5 Blog Content Topic Sources
Writing by Brick Marketing in Content Marketing
Setting up a business blog is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it active. One of the worst things that a business can do online is set up a blog, and then let it go inactive for months at a time. If you include a link to the company blog on your website, there’s a good chance that your website visitors that are looking for more information will click on it. Do you really want them to see that your last post is from three months ago and discusses a (now) irrelevant subject? Probably not. A blog is a commitment, and that needs to be understood from the get go. Unfortunately many businesses create a blog with the best intentions and within a few months have numerous excuses as to why they haven’t been posting.
One of the most frequent excuses, besides lack of time, is that they don’t know what to write about. Sometimes, in order to just fill a post quota, it’s tempting to just write about anything that comes to mind, even if it’s not completely relevant to the needs of a target audience. That should never be done. By doing a little bit of digging, there are always relevant topics to cover. You just need to know where to look.
Here are 5 places:
Customer Service
Speak with members of the customer service department in order to get key insights about what kinds of questions or concerns they most frequently hear. Depending on the size of the company, there could be hundreds of topics to cover. Customer service has the most interaction with those that are actually using your product.
News
This can be company or industry news. A business blog is owned by a business, which means that it’s perfectly OK to share any interesting news that’s going on in the company. This can include anything from a new hire to a new office location opening up. Make a point to browse industry news on a daily basis to see if there is anything worth discussing. Set up Google alerts for certain keywords or phrases that relate to your business.
Social Media Followers
Social media is about two way communication. Your social media followers follow you for a reason. They want to hear what you have to say. You should also want to hear what they have to say. Create blog posts based on social media conversations. If you’re really stuck, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask your followers for feedback or insights regarding what kind of content they would find interesting.
Industry Newsletters
Sign up to receive newsletters that others in your industry, even competitors, send out. The content in these newsletters may spark an idea or you may want to take a different spin on something that they’ve written.
Search Feature of Site
Does your website have a search feature? If so, what are people searching for? Sometimes people are just too lazy to navigate a website and head straight to the search bar to find what they are looking for. Pay attention to search trends for insights regarding what people are most interested in learning.
