7 Tips to Make Sure You Never Run Out of Blog Topics
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We’ve all been there. Racking our brains for blog post ideas, not sure what to write about next. It can be a challenge to come up with new and engaging blog posts especially if you already have a comprehensive collection of content on your site. But don’t worry, we’ve put a comprehensive list together to help you brainstorm topics for your own brand. From time sensitive posts to recycling old posts, here are 7 tips to make sure you never run out of topics!
Create Value
A blog is an excellent place to establish yourself as an expert in your field. It is important to make sure that your posts are helpful and that people will use your blog as a resource. By creating content that is useful, you are showing readers that you are the place they should seek out when they want to learn something new or have a question relating to your industry.
From the definition post where you explain what something is / how something works to a series post where you write series of posts on one topic, always thinking of the next thing to teach your readers is crucial. You can even create a problem/solution post where you post a problem and then offer up a solution.
Related: The Importance of Content Marketing: Mapping Out Integrated Campaigns
If you aren’t sure what to write about, you can go to sites like Quora where people ask different questions on various topics. You can find a topic that is relevant to your brand and see what questions people are asking.
People are constantly posting questions, so there should be endless topics to write about. In addition, you can write about questions you don’t know the answers too. Do some research and create a blog answering your own questions!
Time Is Of The Essence
When it comes to well-performing blog posts, timely ones are known to outshine the rest. Did Facebook just update one of its policies? Or has Google just launched a new offering? Every day there are new products and services on the market which is great for content marketers because that means there is ALWAYS something to write about. It is important to read industry news on a daily basis and stay atop of the constantly changing trends.
By staying informed of the news and industry updates, blog topics will fall into your lap. The news performs the topic creation process for you, and all you’ll have to do is be informed enough to grab those topics and run. Timely content is even considered better than having perfect content. So, if you have a timely topic to write about it don’t worry about making sure the content is perfect, simply run with the topic and publish it on time.
But, when we say your content doesn’t need to be perfect this doesn’t mean your content should be riddled with grammatical errors. Still take the time to proofread your work, but there is no need to pour over your blog many times to make the content impeccable. Timely content is very effective not only to join in on the trending conversation, but to also help bring new people to your website.
Keep Your Competitors Close
Another way to always have something to write about is to keep a close watch on your competitors. If they are talking about something, there is a good chance your company should also be talking about it. Maybe they just published a post that dives into a specific topic only relevant to your industry. If you are keeping an eye on what they are publishing, you can keep up with the relevant content and regularly have new topics to write about.
Related: Building and Integrated Content Strategy
Take a look at competitors that you know have an excellent bank of content. You can grab ideas from their blog and take those topics and make them completely your own. Try to come up with a new angle to a question or problem they have posed.
Even if you don’t use the same exact topics they are writing about, more than likely it will inspire you to create content of your own. But, always remember never to clone their articles. Getting inspiration is perfectly fine, but essentially writing the same blog they have will hurt you in the long run.
Recycle Recycle Recycle
Each time you want to write a new blog post, you don’t need to come up with an entirely new topic. It is okay to reach back in the vault and take a topic you’ve already written about to revamp. Because things are always changing, there is bound to be topics you’ve written about that you can write a follow-up piece on.
For example, there might be a blog post that you wrote a year ago that has had developments surrounding the topic that it was based on. Now is a great time to dust off that post and add relevant information or a new perspective to that content.
Related: Beyond Blog Posts: 5 Ways to Take Your Content Strategy to the Next Level
In addition to revamping historical posts, you can repurpose old content by turning it into new content. For example, if you have an infographic that has done really well, try turning it into a blog post and linking to one another. That way you are not only producing brand new and engaging content, but you are also bringing more engagement back to your initial piece of content.
Dive Deeper
Similar to recycling old posts, but with a twist. Are there subtopics within blog posts you’ve already created than can be expanded further? Say that you wrote a blog topic explaining the different social media platforms every E-Commerce company should utilize. You can then create an individual blog post for each social media platform that provides tips and tricks for increasing engagement.
Start by going through the last fifteen blog posts that you’ve written and write down topics within those posts that could be turned into their own piece. By doing this, you will come up with at least fifteen more topics for blog posts and probably even more.
Another way to do this is to take one of your published posts and create a contextual content cluster around it. If the topic of that post is “Should My Company Invest In Email Marketing?” then you would create 3-6 blog posts that would ladder up to that overarching topic.
Related: A Holistic Approach to Blogging: Contextual Content Clusters
An example of one of those supporting topics could be, “5 Email Sequences Every Company Needs To Send.” All of your subsequent topics in that cluster needs to relate and help support the topic of email marketing.
You can then continue to use this strategy with other topics that are of relevance and interest to your audience. This method of creating content will not only enable you to have a never ending supply of blog ideas, but it will also help your brand rank for those keywords on the search engine results page.
Be Inspirational
No matter what your brand or company offers, there are always different ways to give inspiration to customers. Whether it is providing them with new ideas or positioning something in a new way, your blog should act as a space where your audience can go to for inspiration. For instance, if you have a clothing brand, you can use your blog as a platform to share the newest trends or give tips and tricks on innovative ways to wear your clothes.
Or if you are a marketing company like us, we provide readers with new ideas all of the time such as this article you are reading right now. With so many ‘how to’ or ‘new idea’ posts, you’ll never run out of blog topics to write. It is important to note though that your blogs need to be aligned with your brand and target audience. Writing simply any inspirational topic will not help your brand even if it provides more content for your site.
If you have blog topics that aren’t valuable or relevant to your target market, than your content is not going to help reach the goal you set out to do. But, for any brand there are countless ideas that can be formed into blog posts as inspiration pieces. Not only are there boundless opportunities within this blog category, but this type of blog post also tends to perform very well with certain audiences.
Promote Your Brand
While this may not work for every brand or company, it is something to keep in your back pocket. By sprinkling promotional posts in with your other blog posts, it will keep your product top of mind with consumers while simultaneously providing consistent content you can publish.
Use your blog to showcase new product offerings or a new service your company has. In addition, the blog is an excellent place to share company news. In doing this, you are producing relevant content while also promoting your brand.
Related: How to Drive Revenue With Content Marketing
Another way you can use your blog for promotion is when your company is having a sale. You can create a blog post that highlights the products/services on sale and incorporate fun and engaging content to do so. For example, if you are having a sale on shoes, you can create a blog post that talks about the current trends and how to incorporate those shoes into your outfits.
Or, if you are wanting to push the sales of one of your products, you can create a blog post that focuses on the benefits of that product. If you have loyal subscribers you blog is an excellent place to promote your sales, offers, or new product/service launch.
Don’t Forget The Visuals
While this is more of a trait of a great blog post rather than a tips for topic ideas, adding visuals to your blog posts are essential. This doesn’t mean stuffing your post with images and videos, but it is important to style out your blogs.
Use headers, numbers, bullets, and other elements to make your content more digestible and easy to read. In addition, adding a header photo and in-content photos can help make your content more engaging. Lastly, it is not only images that are important, videos have become important to keeping your readers interested.
Hopefully the next time you are stuck and can’t think of a blog topic, you’ll use these tips and continue to create engaging and interesting content for your audience. There are endless topics to write about and when in doubt, look to other blogs for inspiration.
There is bound to be something on another blog that will spark an idea for your own brand’s blog. As mentioned above, don’t simply copy another blog but take that idea and make it into your own. We hope these tips above will help you create meaningful content for your brand and ensure you’ll never run out of ideas!