01
Questions people ask you
Look through sales calls, contact forms, comments, support messages, and conversations. Keep the exact question and the situation behind it.
What did someone need help deciding?
Find social media content ideas in questions, changes, and real work.
Stop asking a blank page what to post. Collect the questions people ask, the changes they need help understanding, and the lessons your work can prove. Turn each signal into one useful audience question, then choose the idea you are best placed to answer.
Build a source habit, not a longer prompt.
Idea lists tell you what could be posted. Sources tell you why a post should exist and give you something specific to say.
02
Questions people ask elsewhere
Search relevant Reddit communities, reviews, forums, YouTube comments, and Google results. Notice repeated wording, disagreement, and missing answers.
What keeps coming up without a useful answer?
03
What changed
Watch product releases, rules, prices, customer habits, and industry news. A change becomes an idea only when you can explain why it matters to your audience.
Who now needs to make a different decision?
04
What your work taught you
Use a mistake, before-and-after decision, useful process, strong opinion, or result you can explain. This is the source competitors cannot simply copy.
What do you know from doing the work?
One career question becomes three possible angles.
An independent career coach repeatedly hears: “I know what I’ve done, but I ramble when an interviewer asks me to introduce myself.” That is a signal—not yet a post.
Audience question
How can I explain my experience clearly without memorizing a speech?
Explain
A simple structure for a short introduction.
Show
A rambling answer edited into a clearer one.
Reassure
Why preparation does not have to sound rehearsed.
The coach chooses the before-and-after example because it uses real editing judgment and makes the difference visible. The other two angles stay attached to the same question for later.
Five checks beat “this sounds interesting.”
A large idea bank still leaves you with the hardest question: what should you make next? Score with reasons, then use judgment when two ideas are close.
Useful
Does this help a specific person understand, decide, or do something?
Supported
Do you have experience, proof, or a reliable source behind the point?
Distinct
Can you add a view or example that is genuinely yours?
Timely
Is there a reason this deserves attention now—or is it usefully evergreen?
Right for the channel
Can the idea become a natural post here without forcing the format?
Collect first. Group second. Choose last.
Collect for 10 minutes
Copy five exact questions, comments, search phrases, observations, or changes into one place. Keep the source.
Group for 5 minutes
Put signals about the same underlying decision together. Do not confuse repeated wording with repeated need.
Choose for 5 minutes
Write one audience question for each group, add what you can uniquely contribute, and run the five checks.
Use AI after you have a signal.
Ask it to group evidence, suggest different treatments, challenge weak assumptions, or adapt an approved idea to a channel. If the input is only “give me 30 posts,” the output has no reason to sound more specific than anybody else’s.
Keep the source beside every idea.
Research method: live US-English Google results and search-volume data, competitor guides, current Reddit discussions, and local Emelyn prospect evidence checked 29 August 2026. The SERP favors broad idea lists; this guide focuses on the missing job of finding and choosing evidence-backed ideas.
Buffer source guide Reddit practitioner discussion Reddit source discussion
Editorial status: author and reviewer unassigned; last checked 29 August 2026. Corrections: hello@emelyn.ai.