Blogging is absolutely crucial to any online marketing strategy. It is perhaps the best and most efficient way to push your own helpful original content to your visitors, leads and customers and it will often be their entry point to your website via a search engine. We’ve given many tips on everything from how to write awesome blog posts to reasons why your blog may not be having the effect that it should.
Tips on writing the posts themselves are all well and good, but how do you come up with enough topics to sustain your blog over the long haul? After all, you need to have something to write about before you can write about it. Right?
This would be so much easier with monkeys.
Here’s how you can start brainstorming:
1. Keep a List of Topics and a Publishing Schedule
This is a no brainer. You need to keep a list of topics in a reserve somewhere. Not only will it help turn the engine over when you’re experiencing writer’s block (and you will), but as you think of things on the fly it’s easy to put them on your list before you forget them. It’s also a good idea to keep a list of topics you’ve already written about. They can stir up new ideas and they’re also great to reference in future articles.
2. Be the Expert
As a professional, people are always coming to you with a problem that they’re looking to have solved. Think about the most common questions that you run into during the workweek and elaborate on them. They could be in the form of Q&A, tips, suggested best practices, etc. Just think about the issues that your client personas are facing and there’s sure to be a plethora of helpful content ahead.
3. Interviews
Anyone that has any sort of interest in your company can contribute great content via an interview. They could be other industry experts, current clients or even employees. You can also make your blog posts a little more interactive by offering video interviews. Check out our article on some other ways you can use video to create awesome marketing content.
4. Create ‘Best of’ Lists
You’ll notice this is a common trend on this blog. We’ll offer the 5 best tips for something. Normally when we create these lists, we’ll come up with a good 10-20 items and either break them up into several posts, or whittle them down to the 5 or so best ones. It’s much easier to digest smaller pieces of information at a time than one giant exhaustive list.
That’s why I save the naughty girls for last.
5. Follow Ups
You see what we did there? Just because you’ve written about a particular topic doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. Take the opportunity to create a sequel to that content or provide an update to the previous topic and reference it in your new post. With regards to ‘best of’ lists, you can use that content that didn’t make the first cut to create a ‘more best of’ series.
6. Guest Posts
Ask fellow professionals and contacts if they would be interested in providing guest content via an exchange of services. Not only does it help free up some of your valuable time, but it also provides your visitors with fresh content from a different perspective.
7. Community Events
One of the easiest things to write about is simply what’s going on around town and how your business is becoming involved. You can also use these events as a springboard to new topics from all of the great discussions you’re sure to have at these locations.
Blogging really doesn’t have to be the giant ROI and time suck that you may believe. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Every great online marketing strategy is built on the foundation of great content that people want to read. Now that we’ve offered you these tips to get your creative juices flowing, try our free guide to get your blog up and running:
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