Blog Content Ideas
Content marketing demands a lot of attention. You need to pay attention to the latest popular trends, analyze your competitors’ strategies, and come up with new, original ideas on a constant basis so you can post regularly and build an audience that expects—and desires—your consistent material. For some content marketers, the obstacle is in the core strategy; questions like “who is my key audience?” or “what mediums do I need to be using?” But for most content marketers, the biggest problem is creating enough high-quality, engaging material to keep the engine of your content strategy running.
If you’re having trouble keeping up a consistent flow of content, try one of these unique strategies to create a higher volume of the same high-quality material your audience has come to expect:
1. Break up your posts. This isn’t about “creating more content” as much as it is about using the content you already have more efficiently. If you’re a fan of writing longer posts, try breaking those posts up into smaller, more niche titles. It will give you more opportunities to post without watering down your content. If you’re already writing short posts, this strategy can still work for you—take your idea for the post and transform it into different permutations. For example, if you write an article about top breakfast foods for young children, write a follow-up about top lunch foods for young children.
2. Experiment with newsjacking. Newsjacking has become a bit of a buzzword, but it’s a viable and easy strategy that anyone can use. Essentially, newsjacking involves finding a relevant trending topic and repurposing it for your own blog. It will take a bit of effort to find the right news story that fits your niche or industry, and some more effort to brainstorm and write a good spin on it, but it can work wonders.
3. Outsource your content creation: internally. Another way to get more content flowing is to rely on your coworkers for a little bit of help. This is especially useful if you work for a large company with multiple departments. Ask around to see who might be interested in writing up a sample blog about their own responsibilities within the company—for example, in a manufacturing company, a niche technician would be able to write a highly detailed post about the pitfalls of certain types of equipment. This way, you can leverage the power of your existing staff to create more—and more unique—content.
4. Outsource your content creation: externally. Another option is to rely on an external source of content creation, usually in the form of a freelance writer. Try not to rely on content mills or services that connect you to a wide pool of authors. Instead, find a freelancer who can learn to write consistently in your company’s brand voice.
5. Outsource your content creation: use your audience. If you’re looking for a free, yet somewhat less reliable way to create more content, try leveraging the power of your audience. Initiate a competition or simply call your readers to action by asking them to submit pieces of their own content. You can invite them to write or record a review on one of your products, find a new and inventive way to position one of your products, or just ask them to write about anything they want (as long as it has something to do with the company). Take the best of these responses, and post them gradually. This will serve as an excellent means of content production, and will also increase the loyalty of the customers whose content you shared.
6. Don’t be afraid to share. Speaking of sharing content, don’t be afraid to do it. The best content strategies are the ones with mostly original content, true, but the key word there is “mostly.” If you see a cool infographic or an exciting video relevant to your industry, feel free to post it on your site (along with proper attribution, of course). Your readers will probably like it just as much as you did when you saw it, and you can share the credibility with the original source without having any stake in its original creation.
7. Start a discussion. If you need to make a new post on your blog, but you don’t have a lot to say, open it up to your commenters. Instead of writing several hundred words on a given subject, simply announce a given subject and let your readers take care of the rest. Find content that is relevant to you website design and talk about events locally, like Santa Barbara. All you need to do is set the stage for an engaging discussion, and the comments will flow freely to fill space and provide more content for search engines to crawl.
8. Use interviews. Interviews could give you an easy way to create more content. All you’ll need to do is find a willing participant, and write down a handful of questions. You could interview a major authority in the industry, a notable client, or even a senior member of your organization. Let them elaborate on any or all of the questions you’ve provided them, and simply post their responses as a new piece of content on your blog. Depending on how fast your interviewee can complete the process, this can be a highly efficient means of creating new content.
9. Recycle your older posts. Recycling your old posts can be dangerous, so be careful with how you do this. You can’t simply repost an older entry and get all the same benefits. Instead, you’ll have to either delete the older post and re-post it as a new piece to avoid having Google see duplicate content on your site (though this eliminates a deep link). Or, you can revise the post enough to make it seem like a different entry altogether. This is a great way to breathe new life into older posts whose topics haven’t become antiquated by changes in the industry.
10. Get personal. If you’re out of topic ideas or you want something easier to write about, consider getting personal with your blog posts. It’s not a great idea to turn your company’s blog into a personal affair by only writing about company events, company history, and personnel, but as occasional entries, they work fine—and they can show off your brand’s personality. Write a biographical entry about a leader within your organization, or take pictures of your office and show off some of the internal workings that make your company tick.
Every company is different, and every content marketer will need a different blend of tools and strategies to sustain a high-quality content marketing campaign. Treat your efforts as experiments; try a new means of creating content, measure the results, and compare it to your original process. If you come up with better content or improve your efficiency, keep it up, and if not, try something different. Through trial and error, you’ll find a rhythm that suits your company—and your unique talents and preferences—perfectly.