Sometimes you just lose that fire. You’ve squeezed every bit of juice out of your creative brain. What was once exciting seems mundane. That can easily happen in the world of content, and in particular, with your blog. If your blog is a primary source for drawing traffic, then you know the importance of having good topics, keywords, and organic SEO. But what if your team has drawn a blank? Here are some tips to get re-inspired and create new and engaging content blog topics.
7 Excellent Tips for Finding New Ideas for Your Content Blog
Tip #1: Use your most-read posts
Often, content blogs have a limited word count. That means you aren’t using them to go in-depth about a topic. Look over your analytics and find your most-read posts. From there, look at subtitles and sub-topics, and go deeper into each of those subjects. For example, maybe you did a content blog post about “6 Ways to Minimize Your Impact on the Environment.” Within that post, you touched on alternative energy for your home. Now you can take each of those subtopics—like solar energy or geothermal energy—and make them each its own topic. A new title could be, “4 Benefits of Solar Energy,” or “How Much Will Solar Panels Cost You?” Of course, your new topics and subtopics will depend on your industry, but popular posts are a great place to start—especially since readers seem to like them.
Tip #2: Ask your readers
Your readers can be an excellent source of ideas. Conduct a survey, gather comments on social media, or ask your customer service team the top questions or concerns your customers ask. Each of these questions, issues, problems, or feedback tidbits are great for creating blog topics. You can give your readers the solutions and information they are looking for.
Tip #3: Check trends in your industry and write about them
Let’s say you work in the landscaping industry. A great way to come up with new topics is to look at what’s trending. Pull up Google and ask a question like, top gardening trends of 2018. All of a sudden—Voila!—you have several things to write about. Now you have new topics like "creating an outdoor eating space in your garden," or "how to explore growing new foods." Again, tailor your search to your industry.
Tip #4: Add some guest posts
Maybe your voice has gotten boring, or you still can’t think of an idea. Luckily, there are lots of guest bloggers and industry supporters that would love to write for your blog. Put a call out there, or start emailing companies and blogs you like. If you need more information, there’s plenty of guidance on how to find guest bloggers and learn more about guest posts.
Tip #5: Interview someone related to your industry
Human interest stories can be popular if done well. Find someone related to your industry who will interest your readers or offer new and exciting information. Then, use some guidelines to conduct an interview before putting it into article form. Your content blog may benefit from having something a little different yet engaging.
Tip #6: Compile a list of favorites
What are 10 different ways to use your product, or 5 services your company offers? People love lists, and they can be great topics for your content blog. Think of unique ways you can use lists in your blog. If you’re a real estate company, maybe list the “top 6 coffee shops for families” in a specific neighborhood, or if you’re a wedding photographer, the “5 most unique local spots for engagement shots.”
Tip #7: Write for a secondary audience
It’s rare that a product or service only appeals to one demographic. You may be writing for IT workers for a software company, but maybe there’s a small audience of small business owners looking for help with using your software. Create some topics and present them in a way that your secondary audience will understand. Primarily, you’ll write for the main audience, but it doesn’t hurt to have some pieces mixed in for your secondary audience as well.
When you feel your well of ideas drying up, find new ways to get inspired. That way you’ll have a content blog that consistently produces fresh topics and highly-readable content.
