Many people think that writing a blog is easy, but it’s hard to know what to blog about. After all, most of us have a wealth of knowledge in our heads and would love to share it with the world.
One of the perks of being a blogger is the ability to generate blog ideas. However, the tricky part is knowing what and when to say it. Most seasoned bloggers go through this stage, but they also learn to overcome these obstacles.
My experience here is that the easiest way to find blog ideas is to strategically plan each post. While it’s not created overnight, the best bloggers have a year-long content calendar to draw from.
With these instructions, you always know which topic is coming up next. Here’s my wisdom on how to create your content calendar full of blog ideas, which should be both strategic and coherent.
Blogging should be strategic
As a general rule, deciding what to blog about should involve strategic decisions. One reason is that you need the blog to complement other aspects of your overall marketing efforts.
Another reason is that your blog should be a place that customers and decision-makers enjoy visiting. However, designing your blogging strategy is relatively easy if you consider the following questions.
What role does your blog play in your business?
One of the most important strategic questions on blog ideas is what a blog can do to fulfill its strategic role. For example, some corporate blogs focus primarily on corporate news. This is often done with regard to shareholder and public relations work.
This is where most blog posts are designed to make the company look human and be a place for humans. This is one of the reasons why blogging is not dead.
Similarly, many blogs serve consumer education. Content marketing is an important aspect of corporate communications, and one of the best forms of it is teaching people how to make better use of your products and services.
When decision-makers are looking for a possible purchase, they want to know if what you are offering is the best fit for their business. So, knowing what to blog about is first and foremost knowing why to blog.
What are you trying to sell or promote?
For most brands, the answer is that they’re trying to sell products, promote their business or both. The topics for your blog should reflect the nature of your business.
For example, a makeup brand might blog about application tips and showcase its products. A building materials company can discuss when to use which of their products. Service-oriented companies can talk about the benefits of the services they provide. Each sector may wish to discuss industry news and developments etc.
Who is your target audience for your blog?
To know what to blog about, you need to know your audience. The aim of the cosmetics company could be marketing to make-up artists and film studios. Building material suppliers can target homeowners or contractors etc. Your blog topics should reflect your audience, but also the way each post is written.
Create your blog content strategy
After you’ve established your goals and target audience, it’s time to formulate your strategy. Search engine optimization (SEO) comes first. Although most established blogs and websites have regular readers who visit them every week, finding new readers is important.
And the best way to do that is with good SEO practices: most people don’t read past the first or second page of results. My blog confirms this: according to my analytics figures, search traffic generates 82% of traffic.
To achieve optimal SEO, determine the keywords that your target customers would use to find your products or services. There are various SEO tools like SEMrush (affiliate) that can help you research relevant keywords in your industry. Ideally, you’ll be adjusting both general and more specific keywords.
In addition, selected keywords must have a significant search volume. Finally, make sure your chosen keywords aren’t competing so hard that you’re struggling to rank well.
Create your editorial calendar for a year
Armed with relevant keywords, you’ll have an easy time deciding what to blog about. As a rule, I recommend that you start blogging weekly.
Writing a blog post requires time and planning, so work time should be considered. The easiest way to select topics is to list the top 52 keywords you find that align with your business’s bid relevance, search volume, and ranking difficulty compared to the competition. Then you write on a different topic each week.
While you might get inspiration from bloggers who post multiple times a week, this isn’t a good place to start. In fact, it has been suggested that the biggest problem that kills 95% of blogs is when the author makes 5 or 6 posts too fast and then runs out of breath.
Another reason to increase your pace is as domain authority builds over time. To do this, start with the least difficult post in terms of competition and later work your way up by blogging the more competitive ones.
As more competitive keywords appear on your calendar, you’ve built a track record with the search engines.
What to blog about for each keyword: Find SEO blog ideas
Of course, one keyword isn’t quite enough to know what to blog about. Rather, it is a starting point that determines where you should compete. Narrow down your topic by looking at the top 10 search results and understanding what ranks well. This allows you to confirm the search intent.
Then examine your competition and use their posts to understand what a searcher is looking for. You must defeat these existing posts to reach a high level of authority.
When writing, it’s important to give the subject its own unique treatment. This means understanding what information the competition is missing from their posts. Give them this information and more with your own unique perspective and experience.
