Latifah Abdur Explains Why Your Next Content Idea Should Start With a Customer Question

Not sure what to create next? Latifah Abdur explains why your best content ideas may already be hiding in the questions your customers are asking and how those questions can become a roadmap for stronger online visibility.

“What should I create content about?” It’s a question business owners ask all the time, especially when they know they need to stay visible but don’t want to keep creating content just for the sake of posting. During a Bloom Connections Educational Moment, Latifah Abdur, founder of Bloom Connections and fractional CMO firm Elite Vivant, offered a different starting point: Instead of beginning with what you want to talk about, start with what your customers are already asking. That shift matters because the way people search for information is changing. People still use Google, but they’re also turning to AI tools and asking complete questions about the problems they’re trying to solve. Latifah put the opportunity plainly: “AI is answering your customers’ questions right now. Is it answering with you?” The goal isn’t to publish more for the sake of having content online. It’s to make your expertise available around questions people are already trying to answer. And that starts with understanding what they’re actually asking.

The Visibility Game Has Changed

For years, online visibility largely centered around Google. Someone typed in a search, scanned the results, opened a few websites, and looked for the information they needed. If your business wasn’t appearing prominently, there was a good chance they never reached you. That search behavior still exists. What has changed is that someone can now open an AI tool and ask a much more specific question. Instead of searching for: bookkeeping services they might ask: How do I choose a bookkeeping service for my consulting business? Rather than working through a list of websites themselves, they may expect the AI tool to help them understand the answer. During her presentation, Latifah described this as a change in the “visibility game.” AI tools can draw from information available across the internet when responding to those questions, creating another way businesses and their expertise can potentially be discovered. That means your content strategy can’t begin only with the topics you want to promote. It also needs to consider the questions your audience brings to the search.

Answer the Question They’re Asking, Not the One You Wish They Were Asking

As business owners, we know our services.

We know the terminology.

We know what we want someone to buy.

The person looking for help may not be there yet.

Latifah emphasized the importance of answering “the question that’s being asked, not the question you wish they were asking.”

That distinction changes how you think about content.

A bookkeeper might want someone to search directly for monthly bookkeeping services.

The prospective client may be asking:

How do I choose a bookkeeping service near me?

Another person may want to know:

What’s the difference between QuickBooks and Xero?

Someone else could be looking for an affordable bookkeeping solution specifically for freelancers or another type of business.

Each question gives you information about what that person is trying to understand.

Instead of forcing them immediately toward the service you want to sell, you can meet them at the decision they’re currently trying to make.

But first, you have to find the questions.

You Don’t Have to Guess What Your Customers Want to Know

During the Educational Moment, Latifah demonstrated AnswerThePublic, a search-listening tool that can help uncover questions people are searching around a particular topic.

She used bookkeeping as an example.

A broad term like bookkeeping may be highly competitive, but digging into the questions surrounding that term reveals more specific opportunities.

AnswerThePublic organizes searches into question clusters such as:

Who
What
Why
When
How

It can also surface comparison searches using language such as versus, with, and without.

Now a business owner isn’t staring at a blank content calendar wondering what to say.

The audience has already provided a starting point.

That’s where search research becomes more than keyword research.

You’re learning what people want to know.

Customer Questions Can Become Your Content Roadmap

Finding a long list of questions doesn’t mean you need to answer every one.

Latifah recommended scanning the question clusters and pulling approximately five to ten questions that are relevant to your business and audience.

Those questions can then become a roadmap.

One might deserve a full article.

Another could become a short video.

Several closely related questions could become FAQs.

A comparison question might become a standalone piece that helps someone evaluate two options.

A question you hear repeatedly during sales conversations could become a LinkedIn post.

The shift is small, but useful.

Instead of asking:

“What am I going to post this week?”

you can ask:

“Which customer question am I going to answer?”

Now you have a topic tied to something your audience has demonstrated an interest in understanding.

But finding the question isn’t enough.

The next part is where your expertise matters.

Your Experience Is What Makes the Answer Yours

Once you identify a useful customer question, Latifah recommended seeing what already exists around it.

Ask the question in an AI tool.

Look at the answers.

See which sources are appearing.

