It may take several months to observe the advantages of blogging and the extent of their growth is determined by your ability to consistently nourish the approach. It can be quite challenging, hence if your blog is like a garden experiencing a dry spell, there is no need to fret. You are not the only one facing this difficulty and relief is on the way. Keep reading for suggestions on blog topics that will help rejuvenate your tactics and make your job enjoyable.
Thought leadership blog post ideas
Your aim through these posts should be to distinguish your business from others in the same field and establish credibility.
- X Things [Hobby] Can Teach You About [Topic]: What are you passionate about outside of your business? Can you find a way to connect it with a concept relevant to your readers? Thought leadership doesn’t always mean coming up with new concepts or, well, thoughts. It can also mean coming up with new ways to package old concepts.
- Experts Weigh In: Is there a “controversial” topic in your niche? Not one that is emotionally charged, but something that can spark a mix of responses. Ask a handful of experts the same question (or set of questions) to get a well-rounded perspective. For an example, check out our Ultimate Guide to PPC Metrics: 17 Experts on the Top 3 Must-Check PPC Metrics
- X Best Practices I Don’t Follow: What are some standards that you find work against your favor, are antiquated, or simply don’t work for your scenario? Share them and why. Note: To avoid leading anyone astray, be specific about why and make sure to illustrate scenarios when those best practices are, indeed, best.
- A “Really,” “Truly,” or “Actually” List: Every niche has those keywords that, when searched on Google, bring up pages and pages of results that all basically say the same thing. In our niche, for example, it’s Instagram captions. Drives me bonkers. But you can be the one result that doesn’t just copy and paste what’s already there, and actually take the time to come up with your own authentic list (while still meeting the intent of the keyword, of course). Then make it clear in your SEO title. In fact, I do just that in my 131 [NOT Overused!] New Year’s Instagram Captions.
- X Things I Wish I Knew / Mistakes I Made: Talking about your shortcomings can be just as effective as your successes. Plus, it makes you more human. Reflect on mistakes you’ve made in your journey doing your line of work, or things you wish you knew sooner. Your readers will appreciate the transparency—not to mention being able to avoid making the same mistakes.
- Share Your Opinion on Something: Express your mind on a topic in your industry. Just remember that it’s best to also present the opposing opinion or other perspectives involved. A good example is our post on Performance Max: Pros, Cons & Polarized Perspectives.
Pro tip:
Thought leadership content is not expected to generate significant organic traffic due to the introduction of new ideas and concepts that are unlikely to be actively searched for by readers. However, traffic can be directed towards these posts by utilizing social sharing platforms, email marketing, and internal links. Furthermore, genuine content can lead to the acquisition of backlinks.
Strategy & tip blog post ideas
The core of your content strategy should be centered on this. Several enterprises are hesitant to divulge their techniques to accomplish what they do for their customers. However, it’s not imperative to share your trade secrets. Moreover, by illustrating to them how to do something, you establish that you a) possess expertise in the subject matter and b) have a genuine interest in helping them. If your blog doesn’t provide it, they’ll seek it somewhere else. Moreover, if they can carry out tasks themselves, they’re not a suitable match for your enterprise. Your target audience is people who either lack the necessary skills, time, or interest to acquire the knowledge to accomplish what you do.
- How to Do X (Without Y): Basically, cover a way to achieve something without doing the go-to strategy for it or using the go-to tool for it. For example, we have a post on How to Compete With Big Spenders (Without Spending More Money).
- How to Do X in X Time: Humans love to save time. They also love predictability. Telling them how to do something within a finite period (in a week, in an hour, in five minutes)—particularly a faster time period than they’re used to is guaranteed to drive clicks.
- How We [Achieved X]: As long as it doesn’t reveal your secret sauce, share how you reached a particular goal (one that your customers also want to reach)—strategies used, mistakes made, challenges faced—to help others do the same.
- Topic: The X-Step Recipe to Success: Turn a particular process into a food analogy and walk your readers through how to do it, recipe-style Share ingredients (tools/skills/mindset(s) needed), steps, images, and plenty of food puns. Here’s a tasty example: How to Run Google Ads: The Step-by-Step Recipe to Success.
- The Quickstart Guide to X: just like a piece of equipment often comes with detailed instructions and a shorter quickstart guide, distill one of your more detailed walk-throughs or whitepapers into a post that just covers the basics. Also known as a cheatsheet or pocket guide.
Repurposing blog post ideas
Repurposing content is a fantastic solution that provides multiple benefits. In addition to extending the value of your initial efforts, it helps to keep your content up-to-date (thanks to subtle tweaks) and saves you time in the process.
- Compile your top tips. Comb through your posts on a particular topic and extract the best tip from each one—ideally, very specific and niche tips that your audience might not necessarily know to search for. Combine these into a post and you’ve got yourself a hack list.
- Round up your top strategies. This is similar to the above, but instead of extracting specific tips, gather up a handful of posts that each cover a particular strategy in depth. Create a post covering each strategy briefly, then link to the more detailed coverage when you talk about each one.
