You’ve sat down to dedicate some time to create stellar content for your blog, yet nothing but an empty page stares back. You’ve officially been hit with blog writer’s block and the great ideas simply aren’t flowing through.
To consistently create great blog content, you need a strong editorial calendar to see you through each month. But how do you generate great ideas? Explore some of the methods below and you’ll be creating relevant, high-quality blog content that your customers will love reading.
How to come up with content ideas for a blog
Providing value to your audience and positioning yourself as an industry leader are just a couple of the benefits of consistently producing high-quality content. You can demonstrate what you do and how it’s relevant by covering key topics. Coming up with ideas is often the hardest part of the blog writing process. So, let’s explore some of the best ways to consistently come up with blog ideas.
Ask your customers what they’d like to see more of
A great source of content ideas can come from your customers themselves! Being able to create blog posts around exactly what your clients/customers are looking for is a sure-fire way to guarantee traffic and gain more business in the process.
You can simply ask customers what they need help with in emails, social media, comments etc. Then create blog content surrounding their problems and solve them as a result. This will position your business as a trusted authority and you’ll be providing customers with real value.
Another way to use the insight of your customers is to ask what their favourite blog posts are and what they’d like to see more of. This will let you know what topics are popular as well as the preferred style and format. Again, you can send an email, post on social media or reply to comments asking for pointers.
Hold a group brainstorming session
You’ll be amazed at how many ideas come together when everyone is in a group brainstorming session: after all, you’re only capable of so many ideas alone. You can bounce ideas off each other, have discussions and embark on new trains of thought. After a good content brainstorming session, you could come away with a much healthier-looking editorial calendar!
Here are some brainstorming starters to help get those creative juices flowing:
- Have everyone write down as many ideas as they can in 10 minutes — share and discuss ideas afterwards.
- What’s happening in the news that’s relevant to your industry?
- Share a great piece of content you’ve read this week.
- What blog posts do you enjoy reading most?
- If you were a customer, what would you want to know?
Identify trending topics
If you’re looking to snag some traffic for your blog (who isn’t?), then trending topics can be a great way to not only come up with content ideas, but also boost your online presence while you’re at it. So, how do you discover which topics are trending in your industry?
- Google trends is a rich resource for what’s popular in your industry, what people are searching for and what topics are being discussed.
- Keep up to date with your industry on social media to see what people are interacting with most.
- Only create content around trends that concern your audience.
Write a detailed guide
Positioning yourself as an authority with your audience is a key way to build trust and loyalty. If you’re stuck for content ideas, why not consider creating a detailed ‘ultimate guide’ on a complex or wide industry topic? Content that’s 3,000 words or more tends to perform better, as it provides the audience with a great deal of value and truly fulfils their search intent.
Perhaps your company specialises in social media marketing, for example. Therefore, you could create ‘The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing’. You could go in-depth on the different platforms, what they do and how they can benefit the reader.
By the end of the guide, the reader should have everything they need to know about social media marketing. When creating a detailed guide, a good idea is to look at Google’s ‘people also ask’ drop-down and try to answer all of the top questions.
You don’t want your detailed guide to overwhelm the reader. So make sure you break up the text with images, infographics, videos, lists and more. This will also help boost your SEO.
Look at your competitors and find a content gap
If you’re struggling with content ideas, your competitors can be a great place to start. Carrying out a competitor analysis can help to identify any content gaps that competitors haven’t yet covered, so you can jump on the topic and rank before they do!
You can also explore blog and social media comments or even Amazon book reviews to discover topics that your audience want to know about but can’t find anywhere. You can then create content that you know people are searching for.
Reflect on things you learned in the past
If you want to build a connection with your audience, getting a bit personal in your blog posts can be a great way to do so. It’s highly likely that you were in the same shoes, suffering the same problems as your audience, at some point. Reflecting on your past struggles and how you overcame them can provide invaluable insight for your audience.
You can also reflect on past mistakes and what you’ve learnt from them. This can help your audience avoid making the same mistakes, whilst opening yourself up to building a connection with your readers.
Conduct keyword research to find what your target audience are searching for
A quick and easy way to come up with blog content ideas is to conduct some keyword research. This will help you identify the topics that your target audience is regularly searching for. As a result, you know that the content you produce will be relevant, useful and enjoyed by your target audience.
So, next time you find yourself looking at a very empty editorial calendar, you can try out some of our top tips and you’ll have content ideas coming out of your ears in no time! Sometimes, coming up with content ideas is half the battle. If you’re looking for someone to write your content, all optimised for Google and delivering huge value to your audience, our content writing services could be just what you need.