Then pay attention to what’s missing.

Is the answer too broad?

Is there a situation where the standard recommendation changes?

Have you worked with a client facing this exact problem?

Do you have an example that makes the answer easier to understand?

Is there data you can bring into the conversation?

Do you have a different point of view based on what you’ve seen in your work?

Those are the details that begin separating your answer from generic information someone could get anywhere.

A customer question gives you the topic.

Your expertise gives someone a reason to pay attention to your answer.

That distinction becomes especially important when AI is also helping you create the content.

Let AI Pull the Expertise Out of You First

It’s easy to type a topic into an AI tool and say:

Write me a blog post about this.

The result may sound polished.

But if the tool doesn’t know what you think, what you’ve experienced, or what you’ve learned from doing the work, the content can easily sound like something anyone could have published.

During her Educational Moment, Latifah demonstrated a different approach.

She shared a prompt designed to interview the expert before writing the content.

The process asks questions one at a time to uncover things such as the expert’s opinions, frameworks, experiences, examples, case studies, and data.

Only after gathering that information does AI begin shaping the content.

That changes AI’s role.

You’re not asking it to manufacture your expertise.

You’re giving it your expertise and using the tool to help organize what you already know.

Then the writing itself needs to make that knowledge easy to find.

If They Asked a Question, Give Them the Answer

Finding the right question and bringing your expertise to it won’t help much if the reader has to dig through the entire article to figure out your answer.

Latifah encouraged the group to be direct.

As she said during the presentation:

“Don’t build a story and then try and sneak the answer in there.”

Give the reader an initial answer early.

Then use the rest of the article to make that answer more valuable.

Add context.

Explain where the answer changes.

Show an example.

Address the next question they’re likely to have.

Bring in your experience.

Clear headings can also help organize those ideas so a person can quickly understand what each section addresses.

And those same fundamentals matter beyond AI.

One Customer Question Can Give You More Than One Piece of Content

A good question doesn’t have to live in one format. An article can become a video. A video creates a transcript. Part of the answer could become a LinkedIn post. A deeper explanation might become a newsletter. Related questions can become follow-up pieces. During the conversation, Latifah encouraged business owners to think beyond publishing only on their websites. She specifically discussed LinkedIn as another place to publish useful expertise and build authority around the questions an audience may be researching. The goal isn’t to copy and paste the exact same thing everywhere. It’s to recognize that one strong idea can give you several opportunities to communicate what you know. And that can make content creation feel very different.

About Latifah Abdur

She created Bloom Connections as a space for business owners to build meaningful relationships, share expertise, and develop power partners who can carry one another’s names into rooms they aren’t in. Through Elite Vivant, Latifah works with businesses on the marketing decisions that shape their next stage of growth, bringing together data, strategy, visibility, and execution. Her Educational Moment focused on one part of that work: helping business owners understand how customer questions can become useful content as the way people search continues to evolve.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I find questions my customers are asking?

Start with a core topic connected to the problems your business solves and research the questions surrounding it. During her Educational Moment, Latifah demonstrated AnswerThePublic as one tool for finding question clusters and related searches around a topic.

How can customer questions help me create content?

Customer questions give you a starting point based on what people want to understand. A relevant question can become an article, video, FAQ, newsletter, social post, or a section within a larger resource.

Which customer questions should I answer?

Focus on questions that connect to your expertise and the decisions your prospective customers are trying to make. Latifah recommended selecting approximately five to ten relevant questions to begin building a content roadmap.

How quickly should I answer the question in an article?

Latifah recommended getting to the initial answer early rather than making someone read through a long buildup first. The rest of the article can provide the examples, context, nuance, and expertise that deepen the answer.

Does SEO still matter with AI search?

Yes. Latifah specifically cautioned against ignoring traditional SEO. Clear headings, organized pages, and direct answers still help search systems understand what a page covers.

Learn Something. Share Something. Grow Together.

Latifah’s Educational Moment reminded us that we don’t always need another content idea. Sometimes the better place to start is with a question someone is already asking. Find the question. Bring your expertise to the answer. Give people something useful to find. Want to experience the next Educational Moment? Join us at an upcoming Bloom Connections gathering.

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