A University of Southern California study led by professor Dr. Marin Hilbert discovered that the average person is bombarded with a whopping 174 newspapers worth of data each day which means we've clearly gone from the Information Age to the Age of Information Overload.
The Good News: This is actually a golden opportunity for businesses that generate interesting, engaging blog topics, because most of the stuff that people come across online and elsewhere is boring, irrelevant or painful to read.
So, does your content fit the bill? Are you generating posts that visitors are looking for or are you just wasting their (and your own) time?
To help set you on the right track, we highlight 6 ways for your business to generate interesting blog topics that will get a standing ovation from your readers who's hearts, minds, and souls you've just captured... Or maybe let's just shoot for creating engaging content that creates a loyal audience base.
How to Create Interesting Blog Topics That Get Noticed
1. Review Previous Posts
Your previous blog posts may contain a wealth of ideas for good blog topics – such as questions to answer, issues to explore, examples and scenarios to illustrate a point, and so on. So, before taking Google out for a spin to find evergreen or topical topics, start by searching in your own digital backyard. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
2. Check out the Competition
Have you ever spied on your competition? Your competitors could be posting some interesting blog topics. Obviously, the suggestion isn’t that you’d “copy and paste” anything. Rather, you’d simply see what’s interesting, relevant and topical and provide your own spin on it. In just a few hours, you could have a huge list of ideas that will keep your blog pipeline full for weeks.
At the same time, you don’t necessarily need to head to a competitor. There are many online publications and (believe it or not) even federal, state and city government websites can be surprisingly useful sources of information for generating interesting blog topics.
3. Involve Employees
Your employees can be an extremely good source of inspiration for good blog topics. For example, you can ask your sales and service staff to list some of the questions they regularly get from customers. They will be happy to have a blog to point people to rather than take them through the issue step by step everytime.
You can also make it a requirement for each team member to share 3 ideas for a week (such as during a weekly staff meeting). In this way, they’ll be “on the lookout” for good blog topics and will note them throughout the week as they surf the web, read white papers, talk with counterparts in other companies, and so on.
4. Think Laterally
While it’s important to publish blogs that relate to the core themes of your company and brand, you should think laterally and focus on issues that would be of interest to your customers, and educate them on important topics. The blog post you’re reading right now is a perfect example of this.
5. Leverage SEO Research
Your SEO research will identify keywords that could generate interesting blog topics - especially if the keywords are (or point to) questions that your customers are asking. For example, if you’re in the human resources field and you see that many people are searching for information on whether they can rescind a job offer, you can answer this question in a blog post.
6. Use Blog Idea Generators
Sure it's hit or miss but you may even find some good blog ideas by using an online idea generator, such as the one created by HubSpot: http://www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator.
While these tools can be useful, keep in mind that everything they suggest isn’t a slam dunk. Some ideas are impractical to write about, or simply wouldn’t be interesting to your customers. Our advice is to use these tools as a starting point, rather than a definitive list of interesting blog topics.
Need More Help and Insight?
If you’re struggling to come up with good blog ideas – or if you’re finding it even harder to write blog posts in a fresh, interesting way at a rate of AT LEAST 3 per week, then contact the Leap Clixx team today.
Your consultation with us is free, and we guarantee that you’ll learn something valuable during our conversation that you can profitably apply to your business right away.
Topics: Inbound Marketing
