When creating content for your business blog, the part that always takes the longest, even over writing your content or having it written for you, is coming up with your blog topics. This seemingly basic task becomes daunting when you begin to do research and take a look at the thousands upon thousands of blog posts already out there.
If you've been in a rut about what to publish next on your business's blog, we've got a solution for you. Here are 7 surefire ways to never run out of blog topics.
1. Stay up-to-date on industry news.
The number one reason that you are regularly updating your business's blog is to position yourself as an expert in your industry. By staying up-to-date on industry news, researching, and publishing more information about it on your website, people are going to know that they can come to you for the latest and greatest. Plus, industry news and updates are topics that are never going to go away.
2. Keep a running list of content ideas.
Keep a notepad or a note on your smartphone or tablet for blog post ideas. When you're working on your business throughout the day, keep blog topics at the top of your mind. As you work, more and more ideas should begin to come to mind, and you want to jot them down immediately before they flutter away. When you speak with current and potential customers, remember the questions that you get most often, and write them down so that you can address them in a blog post. When you're doing menial tasks, like driving, cleaning, or taking a shower, take this time to start thinking of new content ideas.
3. Phone a friend.
Get other members of your business on board with coming up with content ideas and topics. No matter what your job role is, you shouldn't be the only person in charge of content. Blog content doesn't only have to be the responsibility of the marketing team, either. Plenty of other team members can have valuable blog topics to offer that correspond to other departments in the business.
4. Look at your product/service benefits.
Although your blog is meant to give valuable insight to your current and potential customers, there is no reason that you can't also use it to sell for your business. What are your target market's pain points? What does your product/service do to erase them? Those are perfect blog posts. Help your audience realize that they have a problem and that they need your product/service to fix it.
5. Revisit past blog posts.
Take a look at blog posts that you've already published. Maybe you can gain inspiration from something that's already been written. Perhaps you've learned more on a past subject and it's about time for a part two. Or maybe you can take an old post and repurpose it into an entirely new format, like a video or an infographic. Just because a topic has been written on once doesn't mean that it's off limits. Do not simply rewrite the same blog post (Google doesn't like that very much), but if you have more to add on now, you can. That is why there are sequels.
6. Use a blog topic generator.
If all else fails, Hubspot has a free tool that will literally hand you over five new blog topics based on nouns you've provided for them. Although we all agree it's better to come up with blog topics from your own brain, sometimes it's nice to take a break and have our work done for us.
7. Do keyword research.
Keyword research is the most important way to always keep new blog topics coming. Using Google's Keyword Planner tool, or even just playing around with the search bar's autosuggest feature, is a great way to find topics that are not only relevant, but exactly what your audience is searching for right now. Search popularity shows that people are interested in that topic and guarantees that people will want to read that blog post.
Consistently coming up with blog topics no longer needs to be your least favorite task at work. Utilizing these seven different methods, you can be sure that you will never run out of content ideas again.
