Content marketing — providing valuable, relevant content for your audience to attract them to your business —  is here to stay, and that’s a good thing. However, it’s only going to become more competitive as more businesses add to the ever-swelling sea of voices on practically every topic. Want to show up on a search result for your modest frozen turkey business? You’re up against “A Comprehensive History of Frozen Turkeys,” “10 Things You Never Knew About the Modern Frozen Turkey,” and “These Celebrity Frozen Turkeys Will Blow You Away!” So how do you come up with ideas for great content of your own?

Sometimes the best way to stand out is to stick to the basics and nail them. Before cooking up an elaborate six-part blog post series complete with diagrams, infographics, and a really neat flowchart on how to choose the best frozen turkey for your teen driver, take a step back and resolve to start small. The following ideas will help get you started:

How To: Apparently people used to learn to do things without typing into a search engine. Did they consult a musty volume of Encyclopedia Britannica or just fail horribly a bunch of times until something worked? We’ll never know. In any case, we now live in a world where people want to try doing all sorts of things on their own, partially because they know there’s someone on the internet who will gladly teach them the ropes. Think about your industry and what people seem to have questions about. Do you think people really know the proper way to thaw a frozen turkey or how to stuff said bird once it’s defrosted? Quite possibly not, and you ought to tell them. Now you’re a source of information as well as the birds themselves.

FAQ: In addition to things people want to learn how to do, there are often general questions surrounding a given industry or your shop in general. What sort of things do people email you about or ask when they come in to your place of business. Is this frozen turkey big enough to feed my family? How does oven size affect cooking time? You can also use Google auto-fill to hone in on frequently-searched questions regarding your field. Just type in “Do frozen turkeys…” and you’ll see a bunch of things people have been asking about. “…taste as good as fresh?” “…go bad in the freezer?”  “…explode when deep fried?” Do they? Use one of these as a blog topic!

Go Local: Get involved in your local community, whether attending craft fairs to show off your wares, helping with local volunteer organizations, or partnering with other businesses to sponsor events. You’re sitting on a content goldmine. Get an event you’re involved with up on your site as soon as details are finalized. Cover the basics of the event — date, time, location, attire, etc. — so that people who are searching for these things will find you. Tip: If it’s an annual event, make sure you’re including the year several times throughout your content, including headers. This will distinguish you from prior years’ content that folks searching online are trying to filter out.

If you’re just starting out with content marketing, there’s nothing wrong with sticking to the basics and gradually growing your content out from there. Successful posts will give you ideas for spin-offs, with abundant opportunities for internal linking. Like you probably tell your frozen turkey customers: Start small your first time around and master the basics. There’s plenty of time for deep-fryer explosions down the road.