog posts first, then convert to threads. (Source: Ross Simmonds, Episode #209)

Validate Content Ideas Before Investing Heavily

Test ideas at low cost before committing significant production resources.

Identify content market fit by testing ideas on social and measuring engagement signals. Test content ideas on social platforms (especially X/Twitter) by sharing small, low-effort pieces and measuring which ones generate high engagement (reshares, reposts, likes, bookmarks). When a post resonates strongly, that signals content market fit — meaning you've found a topic your audience cares about. Once identified, expand that winning idea into longer-form content and double down on distribution. (Source: Ross Simmonds, Episode #209)

Test content ideas like improv bits; iterate based on audience reaction. Treat content ideas like an improv comedian treats bits — test them in live settings (podcasts, webinars, social posts), observe audience reaction, and double down on what lands. If a comment, analogy, or idea gets strong engagement or multiple emails from listeners, mark it as a "pocket" and plan to expand it into a full piece of content. This turns real-time feedback into a content development pipeline. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #155)

Use the "See Similar Posts" feature to identify winning content formats. On X/Twitter, when you find a post that resonates, click "See Similar Posts" to view the algorithm's database of related content on that topic. This shows you the highest-performing posts on that subject. Analyze why those posts got more engagement (depth, formatting, data, structure) and use those insights to rewrite and reschedule your own content on the same topic. (Source: Ross Simmonds, Episode #209)

Extract reusable "bits" from conversations and meetings. During conversations, webinars, or meetings, listen for moments where an analogy, joke, or framing lands well with the audience. Write these down as reusable "bits" that can be repurposed across different channels (LinkedIn, short-form content, presentations). The bits become building blocks for your content strategy. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #257)

Use AI Tools to Scale and Systematize Ideation

AI tools can accelerate ideation when given rich context. Generic prompts produce generic output.

Set up a ChatGPT Project as a repeatable campaign ideation engine. Upload foundational strategy documents: manifesto, category entry points, jobs-to-be-done, top blog posts, positioning document, brand personality guidelines, and behavioral psychology principles. Write custom instructions that tell the AI to generate new campaign ideas by connecting dots across these files, maintaining your brand voice and tone. Feed in new inputs (sales call transcripts, LinkedIn posts, podcast transcripts, presentation decks) and prompt the AI to generate campaign hooks, ad ideas, email series outlines, and content repurposing ideas. (Source: Pranav Piyush, Episode #285)

Use NotebookLM to extract insights and content ideas from ICP research data. Upload ICP research, customer data, and interview notes (up to 300 sources) into NotebookLM, then use it to generate content ideas, email copy angles, and personal interest insights. Unlike Claude, NotebookLM only pulls from sources you provide, eliminating hallucination. It syncs with Google Drive, so as you add new research, it automatically updates. This is particularly useful for finding non-marketing angles (personal interests, challenges) that can inform empathy-driven email content. (Source: Jess, Episode #312)

Set up an automated content monitoring and summarization workflow. Build an automated workflow that monitors industry news and competitor content by scraping RSS feeds from selected websites every 15 minutes. Use AI to check relevance against your defined topics, extract full article content via tools like Gina AI, summarize with Claude, and send results to Slack. Feed this curated content into custom GPTs trained on expert insights to generate content ideas, identify trends, and create unique angles. This workflow can be built in 2–5 hours using tools like Make or Zapier. (Source: Ugi Djuric, Episode #278)

Use AI to eliminate obvious ideas during ideation. In brainstorming sessions, ask AI (e.g., ChatGPT) to generate the top 10 ideas for a project, then remove all of those ideas from consideration. Since AI generates averages of existing best practices, its suggestions represent the most obvious, consensus-driven ideas that competitors are likely already executing. By eliminating these, teams force themselves to generate truly original ideas that stand out. (Source: Udi Ledergor, Episode #237)

Improve AI output quality by providing detailed briefs and context instead of generic prompts. Don't ask ChatGPT generic questions like "Give me webinar ideas for B2B marketers." Instead, provide detailed context: your audience, past performance data (top 10 and bottom 10 webinars), what your audience gravitates toward, and what you want to achieve. The more specific and detailed your brief, the better and more relevant the AI output will be. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #155)

Use a workflow to identify content gaps for AI search. Pull sales transcripts from the last 90 days to capture fresh customer conversations, analyze those transcripts to extract explicit and implicit questions/pain points, cross-reference against a list of AI search gaps (questions where your company should appear but doesn't, and competitors don't either — the "blue ocean"), and overlay quantitative data (e.g., search volume, traffic opportunity) to prioritize which gaps to address first. Output a ranked list of content topics with target audience, variations, and common objections. Feed the system rich context (brand case, ICP, sales metadata) so it understands nuance beyond raw transcript text. (Source: Eoin, Episode #290)

Identify Content Gaps Through Search and Competitive Analysis

Use search data to find topics with demand that aren't yet well-served.

