Blog post ideas are like weather, everyone who consistently creates content knows this. You can be bombarded by ideas on what to blog about this week and next week, no idea may be coming forth, based on your most prominent business objective at the moment.
When a small business finally finds reasons to blog in order to create brand awareness, generate leads, convert leads to new customers, engage with existing customers, how does its digital marketing team craft a sustainable system that will continuously generate good blog post ideas?
Answer to this notorious question of how blog post ideas happen on us aplenty now and vanish into thin air the next minute is what this piece is about.
You will learn how small businesses can get content topics for their blog posts.
This post does not only teach you how to consistently generate great blog post ideas, it shows you how to tie business objectives you wish to achieve at every point in time to every piece of content you create.
Learning how small business can get content topics for their blog posts will break down for you business objectives your blog can achieve, what your blog can help your audience with and documented strategy to consistently generate blog post ideas that help fulfill your dreams as a business.
Blog post ideas, how can they fulfill my business objectives?
If you have not clearly stated what business objectives your blog is meant to fulfill, please stop reading right now.
Yeah. Stop reading!
Please, take your pen and note now. (I prefer Sticky Note anyways)
Write out what business objectives you seek to achieve with your blog post ideas. You should categorically know if your blog post ideas should help you create brand awareness, generate new leads, convert leads to new customers or engage with existing customers.
Unless you know exactly how your blog post ideas contribute to your profit line, you may not be inspired to devote enough resources to blogging.
At the heart of inbound marketing is business blogging. To do marketing that everyone loves these days, content marketing via your blog is key. It’s very very key.
What are the business objectives that my blog can achieve?
- Target the right audience
- Capture Influencers for promotion
- Rank website high organic search
- Ask FAQ or show how to use product
- Get audience to take action
Let’s look at how blog post ideas can help you achieve some of these business objectives.
How do I target right audience with blog post ideas?
All the searches in this life are to buy, know or go. You can target your audience who want to buy something but need more information about what to buy.
Sometimes, people don’t know what product, what brand is good for their needs.
It is on you to find questions these audience seeking information on what to buy, then answer them with engaging content. Optimize this content for search and seek back links so that more audience asking such questions can find your business through answer you have provided to their questions.
For your target audience who want to visit particular places, do keyword research or survey to identify places they find interesting. Write about these places so that your target audience can find you.
How do I capture influencers’ attention with blog post ideas?
Easy pizzy. Find what influencers of your choice are already discussing. Find what topics your social influencers are talking about and join the conversation with your blog post.
Top blogs in your niche at times set a new topic that other influencers start talking about. You could address these topics from your point of view as a business and share with them.
If your content resonates well with influencers, you are in for some real good free promo. This can get you some few minutes of fame.
How can blog post ideas rank my website high in organic search?
Rank for keywords. Writing to rank for a particular keyword is not the sole factor for ranking your website top of SERP though. It makes your website more relevant to frequently searched terms.
The more audience click through to your website because it contains information about their search terms, the more search engines find your website relevant.
Google would love to make more web visitors see a website that has relevant, fresh ideas which some people have already considered relevant by clicking through.
Trying to rank for some set of keywords should not isolate your blog post ideas to some particular topics. It should give you clue as to what most of your audience are interested in knowing at that point in time.
Keyword research is critical to fulfilling this goal. Identify long tail keywords or question keywords with moderate search volume and competition level. Create content and optimize it for these keywords.
Learn effective keyword research techniques here.
What purpose will my blog post ideas fulfill?
These are ways your blog post ideas can be of help to your audience:
- Help audience solve a problem/accomplish a goal
- Inform audience of new topics/trend/update/tips
- Help them find alternatives to products they may be using with yours
- Help them make good buying decisions
- Entertain audience/provoke opinion sharing
How can my blog post ideas help audience solve a problem?
Detailed how-to content helps audience solve a problem or accomplish a particular goal. Create and promote them.
If you know your audience enough, you will know their primary and secondary problems. You will know what other challenges are common to certain segment of your target audience. Buyer persona helps you with identifying these problems.
Let’s say using your product helps your target solve their primary problems. Secondary problems are other challenges they have at work as related to your product or issues they have with other products they use to complement yours.
It will not be a bad idea to go out of your way to dig into these secondary problems.
