10 Blog Topic Ideas To Delight Your
Audience & Drive Online
Trafficalishaxr.blogspot.co
10 blog topic ideas you can turn into hundreds of compelling articles to engage your audience, drive traffic, and boost your search rankings.
Exciting stuff! And we’ll look at that in a sec. But first, let’s answer the following burning questions:
1) How often should you blog for business?
2) How long should a blog post be?
Let’s get started.
kitten searching for creative blog post ideas on Google
1) How often should you blog for
business?
Blogging frequency depends on your competition, and your available resources for content marketing. And by “resources,” I mean time and talent.
For a business in a competitive niche, blogging weekly on relevant topics is a good idea.
But look at it this way. To rank on page one, you need to have all the content, backlinks, and traffic that your page one competitors have.
So ask yourself…
How soon do you want to get there? And how fast can you churn out quality content?
Here’s some stats for perspective.
After an extensive study of over 13,500 bloggers, Hubspot reported,
“Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got almost 3.5X more traffic than companies that published between 0 – 4 monthly posts.”
Obviously, this isn’t possible for all businesses…
Do what you can. But make sure it’s all top quality. There are some great ideas coming up.
How long should a blog post be?
From a study of over 20,000 keywords, SerpIQ reported that the average word count for top ten results is 2,416 words.
More than you expected? The data doesn’t lie…
According to Brian Dean from Backlinko,
“Longer blog posts rank better because they’re filled with details. These details are what is giving readers value. Reader value is driving ranking.”
And when there’s more detail, it’s easier to integrate long-tail keywords. This helps you rank for multiple terms, drive traffic, and attract backlinks. All very good things for your business.
No… this doesn’t mean you need a blog full of 2500 word posts. Go look at your competition. See what works and what doesn’t.
If the top 10 for your keywords are all 700 words, write a 1500 word article. But make sure it covers what your competitors have – and more!
You also need to account for search intent. What your audience wants, and how they want it. So if 1800 word tutorial articles work best in your niche… you know what to do.
Alright. Now for the main event…
Blog topic ideas for your business
1. List post
People love lists. They’re easy to skim read, and a great way to start a conversation.
Create a list of books, quotes, complimentary products… anything related to your business. Write a bit about each point on the list, why it’s relevant to the blog topic idea, and how it can help the reader.
For example, a gardening business could compile a list of their employees’ favourite heirloom tomato varieties (and why). Great advice from people on the ground humanises your business, and creates discussion points online, and in store.
And look at all the related topics revealed from a quick Google search… more topics to write about!
2. “How to” tutorial
What do your customers want to know? Find out by asking them, your sales and support staff. Also comb your business social media pages for questions.
Then, it’s action time. Create an in-depth article showing step-by-step instructions and tips for how to do the things that your customers want to learn.
For example, a family dental clinic would write an article about how to make dental hygiene fun for kids. This type of post can even help brand their clinic as the go-to place for families – a great competitive edge.
3. Tools or resources
What are the tools of the trade that your business uses? Project software, video hardware, vehicles? Whatever it is that keeps your business running… people want to know!
Create an article listing them out, and how you use them. It can be a bit of a mashup of the “how to” and “list” article ideas. And when done well, is very effective in engaging your current customers, and attracting new ones.
4. Expert roundup
This is about being a solutions focused business, not just going for the quick sale. It’s about building trust, and going over and above for your customers.
Look for a repeated question from your customers where your business doesn’t provide a solution. Then reach out to experts in the field to answer it.
Compile the responses into an article with links to the guest experts’ websites. And, if all goes well, they’ll share the post, and might even link to it from their blog.
But the most rewarding part about this, I find, is the relationships you build with other businesses and professionals. Extending your network can mean more opportunities for collaboration to solve problems together.
Mild warning: an expert roundup can take time, and people don’t always reply… but it’s worth it when they do.
5. One-up your competitors
Look at your competitors’ highest performing articles, and do them better. Let’s say a competitor wrote a popular 500 word post about a new eco-friendly cleaner for coffee machines.
You should write 1000 words, include a product comparison, scientific data and quotes about the ingredients, and reach out to the manufacturer or other experts for comment.
Answer any questions you can think of that your customers might have about the product. Keep an ear to the ground for more questions, and update the post as necessary.
6. Trends
What are the latest trends in your niche? What’s working and what’s not?
Put together an article outlining the trends, and why they matter. Gather statistics, graphs, and quotes from experts. Finally, provide actionable tips on how to overcome the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities.
7. Case study
There are many ways to approach this. One is to create an industry-focused case study. Another is to create a customer-focused one.
Customer focused
Is there a challenge that your customers continually face? Or an issue your company or others may have blundered on? Create a case study based on real customers with testimonials (with their permission, of course), to demonstrate how to overcome the challenge, and you’re doing about it.
Industry focused
Are there challenges that business owners in your niche face? Investigate solutions, and present them with real-world examples. And even though this may be helping out your competitors, it establishes you as an authority in your field. That means something to customers. Plus, it can help you earn valuable backlinks to help boost your SEO.
8. Get personal
A personal touch goes a long way. Try these tips to humanise your business to create deeper engagements with your customers.- Reflect upon a key lesson you’ve learned.
- Blog about what your would do if you could ago back in time.
- Write a letter to your future self.
9. Repurpose old content
If you’ve already got a backlog of content from years ago, here are a few ways you can repurpose it to make it fresh.- Expand on short lists from old articles
- Expand on subheadings old articles.
- Turn popular posts into podcasts and share them on your blog.
10. Ultimate guide
Ready to step it up a notch? Awesome… let’s get crackin’!
Search Google for a key topic related to your business. Save all the articles from the first two pages of search results. Now, create a mega post with your own spin on the best information, and what’s missing, from the top ranked articles.
Include expert quotes, statistics, images, graphs, tables, and most importantly, excellent tips to help people achieve their goals.
It’s important not to repeat yourself, or to copy others. Your article needs to be original (or Google will slap you into a black hole). And… I forgot to mention, these sorts of articles are usually 3000+ words. Not really for the faint hearted.
But! When done right, they rank well, attract backlinks (more on that next), drive a lot of traffic to your site, and help move the needle on your rankings.
Final words
There’s a year’s worth of content you can pull from these ideas. But you gotta stay on top of it. It’s one thing to write these articles, it’s quite the other to do it well.
Make sure your blog solves problems for your audience. And that your articles are easy to read, have great headlines, are well structured, and contain images to boost engagement.
And finally, always value quality over quantity. Otherwise, who’s going to read it?
If you would like some more tips on content writing, check out these articles:
And if you would like the author of this article to write for your business…
Posts
0 Comments