- Combine and redirect. Got a lot of short posts all covering the same keyword cluster? They could be competing with one another on the SERP. Consider combining them into one comprehensive post and redirecting them accordingly. You might use the one URL that has the most traffic and/or backlinks. Or if none of them have stellar performance, just publish as new and redirect all of them to the new link.
- Create a post out of a comment thread. Got any social media posts that sparked a long Q&A thread or interesting discussion? Turn it into a post!
7 ways to come up with blog post ideas for your business
To generate material for your business blog, you require a steady flow of concepts to occupy the reservoir. However, where can you discover these notions? Discover some methods I utilize to locate blog article topics that correspond with my company objectives and intended readers.
1. Review your customer support logs to find pain points
Utilize this tactic when your target audience isn’t connecting with your content.
If a substantial number of individuals have a particular inquiry when reaching out to customer support, it is probable that the question is noteworthy enough to be addressed.
The approach adopted by James Parsons, the creator and Chief Executive Officer of Content Powered, involves utilizing customer feedback to generate topics for content creation. Noteworthy areas of concern, inquiries, and tactics implemented by customers are leveraged in the process, as noted by him. A case in point is a client who employed NitroPack and inquired about the feasibility of eliminating the footer link added. Based on this, they crafted a blog post on the same issue, which ultimately garnered significant traffic and currently ranks top on Google.
Aside from creating tutorial or troubleshooting articles, endeavor to extract themes from customer inquiries, enabling you to compose a diverse range of posts that address the core pain points of clients. This requires taking a step back and analyzing the queries to determine their underlying objectives. Rather than merely focusing on what customers are asking, consider why they are asking it.
2. Use AI software
Employ this tactic when you find yourself in a state of complete impasse.
Every day, Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more accessible to users. Although it is not yet capable of replacing writers and editors, it could be considered as your motivational assistant.
AI software for content marketing utilizes natural language processing, which is an AI field that enhances computers’ understanding, comprehension, and handling of human language. The software examines established niche content to uncover keywords and sentence structure and derive fresh and original ideas.
3. Use Google Alerts and Google Trends
If you aim to enhance your SEO, utilize this tactic.
Google Alerts has been around for a while, but I feel like it’s still an untapped resource for coming up with new ideas.
By crafting your own search engine queries, Google will provide you with notifications (accessible through various apps) whenever new content, matching your set of terms, appears on the internet. This method is not only convenient but effective in keeping abreast of the latest trends and developments in your industry without the need for constantly browsing. Boosting your knowledge in your field, also helps with your creativity in generating new content.
Google Trends can provide you with suggestions for trending topics that are related to your keywords. For example, if you own a pool cleaning company, simply search for “pool cleaning” in Google Trends to discover other popular topics and related queries.
4. Study your competitors’ content—and fill in the blanks
Adopt this approach if you face significant rivalry in your field.
Examining your rivals’ material can be an excellent means of sparking new ideas. Simply perusing their content may be enough, or alternatively, you could input their URLs into a tool like Google Keyword Planner and discover a range of their most significant and widely-used keywords. This will enable you to build comparable pieces based on your own knowledge or skill set.
Certainly, replicating the identical article of your competitors will not suffice- it is imperative that you distinguish your work. Once you have the subject matter, these are the measures you can undertake to enhance the level of your content above that of your rivals.
Provide comprehensive guidance. To illustrate, I authored a blog post concerning Pinterest for Supermetrics, which is presently ranked second (as of the time of writing) among search results for the keyword “Pinterest traffic.” This is higher than a competing Pinterest post on Ahrefs, a more prominent website. Rather than simply stating what needs to be done to boost Pinterest traffic, my post supplies readers with a series of instructions to follow.
Rather than simply stating information, it is more beneficial to share personal experiences. Merely listing facts can be done by anyone, but when coupled with relevant personal experience, your blog post can become exceedingly valuable. As an illustration, in my Zapier blog post that pertains to improving website speed, I discuss how sluggish loading times were negatively impacting my company and how each suggestion presented in the article ultimately enhanced my performance. This method makes the content more relatable.
Vary the layout. Experiment with informative visuals if your rival’s publication is primarily composed of text. This not only enhances the interest of your material but also enhances your probability of appearing on Google’s image search outcomes.
5. Join a community for your niche
Implement this approach when you are a novice in the field.
In case you have a meager customer base, you may lack knowledge regarding the content preferences of your audience. Thus, my recommendation would be to become part of an online community relevant to your niche, with a focus on Facebook Groups and Slack communities.
Join a Facebook Group related to fitness if you operate a fitness business. You will be presented with discussions and inquiries from fellow members which could serve as inspirations for your blog articles.
6. Tell your story
If you possess an exceptional background story, apply this approach.
Sharing your challenges and the lessons you have gained from them can establish reliability with your viewers, and your blog is an excellent platform for this purpose. Unlike other marketing material, where you’re limited to a few words, your blog affords you the opportunity to narrate your complete story.
7. Take a break
Employ this tactic when all the other methods have failed.
At times, the act of attempting to generate ideas is actually impeding your ability to generate ideas.
It is advisable to take some time off and shift your attention to other activities. You can socialize with loved ones, indulge in some TV viewing, or immerse yourself in a good book. This will enable you to regain your concentration, and you might come across a source of inspiration even as you take time out.