The idea here is that people will find things on your website or blog that doesn’t appear anywhere else. Over time, this will help attract repeat visitors and build a following.
As you write, think about what kind of blogs or other material you want to read. Is it dry and boring or does it show the author’s personality? If you’re like most people, reading the same old dry material isn’t your idea of fun.
Be creative and focus on the topic in a branded and personable way that general blog writers don’t. Almost as important is using data sources, talking about your experiences, and including pictures or videos.
This way your material will be remembered. One blogger found that writing conversations increased the time people spent on his website by 22.7%.
Find blog ideas for new posts
Sometimes it’s okay to write something similar to everyone else’s material, but you don’t want to do it all the time. Nobody likes a “Me Too” blog, and it doesn’t build your domain authority. Therefore, you need to come up with new ideas for your keywords.
One way is to see which topics tend to get more views or conversions and do more keyword research to find more content ideas. In other words, you’re looking for the “holes” in the content just waiting to be filled.
At the same time, you should regularly check your SEO tool for keyword search volume as trends change regularly. Therefore, you should consider doing these reviews on a quarterly or even monthly basis.
You may find that customers are looking for specific information in your industry or that your company has a solution to frequently asked questions. This gives you the opportunity to revise your content calendar or to adapt a keyword to different questions.
Over time, your search engine rankings should increase. Keep an eye on this, and over time you’ll be able to target more competitive keywords with higher search volume.
This works well because ranking higher on certain topics increases your “domain authority”.
Finally, as your business grows or adds new products and services, you should look for new strategic keywords. Add them as needed to keep your content calendar competitive. Being at the forefront of a discussion is a great advantage.
Other places to find new blog ideas
Browsing the web and looking for keyword usage isn’t the only way to decide what to blog about. In fact, over-relying on the same sources all the time can make the blog boring. We definitely don’t want that!
By being the most interesting or informative blog in your industry, you can gain a significant competitive advantage. Luckily this isn’t rocket science. Here are some more sources of inspiration.
Questions are full of blog ideas
People in each of these categories are already interested in your blog, your products, and services, or both. For reader questions, consider something that suggests some insight on the part of the questioner. A common example would be automotive blogs, where someone might request insights into a specific make of a car.
Likewise, customers and sales managers ask questions about your products and services. If any of these topics come up often enough, then it’s time for a customer education post.
Consider topics in the blogs that you read that you find interesting
Sometimes being better than another blogger isn’t the only reason. For example, I know some bloggers who engage in friendly debate through blog posts.
While this is less common on corporate blogs, the principle is the same: Borrowing other people’s topics and interacting with them can be very useful. Bonus points if you get backlinks in the process.
What people are looking for on your website
Here you just use Google Analytics (make sure you have GA Site Search set up) and whatever other tools you use to see what people are searching for. If they find it, you should consider expanding your coverage of this topic. A neglected topic should be overwritten as soon as possible.
What questions are people asking on Quora?
For the uninitiated, Quora is a social issue platform similar to Reddit. Look for sections relevant to your niche and see what people are talking about. Then write a post that answers these questions.
Look for popular blog ideas on other websites
An equally valuable source of information for what people want to know is competing websites. Many blogs have widgets that show which posts are popular. Occasionally you should check this out for information on what people are reading. Popular websites in your niche are also great sources. Knowing what to blog about is even easier when considering multiple sources of information.
There’s no need to keep reinventing the wheel: You blog is already full of blog ideas
There is no question that some blog posts are only good for a short time. Articles of this type include personnel change announcements and other company news. However, much of what is written on a blog is useful long into the future.
To ensure the blog post stays current, revising and republishing old blog posts might be a good option. During the revision, make sure the keywords are updated accordingly.
However, revisions can mean more than just changing keywords. Done right, edits will often add content to make the post more valuable than before. At the same time, you will find it easier to keep up with the competition.
As products and services, blogs are subject to competitive pressures. And people go where they find the information provided more valuable.
There’s no question that deciding what to blog about can be a challenge. Consumer demand changes, products change and competition varies. In this competition, everyone competes for the best search engine results and regular readers.
Luckily, if you follow my suggestions, you’ll have a great content calendar filled with a year’s worth of content in no time.
Hopefully, you’re not looking for ideas to blog about right now, are you?