Provide solution to your target audience’ secondary problems and share with them.
For instance, part of the people we target for digital marketing training are small businesses. So, we create this post help them do well with their blogs.
You dig?
If you run a small business and you learn how you could consistently get content blog post ideas, we have fulfilled this purpose I am writing about with this post with you.
How can I Inform my audience of new topics, trend, updates with blog post ideas?
Write about trendy topics, trends, updates or newly-found tips that are relevant to your business.
No market is stagnant. There may be new technologies, updates on existing products, new services in your industry. All new trends are opportunity for your audience to learn something new from you.
No one wants to sound outdated. If your audience knows you churn out latest news, write about updates and tips in your industry, your blog becomes a go-to place for them for fresh updates.
Searchengineland does this well for the search marketing industry. You can be sure to read about updates on Google algorithms there. Many other updates related to both SEO and paid search marketing await you on Searchengineland.
This is one sure way to keep your brand top of the mind of your audience. Break news to them on the go, they will keep coming for more.
How can my blog posts help audience find alternatives?
Apart from writing your target audience’ secondary problems, you can do review of alternatives to other products they use, so long you could tie the content to your business.
Writing to provide alternatives for audience could inform periodic blog post ideas for small businesses. This will help you empower your audience with useful information. It will also get you attention of owners of those products you review.
Let’s say you run an app business. Reviewing Samsung S7 against iPhone 7 won’t be a bad blog post idea. You could write about a whole lot of similar tech-related products on a periodic basis.
Reviews like this can spark lots of conversation among users of different brands. Whether they support your argument or not, your blog post ideas will generate lots of engagement which will be good for your bank account at the end of the day.
How can I generate blog post ideas for my small business?
These are blog post ideas generator for small businesses:
- Are there questions that are not answered or not properly answered?
- Do I have research, insights, data, intellectual asset to share?
- Do I have experience or user’s testimonials to share?
- What do I think of current trend/topics/news in my industry?
- What do my audience care about?
Let’s consider how small business can generate fresh blog post ideas always by answering some of these questions.
How can I generate blog post ideas through unanswered questions?
Look for FAQ to answer. People will always have something to unravel about a product or service. I remember stumbling on a website of an offline phone shop through questions about problems common to a particular phone.
I learnt that there were that a particular type of phone had different clones that looks exactly like it. So, it was very hard to know original one by merely looking at it. I got curious and I wanted to know what differentiate fake type from original.
I was searching for this information, when I found this offline phone shop. The website got new visitor, more web page views and I once sighted the site for someone who wanted to write on similar topic back then.
If the phone shop was near my location then, it could have gotten a new lead in me. I am sure many people would have found the post because it was quite insightful for those who want to avoid buying a fake phone.
What tangible resources can I share with my blog post ideas?
You could share research, insights, data via your blog posts. Blog post ideas such as these will definitely set you apart.
If you cannot to conduct original research, look for research institutes or small research firms that have work related to your business and partner with them.
Through this or other means of brand partnerships, you could get intellectual resources that you could legitimately share on your blog.
There are good projects and research findings available at higher institutions, government ministries or private marketing research firms that you could adapt for your blog posts.
You could write about data, insights, innovation that are not popular yet. Your content will be credible so far you get the right authoritative source to back it up. Try to to re-purpose such resources to content formats other than text. It will help spread your content across several channels.
Can User experience form blog post ideas for my business?
Yes it can. It is good for your brand reputation as well. You could ask your existing customers to write about your product or service and you share with your audience.
Maybe you find people writing about you on other blogs, strike conversation with them. Let them come up with content you can share with people like them.
Getting users to write objectively about you, or review their experience with using what you offer will be good social proof for your small business.
It’s wrap on for now on how small businesses can get blog post ideas. Whichever way you plan to implement what you have learnt, ensure each of your blog post ideas is tied to a business objective.
With this, you can measure the digital marketing goals as well business goals your content is set out to achieve.
Our Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing is a practical course designed by the Digital Marketing Institute, Ireland to help businesses improve their online lead generation and customer engagement.
PDDM is highly sought after by employers as it is exclusively structured by practicing Digital Marketing professionals and carries the coveted Digital Marketing Institute and Scottish Qualifications Authority accreditation.
Regsiter for Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing. Next class starts soon. Join us!
Nigeria
