One of the hardest parts of running your business blog is determining exactly what you should write about and what kind of information would engage your audience. (It’s for us, too. I probably spent more time figuring out what to write about today than I actually did writing it.) So let’s look at the best process to use when choosing blog topics that will bring more visitors to your site, let your customers meet current and potential customers and answer all your questions.
Use content tools.
Tools like BuzzSumo are designed to help you find content ideas. You can not only use this site to find content to share on social media but also to help you brainstorm blog topic ideas.
All you have to do is type a keyword or niche in the text box and see what articles appear. You can also type in a blog URL to see which blog posts perform best and try to derive them. Always remember not to completely replicate your blog ideas. You want to have your own original content.
Send out a customer survey.
What is your audience looking for? They are likely to want more information about your industry, your products/services, your business, and how to best use your products/services. Therefore, figuring out what your audience wants to see from you is critical.
But you’re not a mind reader, are you? (If so, we mean no offense. We just tend to assume that most of our blog readers aren’t.) Therefore, you should ask your customers directly.
Sending out a customer survey is a great way to get direct feedback from your audience about what they’d like to see from you. You want your survey to be short and to the point, asking only 5-10 questions that tell you exactly what you need to know.
Making the survey multiple choice makes it even easier for customers (and be sure to provide an incentive for people to want to take time out of the day to take the survey). Ask what aspect of your business/product/service they have the most questions about, ask what their favorite product/service is and what kind of information they would like you to produce.
Find popular blogs in your industry.
Do a Google search for blogs in your industry and find some of the best/most popular ones. Bookmark them so you can refer to them often. You never want to copy the intellectual property of other blogs, but finding blogs that are doing it right and using their blog post templates and themes for inspiration is a great idea.
Check out several of your blog posts to see if any of your blog post topics get going. Create some original threads, as well as threads that put a different spin on some of these previously written articles.
Do keyword research.
There are a few different ways to do this. First, you can use a keyword research tool designed specifically for this, such as KeywordTool.io. You type in your topic and scroll through the results, which are a list of all the different Google searches people do on that topic.
Another way is to start typing your keyword into Google and check what autocompletes in the search bar. Doing keyword research to find blog post topics is a great idea because you can find real Google search results. These are the topics that people regularly research and want to be answered, and now you can write those answers for them.
Scan online forums.
Check online forums or communities in your industry to see what questions users are asking and turn them into blog post topics.
Also, after writing several articles, you may already have a blog post written that answers someone’s question. This is a great way to get more readers because you can share your blog post in response to their questions.