There's a lot of content out there, and guess what? 99% of it is terrible.
And that 1% of content is really good to really great.
Sometimes it’s hot news, like the recent Google search leak, but some content is so powerful, useful and memorable that a single piece of content can propel your business forward.
Your job as an SEO and content marketer is to seize the opportunity. That’s easier said than done.
The solution to this problem is to come up with unique ideas – again, easier said than done.
One tool that can help is the Value Proposition Framework (VPF), which helps you understand what your customer segments think and generate ideas focused on making their lives easier, solving their problems, and achieving their goals.
But even with this value-driven approach, it can still feel like everything has already been done, and often to a good standard.
The result is a ton of published content that doesn't bring anything new to the table, which might be fine if you're trying to drive traffic through other means, but it's never going to get you to the top of the Google mountain.
This is where SCAMPER comes in
SCAMPER helps you explore the content ecosystem from different perspectives and develop brand new ideas.
SCAMPER is another trendy marketing acronym that stands for:
- Alternative
- combine
- To adapt
- Fix it
- Reuse
- lose
- Sort/reverse
Each aspect challenges your current approach and encourages different thinking, which is powerful for the lone wolf content writer, but even more powerful when used to stimulate discussion with a team of co-conspirators.
Although SCAMPER was originally designed to encourage creativity and problem solving, it can also be a powerful tool to assist with SEO planning and develop a truly unique SEO strategy.
Why SCAMPER and why now?
At the time of writing, Google has only just provided some guidance for struggling sites, as summarized in this article by Danny Goodwin.
Key points include:
- Keep creating quality content and do what you think is best for your readers.
- Diversify your traffic sources and promote your content across multiple channels.
- Build a dedicated audience that you reach out to in person, or via email and social media.
To summarize further:
Create quality content and promote it to your audience via social media and email (obviously).
While much of the SEO conversation right now is centered around the massive Google SEO leak, the key to great success in SEO, or any marketing, is providing value to prospects who are interested in your product, and content, expressed in many forms, remains the best way to do that.
The only catch here, as further confirmed by the leak, is that you need to promote your content everywhere to get the most out of it – you need to promote it so people (including Google) know about it and engage with it.
Any serious SEO professional will tell you that, despite what Google has said in the past, you can't just build it and hope for the better. You've always had to create something great and promote it, so there's nothing new here. However, it helps to validate some aspects of this approach.
The real purpose of all this effort is to create something that will wow your audience, something so great that it almost advertises itself. Build it, promote it, and it will rank and the viewers will come (make sure your website is properly optimized so the fundamentals are in place).
SCAMPER is a tool that helps you think outside the box and create something truly unique and different that stands out from the crowd – that's half the battle.
Explanation of the SCAMPER method
The SCAMPER method was compiled by Bob Eberle from a set of questions created by Alex Osborn (the creator of brainstorming).
Although SCAMPER was initially designed to help with the creation of new products, it can be applied to content marketing and overall marketing strategy as well.
The seven elements of the SCAMPER mnemonic are categorized as follows:
- Alternative: Substituting one part of a product, process, or concept for another. This may involve substituting materials, ingredients, people, or approaches.
- combine: Combining two or more elements to create something new. This involves combining functions, features, or concepts to form a new product or idea (much like the Blue Ocean Strategy).
- To adapt: Adapt or change it to achieve a new objective or make an improvement. This involves looking at an existing solution and finding ways to adapt it to the current problem.
- Change (or scale): Change the size, shape, or other attributes. This means enlarging, reducing, exaggerating, or altering certain features to create a different result. (We especially love making things smaller in this world of limited time and attention!)
- Repurpose: Find new uses for existing products or processes: This involves thinking about how your current solution can be applied to a different problem or situation.
- lose: Removing unnecessary or tedious parts of a product or process – thus reducing, simplifying, and streamlining components, steps, or functions.
- Sort (or reverse): Change the order or layout of components in a product or process. This means reordering steps, swapping roles, or approaching a problem differently.
That's the basic idea of SCAMPER and how it applies to creative problem solving. In the rest of this article, we'll explain how you can use SCAMPER to create helpful, people-first content that your prospects and Google will love.
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USING SCAMPER FOR SEO AND CONTENT MARKETING
To integrate substitution, combination, and adaptation into your content marketing using SCAMPER, simply download the template below and answer the questions.
Remember, these questions are just guidelines. We strongly encourage you to brainstorm as a group and generate as many weird and wonderful ideas as possible. Then discuss and critique those ideas. The ideas that remain are the opportunities to pursue.
To make this easier, I’ve created a simple SCAMPER SEO template that you can use here.
