There is a direct correlation between the frequency of blogging and the amount of traffic to a company’s website. Research from Hubspot found that companies that blog 15 or more times per month get five times more website traffic than those that do not. But you are probably wondering what content you can possibly write about?
Finding topics to blog about is one of the most common challenges content marketers face. We always recommend that you start by answering some of your customers’ most popular questions, reviewing industry trends, comparing prices of comparable products and services in your industry, or conducting brief interviews with experts from within your organization.
These creative efforts might seem time-consuming. So here are a few ways to go about generating content for your company blog, from repackaging existing resources to involving others in the process and finding guest bloggers.
Repackage
Start with something simple. Do a thorough audit of existing content or internal communications. This could be company brochures, product sales sheets or a presentation you gave to an industry group. Many times, you can take something that may have been published internally, remove some proprietary information, and transform it into a great blog post because, ultimately, it showcases your brand.
Next, reach out to others in your organization. Identify people who serve as your business’ primary sources of communication with the outside world, whether that’s customer service or sales. Give them a pad of paper, and for one day, ask them to write down every single question somebody asks them. Ultimately, this will give you a rich list to help you generate ideas for blog topics.
Brainstorm
Even if you leverage resources outside of your company and infiltrate other departments within the company, it’s still easy to run out of content ideas quickly. Therefore, you should be constantly seeking new opinions and new insights.
Hold brainstorming sessions and consider creating a collaborative document to allow people build on one another’s ideas. If you are a small company, identify peers or fellow bloggers who might be willing to participate in such brainstorming sessions. For instance, you can create a Facebook group with other people who are in a similar situation.
When you join a group that you can bounce ideas off, you’ll discover something really interesting: when you suggest a blog post idea to the brainstorming group, people will react if they are interested in the topic. If they don’t react to it, it probably won’t drive that much interest for the larger audience either.
Guest Blogging
Another method of generating content for your blog is to invite other industry experts to write guest posts for you. Use your network to find people who might be interested in guest blogging. Be confident in pitching them benefits of guest blogging.
For instance, guest bloggers can gain exposure beyond their normal readership and generate inbound links that can help them rank better in search engines. Guest blogging is also a great way to begin a co-marketing partnership and build a strong relationship with industry influencers.
Curation
Another great way to generate blog content is through curation, or the aggregation of other valuable pieces of content. If you are going to curate information, make sure you’re curating it to provide some type of value for your reader. Don’t just curate content for the sake of doing it. Ask yourself:
- Are you saving the reader time by putting all of these resources in one place?
- Are you offering your own opinion and insight against what somebody else has said?
You need to make sure you’re adding some layer of value for your reader by curating the information in the first place.
Most people will be flattered that you want to share their content. It’s also a great opportunity to build a relationship with them. The simplest guideline is to do unto others as you would have done to yourself. Make sure you’re following other bloggers’ content usage guidelines, and make sure you appropriately attribute the original author. When linking to others’ content, it’s also a good idea to create links that open in a new tab or window.
Following these simple tips can help you keep your content calendar full with rich, ongoing blog topic ideas.
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