Use Google Search Console to identify content gaps. Look for pages that have high impressions (your content is showing up in search results) but low click-through rates (people aren't clicking on it). This indicates a gap between what searchers are looking for and what your content is delivering. These are high-priority candidates for content refresh or rewriting. You can also use Google Analytics, Google's "People Also Ask" section, Reddit, and YouTube to identify related questions and content gaps that competitors haven't addressed. (Source: Eoin, Episode #290)

Regularly consume competitor and adjacent content for inspiration and ideas. Build a habit of consuming content from newsletters, brands, and creators you admire. Study what works: email subject lines, landing page layouts, thumbnail designs, messaging approaches. Send yourself screenshots and notes. This constant input feeds your creative output. You're looking for patterns, techniques, and ideas you can adapt and remix for your own work. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #314)

Build Content Pillars and Frameworks

Establish a strategic foundation so individual ideas connect to a coherent content strategy.

Build content pillars using a Venn diagram of audience needs, peer behavior, and your expertise. Create content pillars by identifying the intersection of three elements: (1) what your audience wants to know, (2) what their peers are saying, thinking, and doing, and (3) your niche knowledge and experience. Start by listing skill statements (e.g., "I know how to write a co-prospecting email") and outcome statements (e.g., "I know how to generate sales pipeline"). Then identify the most expensive problem and most urgent problem your audience faces. The content pillars that emerge from this intersection are "content that converts." (Source: Devin Reed, Episode #196)

Select webinar topics using a quarterly skeleton framework aligned to market trends and audience segments. Plan webinars quarterly by creating a skeleton framework that identifies 2–3 hot topics and 2–3 audience tracks (e.g., content engineers, CMOs). Match each topic-track combination with the best industry expert or practitioner who can speak authentically to that subject. Stay flexible — be willing to pivot the agenda 2 weeks before the webinar if new market developments emerge that your audience is asking about on sales calls or in previous webinar Q&A. (Source: Eoin Clancy, Episode #326)

Generate LinkedIn post ideas by writing your own opinion on relevant industry conversations. When building LinkedIn content, identify posts from relevant industry voices on topics you care about. Rather than engaging directly, write your own separate post sharing your perspective on the same topic. Use the original post as a prompt for your thinking, not as something to directly reference. (Source: Emir Atli, Episode #165)

Write case study-style posts analyzing how other brands execute marketing well. Build your LinkedIn audience by analyzing and writing about case studies of companies or brands you think are doing interesting marketing work. Rather than positioning yourself as an expert prescribing solutions, share your observations and interpretations of what you see them doing well. This approach builds your audience and is particularly effective for early-career professionals who want to build credibility without claiming expertise they don't have. (Source: Tommy Clark, Episode #171)

Capture Ideas Continuously

The best content ideas surface unpredictably. Build systems to capture them in the moment.

Extract LinkedIn content ideas from your weekly meetings and work activities. At the end of each week, review your calendar and meetings to identify takeaways, highlights, or frustrations that can become LinkedIn posts. You can also build a swipe file in Apple Notes, Google Docs, or Notion to capture post ideas as they occur throughout the day, preventing the blank-slate problem when it's time to write. (Source: Tommy Clark, Episode #171)

Source LinkedIn content ideas from sales calls, customer conversations, product meetings, events, and news articles. Establish a system to capture content ideas from multiple touchpoints across the business. Train the team to flag potential content moments and feed them into the content backlog (e.g., via Slack channel) for the founder to develop into posts. (Source: Brad Zomick, Episode #156)

Take physical notes during conversations to improve retention and idea generation. Even when a call is being recorded, take handwritten notes. The physical act of writing helps your brain organize and retain information differently than just listening. You may never re-read the notes, but the act of writing them improves recall and creates mental hooks for future reference. This is especially useful for extracting ideas and anecdotes that can later become marketing content or newsletter topics. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #314)

Where Experts Disagree

No disagreements were identified across the practices contributing to this skill.

What NOT To Do

Don't generate content ideas in a vacuum without customer signal. Guessing what content to create is less efficient than mining Gong calls, social media conversations, Reddit threads, and other customer touchpoints to identify what buyers actually care about. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #164)

Don't rely solely on AI to generate content ideas. AI generates averages of existing best practices — its suggestions represent the most obvious, consensus-driven ideas that competitors are likely already executing. Use AI to eliminate the obvious, not to replace original thinking. (Source: Udi Ledergor, Episode #237)

Don't give AI generic prompts. Asking ChatGPT "Give me webinar ideas for B2B marketers" produces generic output. Provide detailed context: your audience, past performance data, what your audience gravitates toward, and what you want to achieve. (Source: Dave Gerhardt, Episode #155)

Don't wait for founders to volunteer their best thinking. Founders may not share their most valuable insights because those insights feel obvious to them — not because they don't exist. Proactively mine founder thinking through structured interviews and conversations. (Source: Katelyn Bourgoin, Episode #344)

Don't try to generate content ideas on demand from a blank slate. Build systems to capture ideas continuously throughout the day — from customer calls, internal meetings, and team conversations — rather than trying to generate them in a scheduled brainstorm session. (Source: Emeric Ernoult, Episode #317)

Don't invest heavily in content before validating the idea. Test ideas at low cost on social platforms first. When a post resonates strongly, that signals content market fit. Only then expand the idea into longer-form content and invest in distribution. (Source: Ross Simmonds, Episode #209)

Don't start creating LinkedIn content without first spending time observing. Spend an entire month consuming LinkedIn daily and documenting posts that resonate before launching your own content strategy. This builds pattern recognition and taste that informs what you create. (Source: Emeric Ernoult, Episode #317)

Sources