Let’s face it, creating content can be a serious hassle. Coming up with topics, ideas, and concepts to write about on a daily or even monthly basis isn’t an easy task. Today though we’ve got a little something to help you get over the content blues.

This excellent infographic is brought to you by copyblogger. It was originally a blog post called 21 Ways to create compelling content  that they turned into this infographic. Hint** that’s a great way to come up with new content – Recycle.

Check it out. One my personal favorites are #4, #11, #16!

Great content sells, drives leads, brings in traffic, and keeps readers engaged. In order to make it great though you’ve got to base it on data, facts, examples. Without that data you’re just another talking head that gets ignored.

Here’s what I’m talking about…

• “39% of U.S. consumers make more purchases online than in store”
• “U.S. consumers buy more online than in brick and mortar stores”

Which of those has more thud factor? Which one just rubber stamped itself into your frontal lobe for story time with your marketing buddies?

I’m willing to bet it’s the one with the numbers. Where else do you see numbers used to create impact?

Maybe this will stike a chord

“Loser Drop Out Makes $346,542 in 6 Months With 2 Simple Tricks”

Too “make money” for ya? Alright, how about this one…

“Atlanta Mother of 4 Drops 28 Pounds In 3 Weeks Eating Ice Cream & Pancakes!”

Obviously those are tongue in cheek examples. But you get where this is going, right? HEADLINES.

Headlines are used in every.single.piece.of.content.you.right. From sales letters, to blog posts, to articles, to tweets, to facebook updates, to white papers. They all use headlines.

Data will be used in ANY great content you create.

Recently I read an guest post over on problogger.com from a gentleman that works for a very interesting research tool called http://www.factbrowser.com

Here’s what he had to say about finding good data for your content

Finding the right data to support your content can take a lot of time. The good news is that there are a couple of free tools that can streamline the process and make sure you’re well-supplied with fresh research:

• Google Alerts: Set up an alert for keywords from your desired topic area plus words like “data” “study” or “report.” You’ll have to play around with the right keywords and phrases to get your alerts delivering exactly what you need, but it’s a good way to stay on top of new data as it rolls out.
• Factbrowser: Factbrowser, where I work, is a free research discovery engine that aggregates all of the latest research on business and technology, making it easier to find just the facts you need without having to wade through long reports. When you find a topic you’re interested in (like social media or mobile, for example), subscribe to the RSS feed for that topic to see highlights of the latest research.

source

The example I used above about online shopping was straight out of FactBrowser.  It’s a very cool site. Not only can you search for facts based on keywords, but they’ll give you a credible source to that data.

Man… where was this thing when I was writing college essays?

Check out some of these gems filed under Marketing

• The average Facebook post’s “halflife” is 2 hours 30 minutes longer after the introduction of Timeline versus before
• Revenues from search marketing grew to $14.8B in 2011, up 27% from 2010
• 96% of the top 100 newsstand magazines in the US had an “action code” like a QR code in Q4 2011

Pure gold.

Have any killer research tools you want to share? Hit the comments below.