We encourage the people we work with to write blogs along with the blogs we often create for them. We are often able to provide ideas based off research, looking at trends and traffic tools, and other things. Our goal with content strategy is pretty straight-forward: find the gap between what people are searching for and what your competition isn’t writing about. Easier said than done. But of course, there’s nothing wrong with divulging some tips. There isn’t a lot about this that is proprietary in the first place, so here are some ways to come up with your own blog topics quickly, and hopefully painlessly, for routine blogging.
- Look at competition: Think of the keywords you’d be searching for if you were a customer looking for your company’s services. Then, look at competitor websites and check out their Blog, News, or Articles sections. If you’re feeling spry and want to write additional pages on your website, also look at their “Services” page to see how granular they get with specifics about services. I can’t stress enough how important this is in some situations. Some brief examples where we helped clients in this area: In the home remodeling business, everyone writes about kitchen, living room, basement, and bathroom remodeling, but what about dormers, room additions, or entire second story additions? People write about lawn care, lawn maintenance, pest control, termite control in droves every moment. But what about pet and kid-friendly care? Competition will give you an idea of what you can expand on, and, hopefully, trigger an idea for a variation on an important topic.
- Look on Google News: One way I like to find something to talk about is looking for a topic in “Google News”. As you can see below, you can order criteria by how recently it was published. This will help to make sure the timeliness of the information is on point. That way, it is also useful for social media.
- Think About Questions Clients Have Had: With most businesses, clients and people doing business with you have had questions you’ve probably had to clarify at one point in time or another. Ask your employees or co-workers what kinds of questions they’ve had in recent weeks and see how that can turn into a topic of a blog or, at the very least, contribute to a list-type blog or an FAQ.
Coming up with regular, high quality, and timely content is not always easy. It takes time and research. That’s why we offer a variety of content creation services. We’ll take care of coming up with the ideas, doing the research, and writing the content so you don’t have to. Contact us for more information.