One of the most difficult parts of maintaining your business blog is determining what exactly you should write about, and what types of information would appeal to your audience. (It is for us, too. I probably spent more time trying to figure out what to write about today than actually writing.) So we’re going to go over the best process to use when choosing blog topics that will bring more visitors to your website, inform your current and potential customers, and answer all of their questions.
1. Use content tools.
Tools like BuzzSumo were made for helping you find content ideas. Not only can you use this site to find content to share on social media, but you can use it to help you come up with blog topic ideas.
All you need to do is type in a keyword or niche into the text box and see what articles come up. You can also type in a blog’s URL to see what their highest performing blog posts are, and try to create a spin off of those. Always remember not to completely replicate their blog ideas. You want to have your own original content.
2. Send out a customer survey.
What is your audience looking for? Chances are, they want more information about your industry, your products/services, your business, and how to use your products/services in the best way possible. So finding out what your audience wants to see from you is key.
But you’re not a mind reader, right? (If you are, we mean no offense. We just tend to assume most of our blog readers aren’t.) So you need to ask your customers directly.
Sending out a customer survey is a great way to get feedback straight from your audience on what they’d like to see from you. You want to keep your survey short and to the point, only asking about 5-10 questions that tell you exactly what you need to know. Making the survey multiple choice makes it even easier for customers (and be sure to offer an incentive so that people will want to take the time out of their day to complete your survey). Ask which aspect of your business/product/service they have the most questions about, ask what their favorite product/service of yours is, and what type of information they would like to see you produce.
3. Find popular blogs in your industry.
Do a Google search for blogs in your industry and find a few of the best/most popular ones. Bookmark these so that you can reference them frequently. You never, ever want to copy other blogs’ intellectual property, but finding blogs that are doing it right and using their model and blog post topics as inspiration is a great idea.
Go through several of their blog posts to see if any of their blog post topics get some gears turning. Come up with some original topics, as well as topics that take a different spin on some of these previously written articles.
4. Do keyword research.
There are a few different ways to do this. First, you can use a keyword research tool specifically meant for this, like KeywordTool.io. You type in your topic and sift through the results, which consists of a list of all of the different Google searches that people do on that topic.
Another way is to start typing your keyword into Google and check out what autofills in the search bar. Doing keyword research to find blog post topics is a great idea because you’re able to find actual Google search results. These are the topics that people are regularly searching and want an answer to, and you can now write these answers for them.
5. Scan online forums.
Check out online forums or communities in your industry to see what questions users are asking, and turn those into blog post topics.
Plus, once you’ve written several articles, you might even have a blog post already written that answers someone’s question. This is a great way to get more readers, because you can share your blog post in response to their question.
If you’re still struggling to get topics and simply don’t have the time to work on your own blog, let us help! Call (800) 759-7996 or fill out our free consultation form.
