How To Come Up With Blog Post Ideas

If you’ve been reading along for awhile, you know all about the importance of having a website, creating content, and blogging for your business. In theory, this all sounds great— but when it comes time to sit down and actually write something, you may suddenly remember all the HBO/Netflix/Hulu shows you need to watch…

We’re big fans of simplifying the process and you know we can’t resist sharing our favorite hacks— so here's a few tips on how to come up with blog topics to serve your target audience.

Check Your Analytics

If you don’t already know, your analytics (on your website and social media channels) reveal a lot about your target audience. Often times, when I first start working with a new client, they don’t know where to find these analytics and/or their content has been attracting a completely different audience. This is where you need to dive in. Take 15-20 minutes to browse through your analytics and create a list of your most popular content. From there, you can cross-examine it with what’s been performing poorly and see what work needs to be done.

Are there ways you can repurpose or expand upon those content pieces? Could you create a follow-up blog post or a “part two”? Are there topics closely related to your popular content that you could write about? Work through these questions and boom— you have an entire list of new blog content ideas.

Add Value

Skip the traditional blog style and create a free downloadable resource for your audience instead. This is a great way to give something of value to your audience for free while also positioning yourself as an expert. Pick a topic, create something helpful that your audience may need, and then write a brief description and publish it as a blog post. 

For example, we created an SEO Checklist that helps non-techy business owners optimize their website searchability. We sent it out to our email list as a free resource, and mentioned that our team can help them with SEO if they need it. A common first reaction to something like this is “Why would you give something away for free, when it’s something people would/should pay for?” Charging for everything all the time doesn’t help anyone. If anything, creating opportunities for current and potential clients alike to get more of a feel for our style and the quality of work we deliver, pays off in spades.

Ask Your Audience

If you have an engaged online audience, it’s not unheard of to simply ask them what they want. When you directly ask them via social media or survey what they would find helpful, you’re going directly to the source and creating for them specifically. Make a list of their responses and start writing.

If you don’t have an engaged online audience, choose two or three of your real-life clients or customers and ask them what information they would find beneficial. For us, this would look like us asking a few of our clients what questions they have about Marketing as a small business owner. From there, we use our expertise to answer those questions in the form of a detailed blog post. If you or a client has the question, there’s a good chance other people in your target audience will have the same questions.

Feeling inspired yet? If you need some extra help, reach out to us! We can help you come up with a marketing game plan (blogging included) for your business.

PSST— Once you have your blog written, you can repurpose that content into social media posts. We wrote all about that here.