Blog topics don’t appear out of thin air, folks. Sad to say, but they actually take a considerable amount of time to develop.
Now, when you first start blogging, thinking of blog topics is easier than a year or two down the road. After all, at the beginning, anything and everything lies at your fingertips. Is that overwhelming? Start here.
Create A Blogging Strategy
As with any major project, you must plan. Mapping out a blogging strategy will help focus your blog topic-generating efforts.
HubSpot simplifies the process of creating a blogging strategy into a few questions. Here are the most relevant ones for our purposes:
- Why does your blog exist?
- Which of your competitors have blogs?
- Which keywords are you targeting?
Answering each of these questions will help you identify viable blog topics.
Why Does Your Blog Exist?
Identify the purpose of your blog. Is it to inform customers of new products and services? Is it to share company news? Will it be a recruitment tool?
This question identifies your audience, which determines what general topic veins you should even start with. Now you’re free to ask these blog topic questions:
- What does my audience care about?
- What questions does my audience have?
- What problems can I solve for my audience?
The answers to these three questions will lead you to many blog ideas.
Which Of Your Competitors Have Blogs?
Does your direct competition blog? Chances are, they do. So, what are they talking about?
You want to blog at least as well as your competition — better, if we’re being honest. Mine their blog for topics and put a new, insightful spin on that popular topic.
Maybe you don’t have a competitor in your region. In such cases, look to peer companies. They may have blog topics you can rework and gear toward your market.
Which Keywords Are You Targeting?
Keywords are words or phrases (long-tail keywords) that let search engines understand your content’s meaning. When a customer searches for a specific keyword, search engines can then connect your website content with their search query. Obviously, you want your audience to find your blog (web page); creating blogs around keywords will raise the likelihood of this.
There you have it! Three ways beginning bloggers can come up with blog topics.