Step 1: Topics
You can start with a list of articles, keywords, and ideas. To generate ideas, you can use an idea generation tool like the Value Proposition Canvas or conduct keyword research.
Step 2: Landscape analysis
Then, once you have your keywords and topics decided, search for those keywords and topics and see what’s out there. There may be clear patterns, or it may be helpful to do an SEO SWOT analysis to understand the strengths and weaknesses of what you’re currently ranking for.
Typically we recommend looking at the first 10 elements on page 1, but since SERPs are much more dynamic today, look at the first 10 links or features and go from there.
Step 3: Scanpar
Now you can run SCAMPER and use questions to develop new ideas for differentiating your content, making it stand out and adding value.
Alternative
- You can create something new by substituting many aspects: the target language, the angle, or more practical elements like videos, images, GIFs, downloads, tools, etc.
example: Replace a set of written instructions with an animated GIF.
Guide Questions:
- What keywords or topics can you substitute to attract a different audience?
- Can you change the format (e.g. blog post, video, podcast) to better engage your audience?
- What tools or resources can you replace to improve content quality or efficiency?
- Can you substitute a case study from one industry for an example from another?
combine
- Often it's the blending of existing elements that creates something entirely new, and it's the intersection of these two elements that creates uniqueness and value.
example: Combine infographics with in-depth blog posts.
Guide Questions:
- Can you combine two or more popular blog topics to create a comprehensive guide?
- How can you integrate multimedia elements (videos, infographics, etc.) with your written content to increase engagement?
- What happens when you combine user-generated content with our expert insights?
- Can you combine industry reports and expert interviews into one piece of content?
To adapt
- In content creation, adaptation means repurposing content for different contexts, mediums, or audiences.
- For example, turn a popular blog post into a podcast episode or create an infographic from a case study. This approach maximizes the value of your content and broadens your audience.
example: Create a YouTube video that covers the same topic as your most popular blog (coming up with a good idea is the hard part, so make sure it works in all formats).
Guide Questions:
- How can you align trending topics with your brand’s voice and messaging?
- Can we repurpose successful content formats from other industries for our audience?
- What content ideas from your competitors can you adapt to fit your audience’s needs?
- How can you make your content culturally relevant or timely?
Fix it
- Changing your content means updating it with new statistics, trends, or use cases to improve its quality and relevance.
- This keeps your content fresh and valuable, and improves your reputation as a trusted, top-quality source of information.
example: Turn your list article into a comprehensive guide or add detailed statistics to better explain your case.
Guide Questions:
- How can you restructure your content to improve readability and SEO?
- What small changes can you make to your content to better align with user intent?
- Can you change your tone or style to make it more engaging and authoritative?
- How can you enhance your content with additional data, research, and case studies?
Use for another purpose
- Repurpose your existing content in new ways to reach different audiences.
example: Convert your webinar into a blog post series. Convert your blog posts into an Instagram post series.
Guide Questions:
- How can you repurpose your old blog posts into new formats (eBooks, webinars, etc.)?
- Could you turn your FAQs into a blog post series?
- How can you leverage your internal company data to create compelling case studies and reports?
- Can I use customer testimonials and reviews in my content?
lose
- Remove unnecessary elements to streamline your content and make it more effective.
exampleEliminate jargon and overly complicated explanations. Focus on summarizing key points to provide the most value in the shortest time.
Guide Questions:
- Can you remove unnecessary jargon or complex language to simplify your content?
- Can I remove some of the content without losing value?
- How can you streamline your content to focus on key messages?
- What multimedia elements can you remove that are slowing down your page load times?
Sort/reverse
- Vary the order of your content or reverse your usual approach to gain new insights.
example: Start with the conclusion and then explain how you got there.
Guide Questions:
- Can you provide a conclusion or key takeaway first to grab their interest right away?
- What would your content look like if you reversed the normal order (for example, starting from the end)?
- Can you rearrange your content to fit a different narrative structure?
- What if you approached content from a beginner’s perspective instead of an expert’s?
Things to think about before you run off
Implementing SEO effectively isn’t getting any easier or cheaper.
While Google can’t exactly tell the difference between good content and great content, users can, and those user signals help Google determine what to rank highly.
The SCAMPER Method offers a structured, yet flexible, approach to brainstorming and developing new content ideas that are creative and SEO effective.
By systematically applying “substitute”, “combine”, “adapt”, “modify”, “repurpose”, “remove” and “rearrange/reverse” to your content strategy, you can produce content that is always fresh, engaging and SEO-friendly.
Don’t forget to integrate keyword research and SEO best practices at each stage to maximize your content’s impact in search.
SCAMPER Content Marketing Templates
Now that we've come this far, let's download the template:
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